2005 Fleer Patchworks

Here's the third pack out of the Target box, 2005 Fleer Patchworks. I was least interested in this pack when I picked it up, so it has low expectations going for it. It's a run of the mill 5 cards for 3 bucks 'insert or bust' lottery pack. I think one of the reasons Fleer went bankrupt is that they were paying 6 players to be the spokesman on their packs instead of one like everyone else. Donruss was wise with their money and got George Brett to be on every pack and they were rewarded with the loss of their license. Life's just not fair. I don't remember ever opening any of this stuff so I don't know what it looks like. Let's find out!

40 Ichiro
45 Johan Santana
26 Mike Sweeney
Sluggers.com card # AYX7BNKU
3 JD Drew
56 Carl Crawford

Well this doesn't look that bad at all. A sort of solid color background with bendy silver things kind of motif going on. The pictures are all good except for Drew who's in "I just signed with the Dodgers, hyuk" mugshot mode. The name is stamped in foil, which is a pet peeve of mine, but oh well. Not a bad player selection. Ichiro and Johan make every pack better. I'm a fan of Crawford. I seem to get a JD Drew, Mike Sweeney or Tom Glavine in every pack so getting two of the three isn't really a surprise. Not a terrible pack, but nothing to write home about. No inserts though, unless you count the Sluggers.com card. Don't steal my code, I'm going to try to win a trip to the 2005 All Star game once I'm done writing my posts.

Here's what's I don't like about this set (and dozens of others from the past few years). It's a 100 card set which should be easily completable. There are 70 regular cards, 20 rookies and 10 legends cards which isn't too bad. Unfortunately, the legends are numbered to 999 and the rookies to 499. To make matters worse, these cards drop in hobby boxes at one in eight packs. There's not much left over for retail so you're looking at 1:144 odds on pulling one of the short printed cards. to put it in perspective, let's say that every Wal-Mart in the country is allotted 6 boxes of this stuff. If you were to follow the trucks the day it was delivered and bought every single pack of this product from every Wal-Mart in Nebraska, even with perfect collation you still wouldn't be able to complete the 100 card set. Maybe you can complete it if you hit every Target too. So you're left with a 70 card set, a handful of boring inserts and an gamer per box for three bucks a pack. Meh. Stuff like this is why we keep opening wax from the mid 80's.