Sunshine On My Carpet

There's a girl in my 6th period class that always comes into my classroom with a smile.  Every single day.  She was the same way last year.  I'm truly envious.  It's like she sees rainbows and butterflies everywhere she walks.

This morning I got a taste of the joy she experiences when I sat down and busted open two boxes of 1991 Fleer baseball.  The yellow brightened up my day... and my family room.

I figured I'd share a little of that sunshine with all of you and show off some of my favorite cards from the break.  But before that, let's set the mood with a little John Denver and take a look at the box break numbers and what I can expect to pull from these two boxes.

Number of Packs:  72 (36 Packs per Box x 2 Boxes)
Expected Number of Cards: 1,008 (14 Cards x 72 Packs)
Number of Cards in the Set:  720
Expected Number of Stickers: 72 (1 Sticker x 72 Packs)

With perfect collation, I should have been able to build a complete base set with 200+ extras.  However I remember reading about one of you who busted three boxes and was still missing a handful of cards.

So it wasn't exactly holding my breathe and it's a good thing, because after sorting the first 100 cards, I was missing 40.

It's safe to say that the Cardboard Gods were telling me that it's not meant to be.  I sat there for a minute or two thinking about whether or not I should build the set, but I decided against it for these four reasons:

#1:  Best case scenario, I'll still need 200 cards.  That's a lot of cards.

#2:  With insane postal rates, it'd be cheaper to go out and buy a complete set.

#3:  I already have a lot on my plate.  I'm currently building over 20 baseball sets.

#4:  It's 1991 Fleer baseball.  I'll survive without a complete set.

With that being said, I decided to sort them into team stacks, which will eventually be shipped off in care packages.

Gotta spread some of that sunshine!

Okay... let's get to ten of my favorite base cards pulled in this morning's break:

1991 Fleer #118

The one thing all of my favorites have in common are the well cropped action shots.  Figured I'd kick things off with Pudge in his catcher's gear.

Here's a look at the back of his card:

I'm a big fan of the back design.  I think the only major flaw is that there wasn't enough room to fit Fisk's entire career statistics.  Oh well... you can't have it all.

Here are the best of the rest...

This box break reminded me of three reasons I truly enjoyed busting Fleer baseball as a kid:

#1:  The checklist is grouped by teams based on how they performed the year before.

#2:  I always looked forward to seeing who made it onto their annual Super Star Specials subset cards.

I wasn't fortunate enough to pull a Griffey base card, but was very happy to see him on this subset card with Bonds.  It was pretty cool following and watching both of these second generation guys terrorize pitchers throughout the 90's.

#3:  Fleer stickers rule.  Been a fan since the early 80's.

In addition to the 72 stickers, I also pulled nine Pro Vision inserts from the two wax boxes.  I pulled six different cards out of the twelve card set:

And I'll wrap things up with these two box bottom panels:

Are they oversized and difficult to store?  Yeah.  But the oddball fan inside of me  easily overlooks that issue and embraces them.

The 1991 Fleer box bottom set celebrates the seven official no-hitters thrown in 1990, plus the two unofficial no-hitters thrown by Andy Hawkins and Melido Perez.

From what I can gather, there are a total of four different box bottoms.  The third panel contains Nolan Ryan, Andy Hawkins, Terry Mulholland, and the New York Yankees logo, while the fourth one features a Pittsburgh Pirates logo and three double printed players:  Nolan Ryan, Dave Stewart, and Dave Stieb.

Well that's it for today.  Thanks again John for hooking me up with these two wax boxes.  It definitely helped brighten up this rainy day.

Happy Saturday and sayonara!