Cardboard Fenway: 1994 Flair Andre Dawson

Cardboard Fenway - #42. 1994 Flair Andre Dawson

The Red Sox teams of the mid-to-late 1990s were where fading superstars came to play for one year then bounce to another team. Guys like Dawson, Canseco, Eckersley... Actually, I think Dawson was here for more than one season. Anyway, here he is fielding in the Fenway outfield.

1990 - 1994 Countdown: #16. 1993 SP

I didn’t know how to approach SP. Not in writing about it and its historical significance for a company like Upper Deck (I happen to believe that it redefined the company and together with Topps Finest pushed The Hobby at large down the deep, dark, foil-stamped, holographic tunnel from which it’s never re-emerged), but when I first saw it on the shelf at my local card shop. Don’t get me wrong; I like this set. It intimidated me to no end when it originally came out, but I’ve warmed to it as card prices in general have inflated over the last fifteen years. It’s just, well… When it comes to owning baseball cards, I have a bit of an inferiority complex.

Let me re-phrase that. When it comes to life, I have a large inferiority complex. I can’t tell you why… but I want to thank all those collectors who’ve loved and destroyed the crap out of their cards. Without you there would be nothing out there for me to buy.

I’m not ashamed to admit it: I love creased, dinged and frayed cards. Cards that show a lot of wear have always been friends of mine. Just this afternoon I re-sorted my vintage notebook and I’d have to say that about 90 percent of the cards in the book have paper loss, noticeably chipped corners, creases and/or sun damage. A personal favorite is my copy of Jim Bouton’s 1966 Topps Venezuela card: it’s covered in scribbles from the previous owner plus I can fold it twice and it doesn’t snap to pieces. And that’s one of the better cards in my collection.

The writing was on the wall for me when Score came out in 1988; that set did a lot of things that Topps, Fleer and Donruss weren’t doing at the time (full-color backs, photos on the backs, printed on a nicer, cleaner card stock, poly-bagging packs), and really it was only a matter of time before there would be a new set with packs that I couldn’t afford. That came sooner rather than later with Upper Deck the next year. After that it was Leaf in 1990, Stadium Club and Ultra in 1991 and so on and so forth until I could barely afford any packs by the time I stopped buying new stuff in 1995. But I digress…

Of the three ultra-premium sets that debuted in 1993, SP was the most subtle and most delicate. Maybe it was the etched copper foil stamp, or the simple two-color block pattern along the left edge —for me reminiscent for some reason of nautical flags and tags of preppy designer clothes. Or maybe it was ikebana design of the thin, circuit-like metallic ink line that traveled up the right side of the front to provide underscore for the team name along the top. (The light bulb filament-like bob and weave shape of the line would also lend visual cue to the die-cut edge of the Platinum Power insert set. See what they were doing there? It’s a nice touch that ties the insert and base sets together without working too hard.)

But most likely, it earned this distinction because instead of using the Upper Deck and individual teams’ logos, the company name and team names were spelled out in the same copper metallic ink. Because of the omission of these graphics, the SP aesthetic wasn’t piecemeal, and the designers had control of the entire layout of the card. (If you need a refresher course in ultra-premium card design in 1993, take a look for flaws in Topps Finest and Fleer Flair: Finest uses the same Topps logo as the company’s other brands, while Flair’s otherwise elegant design is taken down a few notches by the mostly-harmless-but-by-no-means-elegant team logos, positioned in the upper right hand corner on the back.)

With nine players from each team represented and a total checklist just shy of 300 cards, the make-up of SP was strong, and on the strength of design, overall checklist and availability was able to turn a relatively weak rookie class into desirable cards across the board. Derek Jeter and Johnny Damon (on his only rookie from 1993) lead the pack, but am I wrong or did Beckett have the Chad Mottola card somewhere around $5 at one point?

1993 saw Upper Deck grow up. Not only did the company successfully transform its flagship from a fun-loving, cartoony, young-person’s baseball card set to a mature, classy, young-adult’s baseball card set, but it birthed a brand that gave the company a strong foothold in the rapidly expanding ultra-premium market. If I thought I was intimidated by SP when I first saw it, what about Topps and the other Upper Deck competitors?

1990 - 1994 Countdown: #18. 1993 Flair

If anything, it takes guts to recognize and react positively to change. Considering that baseball cards were relatively stable in their manufacture and presentation (two-color back, no gloss, cheap cardboard stock) for the 100 years leading up to 1986, it only took the big three companies at the time (Donruss, Fleer and Topps) between four and five years to change at least one of their products to more along the lines of what we expect from cards today: foil-stamping, bleed photos, full-color backs and varying degrees of coated stock. In the grand scheme, that’s no time at all.

1991 Fleer Ultra deserves all the credit for giving the company a significant presence in the then-new world of ‘premium’ cards. Collectors responded to the classy look and feel of the cards and felt privileged to be able to buy them, like they were making an investment. Ultra laid the groundwork not only for other premiums that followed, but for the maturation of Fleer’s flagship for the rest of the decade.

The only problem was that Ultra, despite its quality (no whiteout scribbles on these!) and marbleized grandeur, was kind of ugly. Sure, the cards briefy had value, and I salivated over them as much as the next kid, but I always felt like something was missing, design-wise.

Someone at Fleer must have agreed, because not two years later Flair debuted as the company’s ultra—no pun intended—premium card set. And ultra it was. Each card was a little piece of art and each pack resembled an Art Deco cigarette case. Buying a pack of Flair for $3 netted you a stack of shrink-wrapped cards, thicker than any kind of card I’d ever seen (even thicker than Sportflics) that were, in a word, beautiful. Delicate gold leaf names on glossy stock and a mix of veterans on a simple checklist. Looming action close-up ghosted in a Field of Dreams, Riders on the Storm kind of way behind a studious action shot. A great first step in building a reliable brand.

Growing up outside Boston, I always thought that when the guy down at my local card shop said 'Fleer Flair' real fast he sounded kind of dumb (Flee-ah Flay-yahh). Despite the regional patois faux pas of name choice by Fleer, Flair seemed more like an actual set than its competitor, Topps Finest. Finest felt more like it was for high rollers, like you needed a key to the Playboy Club before you could buy a pack. It was certainly not for a pimply high school freshman like me.

But Flair… though I didn’t quite see the point of paying so much for a pack of cards, at least I had the money to do it. It was within my reach. In the end, I bought only one pack of this set, no matter how many times that card store guy tried to push it on me.

1990 - 1994 Countdown: #39. 1994 Flair

By 1994 the novelty had worn off. It was inevitable. The thick cards, the crisp photography, the glossy stock, the delicate gold lettering, the four-color backs—Fleer either had to build on the laurels of its 1993 debut or it had to write the brand off as a one shot deal. Since that wasn’t really an option—Flair was Fleer’s mega-ultra high-end product line, after all—Fleer infused it with all the trappings of a major, mid-Nineties issue: it was released in two series of 225 cards (1993’s set was 300 cards total), had a few rookies* within the base set, and was complemented by a boatload of insert sets. In fact, if you went for the master set (base set plus all the inserts), we’re talking about 510 cards (that’s 60 inserts, for those of you bad at math). And at $4 a pack, that was not exactly a cheap proposition.

But that’s not to suggest $4 a pack wasn’t justified. Prestige. Privilege. That’s what this set came to represent, which was no small feat considering 1994’s crowded hobby landscape. The cards stood out because they were chunky, understated in their design, and totally different from anything Fleer Labs had coughed out before. I mean, it’s still hard to believe that Fleer was only five years removed from ‘Fuck Face,’ you know?

In terms of design, the clean, almost atmospheric photography of 1993 gave way to a busier front: a more elaborate gold foil bookplate frontispiece for name and team, plus two distinct photos (headshot/close-up to the left and action shot to the right). After a while it got to be monotonous, which is why I have only one piece of Flair in my collection (Eddie Murray) and have chose not to add more.

If we carry this critique to its end, can we qualify this set as Flair’s ‘sophomore slump’? I’m going to say ‘no.’ This isn’t ’94 Topps Finest we’re talking about. If anything, 1994 Flair should be remembered as ‘Flair Hits Puberty.’ Not exactly grown-up yet, but not exactly cherubic either.

*Everyone knows that Alex Rodriguez was one of the ‘few rookies.’ But can you name the other four? Overall, it’s here where sets from 1994 falter: the year’s rookie crop just wasn’t that great. In hindsight it’s a real shame, because 1994 was the sophomore effort for the ‘premium’ brands like Topps Finest, Fleer Flair and Upper Deck’s SP, and the premiere issue for Leaf Limited (reviewed previously at #43), sets that would be remembered in a better light if only their rookie crop had been more promising.

(The other four Flair rookies are Brian Anderson, Kurt Abbott, Chan Ho Park, and William Van Landingham. Quick: Can you name their teams?)