2003 Fleer Patchworks

This pack was glued to the front of an 8 packs for 10 bucks junk repack box I bought before I went on vacation. I almost got a box with a pack of UD Masterpieces showing, but I picked up this box and it was twice as heavy. That means CELLO PACKS! I wasn't disappointed, I got a few packs of '89 Topps wax and cello to rip on the trip. If you're nice to me I'll post one of the '89 packs soon. As long as I had bought the thing already, I figured what the hell and ripped this one too.

15 Shawn Green
75 Barry Zito
29 Mike Sweeney
DE-LA Darin Erstad Jersey #029/500
40 Ken Griffey Jr.
4 Bobby Higginson

Yes kids, you can pull jersey cards out of repack boxes. Ok so it's Darin Erstad. I said jersey cards, not 1 of 1 Babe Ruth autograph DNA splinter off the bat he hit his called shot home run with card. The Griffey's nice too. I'm attracting Mike Sweeneys at the rate Chris is pulling C3POleruds though. Does anybody actually collect Mike Sweeeney? I guess I am by default.

Repack Box Remorse: Chapter 2

Here's one of the more modern inclusions in that $20 repack box I was suckered into bought. 2005 Fleer Patchworks is another example of those star sets which are designed for the memorabilia versions. And that makes the base cards only an afterthought. They look to me to be the forefathers of this year's Spectrum set, with the swooping color backgrounds. The little ball logo in the lower center marks where the swatch should be. Some of the player photos look like they're chasing that little ball. It's a sort of subliminal hint that this set is chasing respectability. I guess it never caught it, because the company is now officially gone. Too bad, I kinda liked Fleer. They were the evolutionary bridge between Topps basic colors & retro styles and Upper Deck's more sophisticated graphic themes. Let's see who we have:

20 Jack Wilson - Sounds like Hack, but doesn't quite hit like him...

44 Richie Sexson - Hey, careful, it's a family show...

25 Alfonso Soriano - Didn't really know him until he came to the Nats

13 Jose Vidro - Neither did Jose...

8 Frank "Big Hurt" Thomas - Hope he's not done.

2003 Fleer Patchworks

There's two things about this set that stand out to me. First, I remember when this first came out that there were a lot of complaints about the patches. This set wasn't really on my radar at the time but I recall a lot of problems with the patch cards. Delays, jerseys instead of patches, missing patches, etc. I might be totally wrong as this is from memory and I can't find anything online confirming it but that's just my recollection. The other thing is I never figured out what the heck the logo was supposed to mean. It's like a tire surrounded by a roman laurel crown with 7 stars representing witchcraft or something and there isn't a quilt anywhere to be found. No worries, it's a bad set that's easily forgettable and you can pick up the patch cards for pennies on the dollar nowadays.


Checklist
46 Tom Glavine
68 Rafael Palmiero
54 Kazuhiro Sasaki
59 Greg Maddux
1 Luis Castillo

Two Braves and still meh. Whoever designed this just took all the standard bullcrap that showed up on premium cards and mashed it all together. Marbleized borders. Pinstripes. Way too much silver ink. UV coating on just the player. Ho hum. Another boring mid-aughts set. The Braves will enter my team collection and the rest, who knows? I am amused by Tom Glavine's "tribute to the Great Pumpkin" jersey though so there's that.

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.