I recently completed the 1986 Fleer baseball set. I've said in past blog posts that this was "the forgotten set" in my brain when thinking back on 1980s Fleer sets. Back when I had not completed a single '80s Fleer set, I would always confuse 1985 and 1986 Fleer. This was a time when I was not collecting baseball cards, especially ones that weren't Topps. Sometimes my brain would skip right over '86 Fleer and I'd think the icy blues of '87 Fleer came after the '85 gray flannel suit set. That's part of the reason I set out to complete all the main Fleer sets from the '80s. These sets contained players that I followed from childhood forward, I wanted all those guys in my collection. So I got 1984 Fleer done, then 1981, 1982, 1983 and 1988. I recently finished 1985 and now '86 is in its own binder. These are the last four that I needed. If you listen closely you can here Luis from Sesame Street singing "One of These Things ...
Happy Halloween to those who celebrate, and that's a whole bunch, as I've never seen more Halloween lights displays in my entire life. Somebody is making a lot of money. I've posted off-and-on for the holiday, depending on my schedule (and whether I'm fending off kiddies at the front door). In the early days of this blog, myself and others might try to dig up an orange baseball card for the occasion. You remember when all you could find to represent the night of ghouls and goblins was a lousy 1988 Donruss Baseball's Best or some random orange parallel? Heck, it's all I could find last year . Well, Topps has you covered this year. For its Update set, which often comes out around Halloween (but not always), Topps has issued Panini-like parallels with Halloween themes. The background for individual players' cards have been replaced by dancing ghosts , Jack-o-Lanterns , black cats and other spookies. (They remind me of the Peanuts special ). There are also pl