What were you doing in 1998?  

I was in my last year of high school, without a single thought in my head of what I was going to be doing in the future.  Previously, I had wanted to be a youth pastor or similar, but wasn’t sure how to “get there.”  I also thought about how college would look, and maybe I could get into some sort of graphic design courses. I heard about something called “desktop publishing” that I wanted to try.  

None of that panned out for me, so after high school, I got a typing job in the accounts payable department of a company.  I’d wake up at 4:30 in the morning, drive 45 minutes away, and sometimes would work until 9 at night.  Trust me, that was *WAY* better than the job I had analyzing 100 year old oil wells that were notated in Russian. (I don’t speak Russian.)  

I’ll tell you what I wasn’t doing during this time:  I wasn’t thinking about baseball cards.  When I last put serious thought into collecting must’ve been 5 or so years prior.  1993 Finest was just taking off, as was Flair, and a bevy of others.  I probably cited the reason for leaving as there being too many cards coming out, much like many others back then.  So the bulk of my childhood collecting memories were collecting cards that they made literal millions of.  

In the following years I was gone from collecting, little did I know that the card companies were creating grail pieces that I’d be chasing well into my 40s.  

A significant amount of people are privy to the fact that there are 90s grail cards that today’s 1/1s can’t hold a candle to – we know all about the mirror golds, the red crusades, the PMGs, etc.  But there are other lesser known keys that are extremely difficult to come by that absolutely deserve fanfare as well.  Let me introduce you to two of them! 

1998 Fleer Tradition Classic ’63

  

Fleer’s flagship release featured full bleed glossy cards, with a subset called “Vintage ’63” – a card designed to look like the beloved 1963 Fleer set.  Gah, I drooled over these cards as a kid.  To make things even more interesting, Fleer released a parallel of the Vintage ’63 set called “Classic ’63” – a set featuring a foil diamond on the front, with each card being serial numbered to – you guessed it – /63 on the back.  

1998 Topps Stars Golden Rainbow

A set from Topps that was exclusively distributed to Topps’ Home Team Advantage stores, of which all cards were serial numbered.  The “base” cards were numbered to /9799, with other flavors at /4399, /2299, and then it drops all the way down to the gold rainbow version – /99.  There are much rarer cards in this set, but since I focus on Canseco, we’ll stop the history lesson here.  🙂 

Both of these cards were released in my last year of high school, neither of which I knew existed at the time, and both of which haven’t shown up for sale for years!  Interestingly enough, I was able to grab both within a four day time period.  It is funny how it seems cards for me show up in pairs.  The ’63 is actually a dup, but I was able to pick it up an a ridiculously low price.  It is for trade, by the way, if anyone out there has any other killer Canseco cards.  🙂