Random Ray - 2001 Fleer Platinum

Fleer released their first "Platinum" set in 2001. 

Platinum sounds so shiny and sparkly. The set was anything but those two things, and honestly that is not really a bad thing. Platinum celebrated the 20th Anniversary of the initial Fleer set, which was released in 1981. I thought that maybe the Platinum name came from one of those official lists of Anniversary gifts. After consulting the internet, the 20th Anniversary is actually supposed to be a gift of China.  

I prefer that Fleer celebrated their 20th Anniversary with baseball cards rather than distributing plates, bowls, and tea cups. I actually really enjoy this set and feel like it has aged really well.  

Here is the front of the card, which borrow its design from the 1981 debut Fleer baseball set.  

There are some small differences between the original set and the 2001 Fleer Platinum remake. First, the card stock is way better. The first Fleer set was cheaply printed. The color scheme for the Cardinals is the same as the original with the yellow name bar and red border. The baseball in the corner originally had the Cardinals name in red. Again, small things.  

Many of the cards in 2001 Fleer Platinum have posed photos from Spring Training. Lankford is no different. I like this pose and the angle of the photo looking up at him. Fleer used this camera angle on several of the posed photo in the set. Just something different than the head on photo shot. 

Flip the card over.....

The back has elements from several different Fleer sets. They always had the full stats from a player's career, but the font was always so small. You can't tell me that Fleer could not have made Lankford's stat line larger and still fit the graphs at the bottom of the card.  

I really like the graph at the bottom showing the breakdown of batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage. Feels very sabermetric for 2001. Although, I guess this card was made a year before the "Moneyball" era started with the A's, so maybe not.  

Overall, a very nice card.