The Ugliest Card Set of All Time. 1991 Fleer Football!

cardsnbeads

1991 Fleer Football the ugliest card set of All-Time. The awful Green Border. Terrible plain design. The cards even feel ugly. In addition to being the ugliest set it may be the most worthless set too.

Hallco

MeteoriteGuy

I have to go 1991 Donruss Baseball. The only redeeming thing about these cards is packs are cheaper then fire log starters.

jeffcbay

For that matter, 1991 Fleer Baseball is equally as bad, with the yellow borders. That was a bad year.

Brick

I bought directly from Fleer in 1991. Still got a bunch of unopened crap sitting around from that year. Ouch

eagles33

<< <i>1991 Fleer Football the ugliest card set of All-Time. The awful Green Border. Terrible plain design. The cards even feel ugly. In addition to being the ugliest set it may be the most worthless set too. >>




I have to agree. not a single notable rookie and terrible design. If I remember right there were ok looking all pro inserts that were only in rack packs. The provision cards were horrible though

cardsnbeads

The cuts on some of them were awful as well. Rivals the 1988 Topps Baseball as the most worthless set ever. 1991 had a lot of ugly sets.

cardbender

I agree. 1991 was an awful year for cards, except maybe for Upper Deck who always had a great design.

Those '91 Fleer Football cards had a Broder feel about them like they were printed in someone's basement.

orioles93

they are fugly

epatmythes

JMO, but hard for me to put any set over in the "worst ever" category ahead of that kindergarten finger painting red bordered 1990 Donruss baseball set. A virtual jab-in-the-eye set if one ever did exist.

cardsnbeads

1990 Donruss is one ugly set. The error cards in the set save it from being completely fairly worthless. Even the Diamond Kings don't look good in 1990 Donruss.

LodiBrewFan

1990 Topps is worthy of this discussion.


Has anyone noticed that all of the ugly sets come from the same era?

PowderedH2O

1990 Topps Baseball or football? Does it matter? They both suck.

Brian48

I don't necessarily agree that 1991 was a bad year for card design. I think the '91 Topps set is one of the best looking sets they ever produced. The only negative is the absence of any major rookies and lack of investment value, but then again you can say that about any '90s set pretty much.

RedHeart54

'91 Stadium was a breakthrough set. '91 OPC Premiere was a good design (though exactly the same as the hockey set). '91 Fleer Ultra wasn't too bad-- plus the Update set was a hot commodity in the mid '90s. I guess the story of 1991 was the mainstream sets, aside from Upper Deck, were ugly but the premium sets saved the season.

EAsports

This thread is useless without pictures.

Also, I disagree about 1988 Topps. Over Christmas vacation, I put together an '88 Topps set from rack packs (because I'm a glutton for punishment.)

The set is simple and clean with the white borders, and the colors do "pop."



I would imagine the Tiffany versions, with the brighter backs and card stock, and glossy finish are borderline "nice."

Same could be said for 1991 Topps.

There's no helping this, though:

Francart

I gotta go with 91 Fleer baseball. Those yellow cards are just plain nasty.

bobsbbcards

I'd vote for all of the sets from '91 (Stadium Club being the exception). They were bad enough that they made me stop collecting.....

BaltimoreYankee

<< <i>...Those '91 Fleer Football cards had a Broder feel about them.... >>



cardbender - I haven't heard the term Broder in a long time! Brings back memories of 1986 or so.

EAsports

Everyone was piling on the 1991 Fleer Football. I honestly couldn't remember, so I looked it up.

Zoiks.



Let's just say Fleer had a down year in 1991.

The basketball was pretty bad:



1991 Ultra was pretty bad, looking back at it. It certainly didn't hold up as well as Upper Deck or Stadium did. The photography was good, but the design certainly looks "dull" now.



To me, 1991 baseball wasn't *that* bad. At least the yellow doesn't take away from the photo like the backgrounds on the football and basketball.

saucywombat

I think Fleer literally used the tools from MS Paint and Word to produce the cards in 1991.

Worst baseball ever:

5) 1983 Fleer
4) 1988 Score
3) 1990 Fleer
2) 1990 Donruss
1) 1991 Fleer

NCDOLFAN

Worst vintage football has to be 1973 !!! Plain white borders with that "ribbon" as the only color beside the picture.

NickM

1991 Fleer football is ugly, but it doesn't have that "Aiyeeeee! My eyes!" garishness that sets 1991 Fleer baseball apart.

Nick

jwgators

I don't know which '91 Fleer design is worse from the 3 sports shown. It makes you wonder who is making these decisions and who is approving them.

WalterSobchak

For some reason I always kind of liked the '91 Fleer Ultra baseball set. Can't put my finger on why. I'm a '70 Topps guy so maybe I just like grey cards.

I was a big Griffey guy back then (still am, I just don't collect cards from that era anymore) and his '91 FU was always one of my favorites. Photo taken just at the finish of that sweet, sweet swing.

As I've mentioned before, I believe this conversation begins and ends with 1990 Topps baseball. Just an eye-gougingly awful design. I feel bad for Frank Thomas.

HoofHearted

<< <i>I'd vote for all of the sets from '91 (Stadium Club being the exception). They were bad enough that they made me stop collecting..... >>



Bob, that's my story exactly! In addition to too many sets being produced and not enough storage space, I didn't like the way the cards looked and quit building sets from packs in '91. I've bought, or was given, a complete set every now and then, but I quit buying religiously like I had from '81 to '91...