Breaker's Club Recap: 2002 Fleer

When I put together each edition of my Breaker's Club, I have a number of different goals.  First, I try to find a nice assortment of boxes.  By that, I mean I try to find boxes that focus on team/set collectors as well as boxes that are more insert/parallel driven and then one or two that are more hit driven as well.  In addition, I also try to find boxes for sets that maybe weren't heavily collected - or perhaps sets that "fell through the cracks" so to speak back when they were originally released.

The 2002 Fleer set seems to be the type of set that did fall through the cracks a bit.  It's a solid little set with a patriotic theme (not a surprise given it was the year after the attacks of 9/11).  

Each base card features average (to above average) photography along with a large team logo and an easy-to-read player name (all things I appreciate as a group break host)!  

The backs of each card are fairly basic but I do like that many of the players in the set get a "Did You Know" box filled with an interesting little tidbit about the featured player.

As I said earlier, this particular box was chosen for the team/player/set collectors out there and I think the box delivered.  With 24 packs of cards (10 cards per pack) there were a lot of neat base cards in the box!  That isn't to say we didn't get any inserts or parallels though - because we did!

The parallel set is the Tiffany Collection which basically means "glossy."  

More interesting, each Tiffany Collection parallel is numbered out of 200.  In our case, the Koch is #181/200, the Ochoa #148/200, and the Ventura #078/200.  It seemed like we did quite well pulling three cards numbered out of 200 from the box.

Moving on to the inserts, we found 2 Barry Bonds Career Highlights cards (1:12 packs).  

The all-black borders really make these cards stand out in the set given how almost everything else in the box has white borders.  I'm not sure an insert set dedicated to Bonds is the best seller out there but hey, what do I know?

Next, the Headliners cards are seeded 1:8 packs and we pulled our expected three:

I like this insert set quite a bit and if I were to build the 2002 Fleer base set I'd probably also try and build the Headliners insert set to go with it.  I don't think I'd try for the Bonds set, for what's worth.

Next, the box hit insert:  Golden Memories (seeded 1:24 packs).

At 15 cards in size, completing the Golden Memories set would be a real challenge since you only get one per box!

And finally, serially numbered out of 1500 - a Rookie Sensations card of Ichiro.

The above Ichiro is #0563/1500 and is obviously a great pull for the Mariners!  

That leaves us with our one promised hit of the box.  In our case, we pulled a Classic Cuts Game-used relic (seeded 1:28 packs) of Ted Kluszewski.

Now, I think of Big Klu as a Red but he's an Angel on this particular card.  What's neat about this is that you don't often see relics of Kluszewski in sets - it was definitely a fun one to pull!

And that does it for the 2002 Fleer box.  As I said, lots of base cards here for everyone but also a rather nice sampling of inserts/parallels/hits spread across a number of teams.