30 Day Baseball Card Challenge

Friday, November 7, 2014

Flash(p)ack Friday #2: 1992 7-11/CITGO Baseball

While sifting through dime boxes back in September, I stumbled across a few singles from the 1992 Fleer 7-11/CITGO set which prompted me to pick up some packs off of eBay:


Last night I decided to bust a few of them in hopes of completing a set while relaxing in front of the television.

Each cellophane wrapped pack contained four to five cards:


And after opening my seventh pack, I finally completed the twenty-four card set:



The set has a loaded checklist of some of the biggest names in the game back in the day.  Fast forward twenty-two years and almost 50% of the players are enshrined in Cooperstown.

By the way if the design seems familiar... that's because it's very similar to the 1992 Fleer baseball base card design.


As you can see there are a few subtle differences in the design's colors, plus Fleer used different photographs and added The Performer Collection at the bottom of the card.


The card backs aren't exactly the same either.  Location of the card number and MLB trademarks, photo selection, and the addition of the 7-11 and CITGO logos are the three obvious differences.  Plus the regular issue base card of Gwynn included his minor league statistics at Walla Walla, however neither card included his Las Vegas Stars numbers.

Overall this set fits in perfectly with the Junk Wax Era.  Singles can be found in dime boxes, while packs can be purchased for around 50¢ each.  It's pretty safe to assume that Fleer produced a ton of this product for the 7-11/CITGO gasoline promotion.

But if you can look past the set's value, it's a pretty cool oddball set loaded with big names to chase.

Best of all... for five bucks, I was able to relax on a work night, bust a few packs, build a set, have a few doubles for my oddball/insert binders, and still have a few packs left over.

Well that's a wrap.  I hope all of you had a great week.  Happy Friday and sayonara!

12 comments:

The Lost Collector said...

Fleer did this in 1994 as well with Sunoco. I'm sure there are other instances. I wish gas stations still did this!

Nick said...

I have a couple of these and always wondered where they came from. Sounds like a fun break!

The Junior Junkie said...

Me too. I love these things.

Play at the Plate said...

Very cool Fuji!

Tony L. said...

Yet another argument in favor of oddballs by licensed companies!

BobWalkthePlank said...

I miss these. Thanks for sharing!

Fuji said...

I think I have some Fleer/Shell football cards from the mid 90's as well.

Fuji said...

Yeah... it was definitely $5 well spent.

Mark Hoyle said...

Very cool find. Any dupes of the Clemens or Boggs

GCA said...

Stuff like this motivates me to fill in the junk wax sets that I missed. Just so I can put cool stuff like these with them.

Fuji said...

Hey Mark... Just checked and I didn't pull extras of either. If I stumble across either in future dime boxes, I'll pull them for you.

Fuji said...

Yeah... they might not be worth much in terms of money, but they're cool oddballs that take me back in time.