30 Day Baseball Card Challenge

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Cheap Cool Cards #42: Fleer Super Star Special Subsets

What I'm about to show you is a part of my childhood that I'd like to share with my friends and fellow collectors.

Before I started busting packs in hopes of finding rookie cards, memorabilia cards, inserts, parallels, and autographs... my quest was simple.  I wanted to pull cards of players I knew and cards that were a little out of the ordinary.

That's why I instantly fell in love with Fleer's Super Star Special subsets... especially the cards that doubled as puzzle pieces.



The concept was simple... you take "speed" and combine it with "power"... and you get:



As far as I know... the first of these unique subset cards appeared in their 1983 set.  Along with Ricky and Reggie, Fleer also included Bud Black and Vida Blue:


Put them together and you get...




Black and blue.

The following year, they added three more pairs of "puzzle cards" to their set.  The first one paired up two of the top hitters in the American League...



A pair of Montreal Expos...



And a pair of all-star middle infielders...



Unfortunately... all good things must come to an end.  1985 would mark the final year (at least I think this was the last year) that Fleer would create these special "puzzle cards".

They decided to go north of the border again.  This time they paired up two of Toronto's best power hitters:


Ironically they left out George Bell who led the Blue Jays with 26 home runs in 1984.

And rounding out this post is the creative Holland Tunnell:




Get it?  Holland Tunnel.  Now that's what I call nifty.  These cards look absolutely amazing sitting next to each other in 9-pocket pages.  And best of all... they're super affordable.

I purchased all of these cards (except the Black and Blue which I picked up at the flea market last year) for $2.16 (+ shipping) off of Sportlots.  If you're ever in the situation where you need to add a few cheap cards to justify the shipping fees on that site, then you might want to consider these.

They're cheap.  They're cool.  They're cheap, cool cards.

By the way... if you happen to know of anymore of these "puzzle" subset cards, please let me know.

Happy Thursday and sayonara!

Extra Edition!

Attention anyone who I've traded with in the past or anyone who has generously shipped a care package in my direction.  My mailing address has changed.  Please email me if you'd like my new mailing address.  Thank you and have a great day.

17 comments:

Greg Zakwin said...

Ok, so those are cooler than I originally thought they were.

Dean said...

I'll be damned if I ever noticed that. Cool.

shoeboxlegends said...

I've seen a few of these before but never so many at once, great post!

Tony L. said...

Vida Blue appears to be looking at a teammate off screen saying, "hey, I'm getting paid for this stupid pun." ;-)

CaptKirk42 said...

I thought those were cool in '83 and they are still cool. Of course pulling one of a pair from a pack and then trying like heck to find the other from the pair was maddening (I don't mean that football coach turned sportscaster with a video game named after him either). I think I finally had to hit my LCS in late 83 to match up a couple of those pairs. Got to see how much of the rest of the set I need to complete after all these years.

CaptKirk42 said...

OH and the frustrating thing about those is the numbering is reversed so if you put the cards in their proper numerical order the picture doesn't match up, if you put the picture right you have the numbers out of order.

BobWalkthePlank said...

Those are awesome!

SpastikMooss said...

Never knew these existed, but they're definitely awesome!

Mark Hoyle said...

Those are cool

Anonymous said...

Great post, Fuji... I had been thinking of doing something similar, but you've got more of these cards than I do. Cards like this were among the reasons why I was a big Fleer guy in the early 1980's... and it makes me want to go ahead and complete the 1983 - 1985 sets.

Fuji said...

I'm sure the first time I pulled one of these from a pack, I was like WTH. But once I acquired the other half... I was :-)

Fuji said...

Lol... nice observation.

Fuji said...

Didn't even think about the numbering. I have all three of these sets in binders. One of these days I'll have to go back and look to see if I put them in numerical order or photographic order.

Fuji said...

If you know of any that I'm missing, please let me know. The sad thing is... I have all three of these sets completed and in binders. Unfortunately they're sitting at my parents house, so I don't really have access to them whenever I want.

Commishbob said...

I hadn't thought about those in a long time. Good stuff. I remember trying to explain the significance of the 'Holland Tunnell' duo to some of my students. LOL Blank looks.

Hackenbush said...

Love the Holland Tunnel.

night owl said...

I'm shocked so many have never noticed these before. I had that '84 Fleer Sax for years before my never ending search for the Thon side ended. The card seemed tragically incomplete without the other half, unfinished.