The Dirty Dozen: 1998 Fleer Tradition Series One

In 1998, Fleer renamed their flagship brand "Fleer Tradition." But despite the name change, '98 FleerTrad is your standard issue late-90s base level product.

The first series was 350 cards with the last 50 (all of the subsets) short-printed -- the first time Fleer SPed the base set. Fleer also went back to a standard UV-coating after two years of giving their cards a matte finish.

Each pack came with three different one-per-pack inserts. The first (and most valuable) was Vintage '63; a Hobby only pesudo-partial parallel done in the style of the 1963 Fleer set. The second one-per-pack insert was a "Million Dollar Moment." These were part of a contest where, if you collected a full set of 50 MDM's, congratulations, you won $1,000,000! The catch being, the last five cards in the set were all extremely short-printed, and Fleer only made one copy of Joel Youngblood's card. MDM's were randomly inserted into packs of various Fleer baseball products in 1997 and '98.

The last insert is a Diamond Ink Point card. Diamond Ink was a redemption program where collectors who accumulated 500 point cards of a particular player could then redeem them and receive a genuine autographed baseball of that player. Point cards were seeded at the rate of one-per-pack in just about every 1998 Fleer product and ten different players signed for the program. It was a pretty neat idea, and I'm a but surprised that somebody else hasn't tried to replicate it.

The only thing that sucks about 1998 FleerTrad -- other than the unnecessary short-prints -- is the lack of any copy on the backs of the base cards. Just stats and a photo.

Base:
Shigetoshi Hasegawa (1997 MLB Debut)
Andres Galarraga (Free Agent Signed)
Wally Joyner
David Justice
John C-3POlerud
Kevin Orie ('97 Debut)
Deivi Cruz ('97 Debut)
Joey Cora

Inserts:
Vintage '63 (1:1) Larry Walker
The front notates his 1997 NL MVP.

Rookie Sensations (1:18) Todd Helton
In the early 90s, the Rookie Sensations were the shit. By '98, they had become just another insert. (And a rather unremarkable one if that.)

Million Dollar Moments (1:1) Frank Robinson
Diamond Ink (1:1) Tony Womack 1 Diamond Point