23-year old master set was a TALL order to fill. :)

BrownBullhead

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Come, flip through a slightly dusty Ultra-Pro "Hockey" card binder with me. Thanks for coming by. :)

As some of you know, I am stepping away from the hobby for a while. WAY TOO MUCH money spent since 2012, and less and less fulfillment out of the newer purchases. I'm selling off just about everything 'cept my 2002-03 Parkhurst Retro memorabilia collection, and possibly this post right here - thinking these might stick around too.

1993-94 Fleer Power Play was a mid-range hockey card set, selling for $1.99 Cdn per pack in the year of release. Compare to 1993-94 OPC Premier, which was about $1.29 to $1.49 per pack, or 1993-94 Upper Deck which was $2.49 Cdn per pack.

The product was released in two series, Series 1 coming out early in the season, and Series 2 coming out after the 1994 trade deadline.

It was designed to pay homage to the 1964-65 Topps Hockey "Tall Boys Series" and the result was a hockey card almost 50% taller than a "normal" card. :)

Each Box was 36 packs @ 12 cards per pack. There was one insert per pack, and the various insert subsets had different tiers of scarcity. As I did not keep my empty wrappers, I don't have the specific odds handy for this post.

Series 1 base set was 280 cards; Series 2 base set was 240 cards. That is 520 base cards total, with some players re-appearing in Series 2 if they were traded since the start of the season.

Each series checklist was organized alphabetically by the teams' home cities, then within those, by player surname.

For inserts, Series 1 had Netminders, Point Leaders, and 2nd Year Stars; Series 2 had Rookie Standouts, Slapshot Artists, Gamebreakers, Global Greats, and Rising Stars.

The "2nd Year Stars" in Series 1, while proving to be a slightly lacklustre lineup, were ***SUPER*** Condition Sensitive. I think I had to pick through 15 or 18 copies of each to find one that I thought was worth putting in my set!

1994 was also the Olympics, so Fleer did both Team Canada and Team USA subsets in Series 2.

One of my memories about this product, was walking from my apartment block to the Becker's convenience store at Ellesemere Road and Conlins Road in Scarborough ON to spend whatever spare dollars this 18-year old boy had on packs. I would also get a slurpee, and after carefully opening, then re-packing my cards, walk 20 minutes back to my apartment block.

I never did finish the set back then, but in the mid-2000s, with more disposable income, I was able to go to eBay and buy up a bunch of boxes to make my MASTER SET.

Maybe because it was the halcyon days of our hobby, or maybe it's because it was 23 years ago and it's easy to look back on those years for how simple life seemed to be, but this set always puts a smile on my face.

Thx for reading, and I hope you appreciate this as scanning these took me THREE HOURS. :/

P.S. Insert subsets are near the bottom for those of you who don't want to look at the base.

 
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Had no idea this set was so big!

Amazing walk down memory lane as these were players I grew up watching as a kid. Also just wonderful full body photography shots all around. I may need to trouble you for some high quality scans!

Thanks for the show =)
 
The patience to take the time to scan 23 year old base cards is impressive.
That right there is 3 hours "well wasted."
If it were me, it might have required 3 hours "while wasted."
Andrew
 
SportsCardAlbum.com messes up the order for the img code though. They're not showing in order. :( But thx for the positive feedback anyway :)
 
That's awesome. Definitely brings back some memories! I know I have a bunch of these stored in a dusty binder somewhere...

It's super interesting to see how few of these Team Canada/Team USA players ended up having successful NHL careers. Paul Kariya seems like an anomaly in the lot!
 
OK that's a bit better. At least if I clicked one by one in order on IMGUR, it kept my images in order. If I clicked them out of order in IMGUR, the order was out of order in the code post. Oh well. Got it now.

As for comments about scanning time re base and 1990s and stuff. Some of our members are likely younger than 23 so I think it's neat to show them that everything wasn't always about the patch, stick, whatever. That cards could be cheap and fun and unique. I think this product had all of that.

It's an oddball and I think that is why it stays in my heart after all these years. I generally like weird people, weird things, weird animals. :)
 
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LOL, if I had known, I have that set, would have sold it to you. LOVED it back in the day, so cool. Outstanding work!
 
Gosh, this just teleported me back to late high school, when I would walk through the snow to the local convenience store, or sporting goods store, or barber shop to buy one pack of cards (yes, every other shop at the time seemed to sell hockey cards in the glory days). I remember almost every single player in the set and loved scrolling through the entire base show - so many of the hot rookies or young stars that I painstakingly researched and collected at the time thinking I'd strike it rich years later by cashing in on their RC's, lol.

Thanks for a true blast from the past, so many good memories. Love how Theo Fleury's card makes him look like a giant, and funny to see that Jagr guy who is still playing!
 
Very cool set! Thanks for taking the time to scan it all. I really love the Olympic additions to the set. Better get that Daigle rookie in some kind of top loader!! :D

Naim
 

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