Tino Tuesday #57: 1996 Flair Gold #132

I thought I had been pretty good about picking up Tino Martinez Flair cards, but bloggers keep sending me ones I don’t have. This 1996 Flair Gold parallel comes to me from DHoff over at Coot Veal and the Vealtones. I recently won a contest over there (more to come on that), and Dustin sent me a batch of Tinos in addition to some other stuff.

Growing up, Flair was always a big deal for me. I wasn’t allowed to even really look at it. I remember the card section at CVS (always had a ton of packs), and Flair was off to the side by itself. It came in little boxes, and the price was astronomical compared to the other stuff. I’ll stick to Topps and Score, thank you.

Over the years, I got my hands on several Tino Flair cards. But new ones keep popping up. In later years, that had all those variations, but this one was from 1996. No idea why I didn’t have it.

It’s as thick as a normal Flair card, so that’s a plus. I remember the first Flair card I ever got was a football card. They came one per pack in Fleer’s football set. It was of Willie Roaf of the Saints. I showed my dad the card, and I remember him holding it up and saying “wow, what a nice card that is.” He probably hadn’t held a baseball card since the ‘50s or ‘60s, so this probably was quite a change from what he remembered.

I like the gold background as well. Flair’s design always was very simple, yet sophisticated. It always felt classy, and this card is no exception.