23-year old master set was a TALL order to fill. :)

[BrownBullhead]

Come, flip through a slightly dusty Ultra-Pro "Hockey" card binder with me. Thanks for coming by. :)

As some of you know, I am stepping away from the hobby for a while. WAY TOO MUCH money spent since 2012, and less and less fulfillment out of the newer purchases. I'm selling off just about everything 'cept my 2002-03 Parkhurst Retro memorabilia collection, and possibly this post right here - thinking these might stick around too.

1993-94 Fleer Power Play was a mid-range hockey card set, selling for $1.99 Cdn per pack in the year of release. Compare to 1993-94 OPC Premier, which was about $1.29 to $1.49 per pack, or 1993-94 Upper Deck which was $2.49 Cdn per pack.

The product was released in two series, Series 1 coming out early in the season, and Series 2 coming out after the 1994 trade deadline.

It was designed to pay homage to the 1964-65 Topps Hockey "Tall Boys Series" and the result was a hockey card almost 50% taller than a "normal" card. :)

Each Box was 36 packs @ 12 cards per pack. There was one insert per pack, and the various insert subsets had different tiers of scarcity. As I did not keep my empty wrappers, I don't have the specific odds handy for this post.

Series 1 base set was 280 cards; Series 2 base set was 240 cards. That is 520 base cards total, with some players re-appearing in Series 2 if they were traded since the start of the season.

Each series checklist was organized alphabetically by the teams' home cities, then within those, by player surname.

For inserts, Series 1 had Netminders, Point Leaders, and 2nd Year Stars; Series 2 had Rookie Standouts, Slapshot Artists, Gamebreakers, Global Greats, and Rising Stars.

The "2nd Year Stars" in Series 1, while proving to be a slightly lacklustre lineup, were ***SUPER*** Condition Sensitive. I think I had to pick through 15 or 18 copies of each to find one that I thought was worth putting in my set!

1994 was also the Olympics, so Fleer did both Team Canada and Team USA subsets in Series 2.

One of my memories about this product, was walking from my apartment block to the Becker's convenience store at Ellesemere Road and Conlins Road in Scarborough ON to spend whatever spare dollars this 18-year old boy had on packs. I would also get a slurpee, and after carefully opening, then re-packing my cards, walk 20 minutes back to my apartment block.

I never did finish the set back then, but in the mid-2000s, with more disposable income, I was able to go to eBay and buy up a bunch of boxes to make my MASTER SET.

Maybe because it was the halcyon days of our hobby, or maybe it's because it was 23 years ago and it's easy to look back on those years for how simple life seemed to be, but this set always puts a smile on my face.

Thx for reading, and I hope you appreciate this as scanning these took me THREE HOURS. :/

P.S. Insert subsets are near the bottom for those of you who don't want to look at the base.

[BrownBullhead]

[creasecollector]

This set is awesome. Such a fantastic accomplishment here! :)

Excellent work on these !

[RED BARON TX]

I had a bunch of these cards. Thought they were pretty cool.

[doniceage]

I always love how colorful the cards were. A awesome collection and I am sure it took a while to knock it out. As finding some of those card can be very hard indeed even thought the book value is not all that great.One thing about oversized cards they very seldom get thru hobby love. Thanks for taking the time to share.


DON

[Sharky94]

I have a handful of those. But I haven't seen most of the inserts before. That's cool.

[jdg517]

I enjoyed that set when it came out

[fuzzai]

wow man, great set, thanks for sharing.

love the old school goalie's...brings back my childhood!