Five bucks, eighteen stacks Part 4

Let's tackle one of these big stacks, shall we?

2001 Fleer Platinum is one of those sets that started out normal, and became a mess in the second series. The first series is your standard issue; cards 1-250 are normal, and 251-300 are SPs. Card 301 (Pujols' rookie) was tossed in at the end with a print run of 1500 cards. The second series involves a long list of subsets, including several cards of many players. Ichiro has six cards in Platinum. Let's see what's in there!

The cards are all from series 1, with no inserts, parallels, or SPs. There was just over 200 cards, numbered 1-250, but there were several duplicates, so I'm probably missing 75-100 cards for a full base set.

Set building isn't my goal with this release, though. Nineteen of the cards were usable in my awards/leaders collection, which was my primary goal.

If the design looks familiar, that's because for the first four years of its existence, it featured 1980s throwback designs. For some reason 2005 didn't. The Fleer Tradition series featured designs reminiscent of pre-1970 sets (Goudey, Topps, and Fleer). This set obviously pays respects to the 1981 Fleer set.

This set does what I wish Topps Heritage would do. Where Heritage decreases the quality of its images, this set uses quality images on the throwback design. I think if Heritage was done the same way as Platinum, I would like it enough to collect it. Heritage is too set in its ways and too popular as it is to change now, though.