Wednesday, March 24, 2010

1988 Fleer Sluggers / Pitchers "Baseball's Best" Box Bottom

During the late 1980's, Rickey was quite frequently included as one of the players selected to be included on the panel of cards on the bottom of hobby and retail store boxes. Most of these are fairly common, with some of the O-Pee-Chee Canadian boxes being a little harder to find. But, none are as rare as the 1988 Fleer Sluggers/Pitchers (also known as "Baseball's Best) box bottom. After searching for over 20 years, I finally came across one of these!


Here's a close-up of the card in question. I'm still looking for a nice "cut" version of the card, as the one that I picked up is still attached to the entire display box. Until I came into contact with a few collectors through this blog, I wasn't even sure if this card actually existed!


Here's what the complete panel looks like. I really want to attempt to "free" Rickey from the rest of the panel, but I know I won't be able to cut it accurately enough for my liking.


Until I received these cards in the mail, I'd never actually seen the back of one of them before. The Rickey is one of 6 cards in the set,and is number C-2.


Here's the top to the Sluggers /Pitchers sets display case, which were only available in large retail /drug stores, and contained 24 individual box sets. As a result, most of the display boxes were thrown out, and very few have survived today. Plus, since they were sliding around on store shelves, most of the panels include some surface wear, as well as various mounts of creasing.


The front panel of the boxes actually features a nice image of some of the superstars of the time. Although Rickey is not included, Don Mattingly, Mark McGwire, and Roger Clemens are some of those represented.

2 comments:

Mr J Mel said...

Sweet find and a great looking card!

Richard said...

Any one have a bunch of rickey commons doubles they want to sell I'm looking for 2000 to 2019 or any I guess