1996 Flair Baseball Forum

The 1996 Flair baseball set had a unique format for the base cards - they were issued in equal amounts in two different forms. A lot of other card sites call the ones with gold lettering (and a silverish background) the "base" set and the version with silver lettering (and gold background) is considered the "Gold" version.

Unfortunately, we had the sets listed as "base" and "Gold", but we had the descriptions backwards.

What does that mean? That means as we moved stuff around, we expected that when you saw "Gold Lettering" in the Release Notes for the Gold set, you put your collection information in that set for Gold Letters. That meant Silver letter collection info was in the base set.

What we have done. We discussed it amongst those who do the behind-the-scenes work and thought that these cards sound like variations of each other rather than a parallel "set" of each other. After all, when they're printed in equal quantities and they are coming out of packs at equal rates, how can you tell which one is a "base" card? Our theory - You can't. Therefore, these are VARs.

The new and improved checklist. We have combined the 2 checklists into a single checklist, with every card having 2 variations and we were much more descriptive in the info added in Note2 ("Gold lettering, silver background" - all the [a] versions and "Silver lettering, gold background" - all the [b] versions). By doing it this way, it allows the members to utilize the filters if they wish to view 1 type or the other, and it allows members who wish to complete a set without regard to which version, better ability to track such a collection and determine their progress in one spot, without having to reconcile different numbers in 2 sets.

Why is Dan being long-winded about this? This means we goofed, and we apologize for that, and as much care as we take in retaining all the collection data our membership adds to these sets, we cannot guarantee its accuracy (we couldn't before the changes because we had it listed incorrectly). I want you to understand our own displeasure at having it incorrect and that we're doing everything we can to make this set (and site) better each day. Please review your collection for cards in this set and verify that your physical collection matches what you have listed here. Again if you had the silver letters listed as Base and gold letters listed in the Gold set, your collection should be fine. If you logged them as other sites have them listed, they are probably backwards.

Also understand that this was a lot of work on our part to make this change. I won't get into the details of hours, but it was a lot. More than you'd guess. Please understand that we put much thought into this, and it was not one person who decided this was how it should be, but a many-person decision.

Thanks for reading. And thanks for your patience as we finish up the work.

Thank you, excellent post & admin decision

A lot of work was done on that one. Great job guys!

Huge, huge thanks to Dan and Brian (Firesnbeers) for all of the work they did on this. Dan came up with a very logical plan to fix the huge number of inconsistencies he described above, and he was nice enough to patientily explain each step that needed to be done, then handled a huge portion of the IRs to get all that taken care of. Brian was generous with his time and volunteered to take on a huge chunk of IRs himself and made the process way faster.

As Dan said, there was a ton of work involved in this--making two versions of the checklists, creating VARs, moving images within the base set, moving images and collections from the "Gold" insert, and deleting that insert. This kind of thing involves a LOT of work in general, and then you have to take into account that we're talking about a 400-card base set...with two versions!

The result of all of that work, once Admin handles some IRs only he can address, is both accurate and extremely useful. I'm extremely impressed by the way the base checklist is now formatted with dropdowns allowing you to see the master set, or just the gold or silver base cards, with very clear descriptions and notes for each.

Not only was this a ton of work for two volunteers (and I helped a little! Plus others helped with approving IRs), but it's also yet another example of why TCDB is the best site for checklists out there. Try getting those other places to add cards they're missing, much less fix something like this, and see how far you get.

So thank you once again to everyone involved in all the work making these changes that will benefit many collectors here. I appreciate your work and I hope others recognize your efforts on large projects like this as well!