Review: 2014 Flair Showcase

Thank you, thank you, thank you Upper Deck for reviving Fleer! Not only did Upper Deck revive Fleer, but they also made it their own. First they released the Fleer Retro brands. Now they are expanding from there and released what I can only call awesome, Flair Showcase. Check out why I think this.

BOX BREAK DOWN: 

• 12 Packs, 6 cards per pack
• One Autographed Card
• One Memorabilia Card
• One Auto Patch, PMG, or Jambalaya insert
• Four Short Printed Row 0 Cards
• Two Flair Legacy Parallels
• Three Metal Universe Inserts

PRICE: You can find most boxes around $95

 

Row 2

Row 1

Row 0

BASE CARDS: Upper Deck did a spin-off of their overly popular Fleer Retro by taking one of the popular brands they used in it and made it a featured product again. I must also note that I believe that this product is replacing Retro for 2014 but don't take my word on that quite yet.

The base set is broken down to three parts. Row 2 which is the base cards of the product. I really like this design the best of the three as it's a throwback to the original. Row 2 have a rainbow foil with full color player and a gray shadow of the player watermarked into the background with gold attributes to finish off the name and set name to the card. I cannot stress enough how tremendous they look in person.

Row 1 is a bit tougher of a pull and just has a full colored player against the rainbow foil. Still looks very nice.

Row 0, the toughest base of them all, are brought to you in horizontal and have a very, very faded player in the background on the rainbow foil and a full colored player in the forefront. I didn't care as much for this design of the three. It seemed like a dulled down version of Row 2.

In the original Flair Showcase brand, they also had three different base card variations. Back in the 90's version though they changed away from the rainbow foil and brought you different textures to seperate the three. I still like what Upper Deck did here A LOT but with a little bit more tweaking it could be really perfect.

BOOM!

INSERTS:The Legacy parallels you get two of in every box are primed for success. They look great with an x-factor appeal added to the already nice base card designs.

The Metal inserts are well done as well with Upper Deck creating a new Metal design. They have the metal feel with heavy foil and all of the cards are done horizontal with both rookies, veterans and legends.

And yes, FINALLY, I own my first PMG and it was a nice one! Blake Bortles numbered to 25!

There are not many products out there not named Prizm or Chrome that I give two hoots about the inserts in. Flair Showcase is one I really do care about. They look nice, they have value especially the tougher pulls and this is finally a product where autographs and memorabilia cards, to me, take a backseat. I actually was more excited about the Bortles PMG than rest of the hits.

AUTOGRAPHED CARDS:  ON CARD AUTOGRAPHS!! Yes, that's right! On card autographs for those of you on-card fans! They are also done in gold ink. It looks cool against the Flair Showcase background, however, I think it's a little bit too much gold as the autographs are blended right in with rest of the card and may feel lost. I think silver ink might have worked much better here. But don't get me wrong, I still love the design and seeing these bad boys signed.

MEMORABILIA CARDS: This was one of the tougher jersey card pulls at 1:96 packs with it being a Row 0. It is also the beast from Carolina, Kelvin Benjamin. The one problem I have is the size of the swatch. ITS SOOOOOO SMALL! I would have liked a bit bigger of a swatch. Maybe a square sized at least. This one is as big as the tip of my pinky. Once again however, the jersey swatch looks nice on the Flair base card. That's a big positive.

OVERALL THOUGHTS:Very happy. I felt I got decent value in this box and it was fun to open every pack. There were NO DOUBLES in here either and that's a biggie for me as it helped me decide to do a set of Row 2 for now. A master set would be even better.

If you are a fan of shiny things, the 90's, College Football or this rookie class. Jump on in and give this a try. Big hits are waiting especially the parallels.