2001 Fleer Focus Ray Lankford Green Parallel

The Fleer Focus set was released several times in the early 2000s by Fleer.  The set was a pretty standard release for Fleer during that time period.  The boxes weren't overly pricy and collectors had the opportunity to pull a decent autograph or relic card.  The Fleer Focus product also gave the collectors the opportunity to find a couple of different parallels of their favorite players.  In a cool twist, Fleer did not run the standard parallels of 50, 100, and 500 or other common numbers that card companies run their parallels to.  Instead, Fleer ran a lot of the parallels in the Focus set to player's stat lines with each stat being a different colored parallel.  Donruss also had parallels that ran to the player's stat lines, but Fleer started these cards with Focus.

2001 Fleer Focus Ray Lankford Green Parallel

I was recently able to add the Ray Lankford green parallel collection this week.  The green parallel is numbered to the players Batting Average or their ERA.  In this case, Ray Lankford had a batting average of .253 during the 2000 season, Fleer made a grand total of 253 copies of this card.  Ironically, better position players would have a greater number of parallel cards in this set, while pitchers would likely be the opposite.

While Ray Lankford was a career .272 hitter he had a low year in 2000 with knee issues and missed almost 30 games to start the season.  In fact, the first months of the 2000 season the former Cardinals outfielder only hit .176.  Lankford would put up a similar .250ish line for the Cardinals in 2001 before the team traded him to the Padres for pitcher Woody Williams.  Not the hardest parallel to find, but still a welcome addition to the Ray Lankford collection.