Monday, November 29, 2010

New Project: 1996-97 Fleer Metal Universe

Lately I've been tossing around the idea of starting another set collection to go along with my MVP Stanley Cup Edition project. After sorting through some more base cards recently, I've settled on one set in particular. As you can see from the title of the post, I've decided to take a shot at completing the 1996-97 Fleer Metal Universe set.

I've kind of hit a standstill with the Stanley Cup Edition set as I have all of the base cards and I'm just working on the hard to find parallels. This one gives me the opportunity to chase regular base cards as well as a couple of insert sets.

If you haven't been keeping track of My Picks on Card Boarded, I've already shown off three different cards from the set, Bill Ranford, Hnat Domenichelli, and Martin Brodeur, so it fits that I want to complete and share the entire set.

I've always been fascinated by this set. I remember buying packs at the LCS as a kid and I thought they were the coolest thing back then. I like the fact that there is a different design for each base card, with only a few duplicate designs. Some are pretty neat and some just make you wonder. Here's a sampling of cards from the set:


I'm really interested in seeing all the goalie cards from this set as they tend to have some of the cooler looking backgrounds. How can you go wrong with the brick wall backgrounds like on the Roy and Fuhr? 

According to Hockey DB, there are 200 cards in the base set including two checklists. Beyond the base set, there are 12 Armor Plate inserts, 12 Cool Steel inserts, 12 Ice Carvings inserts, and 20 Lethal Weapons inserts. That makes for 256 cards altogether, not too bad.

Apparently there are also short-printed refractor versions of all the insert sets out there, so that would make for an additional 56 cards, bringing the master set total to 312.

As far as parallels, I was searching on ebay and came across some "Precious Metal Gems" parallels in the basketball version of the set from the same year. I've never seen any in the hockey set, so if anyone has any information on that I would greatly appreciate it.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for your comment on my blog, I've read parts of yours also and thoroughly enjoy reading! Thanks for the advice!

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  2. Oooooohhhh. That's a set I haven't seen in a long while.

    That one never did it for me.

    I'm still trying to track down enough cards though for my 'one sheet, one set' project. It'll be 'gorgeous' when it's done.

    Yikes! Good luck! :)

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