Review: 1990 Fleer

"Just when I thought that I was out, they pull me back in." - Al Pacino as Michael Corleone

It had been a while. While my interest in pro football remained as high as always, my interest in stupid pieces of thick paper had waned. I only bought a few packs of 1988 Topps, and by 1989, I was out of the hobby altogether, which was my bad for missing one of the most important years the business would ever have. (As well as missing a chance at the '89 Score Barry Sanders) But as I was starting to get too old to spend my money on toys, I had to have something else to throw the stuff away on. But video games were too expensive (Which reminds me, someday on one of the other bloggity things, I need to tell the horror story of my botched acquisition of Super Mario Bros. 3.) and I really had no desire to buy tapes at the time. (Because CDs were mystical strange things at the time, and even a crappy CD player cost at least like $100.) And there I was, with about twenty bucks of allowance to blow every month. What was I going to do with all this money? And in the Cleveland, Mississippi K-Mart, I found the answer:

What manner of witchcraft was this? Football cards? By FLEER!? Don't they know that only Topps can make those? Keep in mind that I had missed the entire festivities of 1989, so the thought of another brand doing football was strange to me, much less the thought of FIVE of them doing it. (For those of you who had better things to buy, Pro Set and Score debuted in 1989, and Action Packed joined the fun in 1990.) So there I was, with like two dollars in my hands, so I dropped about a buck ten and got a couple of packs. How could I not? I mean, it was the Premiere Edition! The first! That means they had to be worth a lot of money someday! Heh...


Now, with the benefit of hindsight and fifteen years of technological advances, it's funny to think just how far cards have come, especially when compared to how sad things were back in the old days. I mean, today a set like 1990 Fleer would seem quaint and charming with its caveman-like printing technologies. But back then, with me never having seen the higher-quality stuff Pro Set had been doing or the crazy bizarre shit Action Packed was about to unleash on the general public, these cards were a revelation. The card backs had more than three colors! And a PICTURE of the player! How crazy is that? And the fronts of the cards... They were smooth! Not like that lumpy crap Topps had always put out. Of course, Donruss, (who took a bizarrely long time to get into the football game) Fleer, and Score had higher quality stuff for years, but this was exciting and new for football. And hell, I don't think Fleer put player pictures on the baseball card backs until 1991 or so. But fast-forwarding to the present day, these were really not all that bad looking. The silver football is kind of busy, and there were some odd color choices, like the green on Washington Redskins cards, but they made it work somehow. It was certainly better than the disaster of the 1991 Fleer design, which I'll probably cover on here soon.


As far as player selection, overall, it wasn't too bad, but there was one huge problem. One of the things card companies had started to do (which, once again, was new and exciting to me since I had missed 1989) was to make cards of players drafted that year, before they had ever suited up in an NFL game. It's funny to think that such a thing was ever a novel concept, when it's damn near what the entire hobby is based on now. But making sure to not make the mistake Topps had made the year before, Fleer put draft picks in their set. Four of them. Yes, just four. But maybe they made up for quantity with quality, right? Well, as far as they knew when they originally made the set, yeah. But with even two years of hindsight? Oh god. Jeff George. Blair Thomas. Percy Snow. Andre Ware. Oh... Oh god.
Granted, they would eventually make up for the blunder with the 1990 Fleer Update, which was a damn-near impossible to find 120 card set with guys like Junior Seau, Rob Moore, and Emmitt Smith included, but it didn't help those of us who spent tens of tens of dollars on the main set. Especially since - like basically everything anyone put out in the early 90s - the 1990 Fleer regular set was overprinted to hell and back, eliminating even the slightest shadow of a hope of any of it ever being worth any money at all. I think the Rich Gannon rookie and a few of the usual suspects like Sanders, Marino, Elway, and Montana top the one-dollar mark, but there's not much past that. Nowadays, the entire set goes for about ten bucks, which is probably a bit generous. Bummer.

Speaking of value bummers, then there was the Fleer All Pro insert set. A set like this, being one that wasn't always a one-per-pack deal, (I think rack packs had one, though.) was something that really had never been done before, at least where football was concerned. Getting an All Pro in your pack was a big deal, and I and everyone else I knew who collected cards (Which was basically my brother and this dude Michael) valued those suckers like gold. Also, Beckett never listed them in the price guides, which added a strange sense of mystery to it all. So imagine our dismay when someone got one of those thick-ass yearly price guides that listed everything, and we found out that the goddamn things were basically worthless. Well, actually, they've increased in value over the years, but they're currently valued at 1.2 times the value of the guy's standard-issue card, which still means that the most valuable ones (Barry Sanders and Joe Montana) are worth like a dollar fifty, and half the set are still about a nickel apiece. Fuuuuuck.

The 1990 Fleer set probably sucks in the eyes of most collectors now, and they're probably right, for the most part. But with this being the one set I was determined to complete in 1990, (and I fell WAY short, although I think my brother got everything but a few All Pros) and with it being such a significant part of my spare time that year, this is probably my favorite set of 1990. That's basically how I remember that year: Sitting around, flipping through a yellow notebook of 1990 Fleer cards with spaces here and there for stuff I hadn't found yet, while someone around me was probably playing "Gamma World" (Think "Dungeons & Dragons," except with post-apocalyptic mutants instead of stuff from The Hobbit.) and listening to Seasons in the Abyss.
Good times. Sort of.