For the second straight year, Upper Deck is using the Fleer name for a low end, set builder-friendly batch of baseball cards. 2007 Fleer Baseball features a 400-card base set with crisp photography, a number of inserts and just a touch of autographs and memorabilia.
Retail boxes of 2007 Fleer Baseball hold 36 packs with 10 cards per pack. Each pack contains two cards with the MLB Rookie Card logo and one Rookie Sensations insert, and collectors should find another insert, a die-cut parallel or both in most packs.
Base Cards
All 400 base cards share the same simple but effective design, with an action photo surrounded by a white border. The photo has a drop shadow effect that makes it look like it's raised off of the cardboard, and the player info and team logo are contained in team color elements at the bottom. Card backs have full career stats for all but the longest tenured MLB players.
The first 320 cards are veterans arranged by team (except for players who changed squads since 2006, followed by 50 MLB Rookie Cards and 30 team checklists. Collation in my review box was excellent, as I ended up with 242 of 400 base cards and just 30 duplicates - 22 of which were rookies.
Fleer Baseball's main parallel is a cool borderless die-cut version that makes it look like the borders were cut off the base cards. They seem to fall about one in two packs, as the About.com sample box held 19 die-cuts.
Insert Cards
Plenty of nice looking insert cards await collectors who bust packs of Fleer Baseball. The most abundant are the 25 Rookie Sensations that highlight the top new faces from the 2006 season. These fall at least one per pack, as I pulled 44 from my review box.
Many packs also hold a card from one of four other insert sets: Perfect 10, depicting players who finished in the top 10 of major statistical categories in 2006, Crowning Achievement, celebrating players who broke records or reached milestones, Year in Review, shining the spotlight on 2006's memorable moments, and In The Zone.
All told, my sample box produced 28 cards from these four insert sets.
Autographed and Memorabilia Cards
Even though there weren't any in the box I reviewed, packs of 2007 Fleer Baseball can contain cards from one memorabilia insert and two autographed insert sets. Genuine Coverage is the game-worn offering, with swatches from 42 different MLB players like Derek Jeter, Justin Morneau and Vladimir Guerrero.
Collectors can find signatures of 23 young up-and-comers (plus Ken Griffey Jr.) on Fresh Ink cards, while 26 different players make their marks on Fleer's old staple, Autographics.
The Last Word
It's very early in the 2007 baseball card season, but since the majority of the lower end offerings are released in the spring, it's not too soon to give a hearty recommendation to 2007 Fleer Baseball. Sometimes simpler really is better, and this product - with its pleasing design, straightforward parallels and inserts - is a great example of how that can hold true for baseball cards.
This set should find a lot of fans among younger collectors and anyone hunting for an affordable, fairly comprehensive set of 2007 baseball cards. It should be possible to find boxes at prices that work out to less than $2 a pack, making it a terrific buy.
