1998 Flair Showcase Baseball Review

In a post on Wax Heaven, Mario Alejandro said that 1998 Flair Showcase might be the most beautiful set ever. If not the most the beautiful, it’s certainly up there! Having always been a fan of this set since its debut (and since I’m secretly putting Row 0 together because I’m INSANE), I decided to make this the first of my “Old School Breaks.” This set features 120 players, with 4 cards per player, the 4 rows: 3,2,1, and 0. The 120 players are broken into 4 groups of 30 and each group has its own specific odds of acquiring a particular row card. i.e. It would be easier to find Row 3 cards of cards 1-30 than it would be of cards 91-120. I won’t go into all the details, but in short, Row 3 cards are the most common in general while Row 0 cards are the most rare (and all of these are serially numbered, ranging from 250-2000, depending on where they fall in the set). Anyways, some brief descriptions of the cards are as follows:

Row 3: Black and white background with a close-up of the player
Row 2: Color background with a distant shot of the player, basically a torso shot
Row 1: Color background with a close-up shot of the player, with a crazy finish on the card
Row 0: Color background with a full-body shot of the player, another crazy-looking design

In this box I received 78 out of 120 Row 3 cards, with only 1 dupe! I received 29 Row 2 cards, 9 Row 1 cards, and 3 Row 0 cards. Stars from Row 2 included Maddux, A-Rod, Piazza, Chipper, Vlad, Smoltz, among others. The Row 1 cards were nothing to brag about, with Paul Molitor being the best. From Row 0, I got Curt Schilling out of 2000, Gary Sheffield out of 1000, and Jim Edmonds out of 500. I also got a Travis Lee Wave of the Future card (man, whatever happened to him?!?). I forgot to mention earlier that there’s an insert set called Perfect 10 (10 cards of each of 10 total players, NEVER seen one) and a parallel to the whole set called the Legacy Collection. These are limited to 100 (for everyone and every row) and feature a blue foil in the card’s font. Unfortunately, I did not have one in my box, but I still had a blast ripping it. I also didn’t get one of this parallel either, but maybe if you find a box, you can find one. 😉

Thanks for the read. Feedback is appreciated as this was my first actual review.
-John