Worst Baseball Card Set Ever...

[Dalkowski110]

Okay, I know we had a best, but we've not yet had a "worst." For the horrible look of the cards, ridiculous amount of errors, poor and sometimes recycled photography, and flimsiness of the card stock, I'm gonna have to go with 1989 Fleer. A VERY poor downgrade from 1988 Fleer, which was a fine set.

[baseballchamp14]

i dont like 89 bowman. The cards are not very durable they dont look very nice and if you collect them they're very hard to store because their not a regular length. Theyre about 5 centimeters too big for top holders and card pages

[sharrock]

The blurred photographs and ugly design render 1982/1983 Fleer about the worst case scenario. By 1984 at least Fleer added some fun and the sets were good for a few years.

[BenB]

1991 Fleer might be the worst. I hope whoever came up with those yellow borders was fired.

I wasn't a big fan of 2002 Topps either. That gold design was ugly.

[hudsonharden]

A lot of the late-90's Pinnacle and Donruss offshoots that tried way to hard to take card collecting into the New Millenium. That type of card design totally backfired. By 2001, we saw set like Topps and Bowman Heritage, Upper Deck Vintage, and Fleer Tradition become very popular among collectors.

And who can forget these atrocious peel-off cards.

[Dalkowski110]

Oh, God...with the exception of the valuable cards, I did just that and peeled those off because they either A) fell off or B) were already coming off and too hideous for words. Also despised the Pinnacle rip cards (and the Topps Allen & Ginter rip cards) simply because it involves destroying another baseball card.

[EricDavis]

I agree with 1991 Fleer. They were so ugly my mom didn't allow me to get them as a little kid.

[EdTarbusz]

I collected pretty actively from 1972-1991. The worst sets that I remember are the 1974 Topps, 1981 Donruss and 1981 Fleer.

[Mike D.]

How about 1990 Donruss? Ugly red borders, lousy card stock, washed out pictures, numerous errors, a guarenteed one wax stain per pack, and massive overproduction make this set an all around loser.

In 1990, I was 14, was making a few bucks doing odd jobs, and bought something like 6 boxes of these ugly cards this year, for something like $15 a box. I dumped them all year ago. It was fun opening all those packs, but there wasn't a whole lot in there to get excited about.

Others that deserve dishonorable mention are the above mentioned '81-'82 Fleer, '91 Fleer, and I'll throw 1986 Topps in there too.

[MadHatter]

1981 Donruss was also very bad.

[hudsonharden]

Die-cut cards were a big flop too. Just more corners to get dinged.

[DodgerBlue8188]

How about 1990 Donruss? Ugly red borders, lousy card stock, washed out pictures, numerous errors, a guarenteed one wax stain per pack, and massive overproduction make this set an all around loser.

In 1990, I was 14, was making a few bucks doing odd jobs, and bought something like 6 boxes of these ugly cards this year, for something like $15 a box. I dumped them all year ago. It was fun opening all those packs, but there wasn't a whole lot in there to get excited about.

Others that deserve dishonorable mention are the above mentioned '81-'82 Fleer, '91 Fleer, and I'll throw 1986 Topps in there too.


I agree. 1990 Donruss. Besides that Sosa rookie card. The set is worthless. so much production from it. I hate it.

[Zito75]

1990 Topps and Donruss are just hideous. The Score sets from the early 90's are also pretty tasteless. There were just too many mass produced sets then.

[DodgerBlue8188]

I remember seeing on EBAY a bid for 300 Ryne Sandberg Donruss 1989 cards. I'm like who would need that many? And why are there that many available from one source?

[Dalkowski110]

Another awful candidate for "worst ever card" would be serial-numbered insert cards. Not the fine insert cards of today serialled to 500 or less (and yes, you'll occassionally get the player's jersey number, or number 1 or whatnot), but the ridiculous serial numbers (5,000-10,000) that Donruss, especially, produced. "Hey look! I got card 7,351/10,000! Oh wow!" Even at the time, I thought that was patently ridiculous. It was so obviously creating a false market that it was laughable.

And I forgot about 1989 Score. Just...YUCK! Another poor idea by Donruss in 1989 was to have seperate rookie and traded sets. The rookie set, which was relatively short-printed (for a Donruss set anyway), sold well. Guess how well the traded set, which was BOXED, sold? I picked one up for a fifty cents, sealed, in 1998. You bet, they went back to Rookie/Traded in 1990.

[DodgerBlue8188]

One set I always did like was Stadium Club 1991.

[metrotheme]

I'll co-sign on those early fleer sets ... disgusting. I was in a card shop a few weeks ago and the owner was just giving them away (1981 I believe). The aforementioned 89 Score, 90 Donruss, and either 1990 or 1991 Fleer were all pretty weak in my opinion.

[ChuckBrown]

The photo quality in the 1979 Topps set wasn't very good.

[Sean Casey]

Any card sets by Score are pretty much a joke, but of the four legitimate card companies, Donruss from 1987-1989 was tough to beat in terms of ugliness. Fleer and to a lesser extent Topps had some bad sets during that same time period, but at least they had a few redeeming qualities.

[corb000]

1975 topps the two color thing going on is ugly :thumbsdown:

[Padday]

Okay, I know we had a best, but we've not yet had a "worst." For the horrible look of the cards, ridiculous amount of errors, poor and sometimes recycled photography, and flimsiness of the card stock, I'm gonna have to go with 1989 Fleer. A VERY poor downgrade from 1988 Fleer, which was a fine set.

Ah yes, but that set did produce one of the most memorable baseball cards ever: http://www.bearskinrug.co.uk/_articles/2006/03/28/rough_prowler/1989fleer_bripken.jpg

[dabigyankeeman]

For me, 1968 cards were horrible. I dont know what the ugly background was supposed to look like, kinda like a cross-hatch pattern, but these cards were painfull to look at.

These were followed by the dull blah 1969 cards, which is like they took the really nice 1967 set and made it ugly by printing big circles on the cards to put printing in and the pictures themselves were dull and lifeless with no sparkling color to them.

Finally, to finish off a horrible three-year run, the 1970 cards had this super dull gray border that made the whole card look bad.

A terrible 3-year run for Topps. Then in 1971 they went to black borders and had some great action shots, and it was really nice cards the rest of the way thru the 70's.

I agree with many posters above that the early cards of Fleer that were out of focus were horrible, they really had nerve to produce cards with pictures like that. A total waste.