1993 Donruss

 It'd been quite sometime since I'd made a collection out of Donruss cards. This was the year I'd finally return to them to collect what I thought was their most beautiful set ever printed!

I remember thinking (MAN! Why didn't Topps look as good as this??) Beautiful borders, great photos, it literally had the whole package going for it. I didn't blink an eye the moment I saw it. I knew this was the set I was collecting. 

Thinking back, I guess it really wasn't a good year for Topps at all for me. Since the only set from the decade so far I'd collected was their 91 set. Every other year fell to another company. (mainly Fleer) But this was the year of Donruss for me. 

I will say that earlier, there was another spin off set from Donruss called "Studio" I'd collected. But that's for another post. 

Ok folks, what was the last set I collected as a kid and why did I stop collecting after that? Find out tomorrow!!

1992 Fleer

 This is a "Top Tier" set for me. I LOVED the look of these cards. I don't know why, because usually when a company goes with a generic background for all of their cards I'm not into it as much. But for whatever reason, the moment I saw these, I loved them and had to collect them that year. 

The one featured was a special series that came with the set. They were painted cards of some of the games best players at the time and I thought they were SO cool! This set really blew me away at the time. 

I even have 2 of the highly coveted "Update" sets that came out that year. They go for a couple of hundred these days but mainly because Mike Piazza's rookie card is in it. I remember buying too because I loved Piazza (still one of my favorite players of all time) 

But no one knew how rare the Update sets for this collection were going to be. Due to poor sales of the base cards, Fleer short printed the Update set without knowing what kind of player Piazza would turn out to be. Kicking off a frantic chase to get his rookie card. At the time, you could only obtain an Update set if your card shop ordered one for you or had extras. (which were rare)

I asked for 2 because I wanted to bust one open for my book and the other to keep in mint condition. When they arrived the sets were already going for a staggering $200 on the market. (very inflated, but the short printing drove the price up at the time of the frenzy)

I remember the owner telling me he was selling them to me for cover price ($30 each) but he wanted to ask me if I would sell one to him for $80 (with the other $30 Update set being free) or $120 in trade. I said No thank you and took them both home. I felt I'd won the lottery. 

Since then, they've gone down in value (like all cards from this era did) but I still have them today. And yes, I did bust open one. I just had to see that Piazza Rookie card for myself. : ) 

1991 Topps

 Topps was celebrating 40 Years in the business and to much marketing and fanfare displayed what my brother believes to be one of the best looking Topps sets ever made. 

A bold statement I wouldn't make. Overall, I think there are several other years I would say that carried better designs than this. But I remember this was the year they sold a "mini" set of cards too. Same look but tiny. I loved them. 

They even came with "special" gold background chrome cards in each set that we went nuts over. 

Yeah, I know, just another marketing ploy to get people to keep buying their cards but it worked. And in a field where looking mediocre was the bar (it seemed) this set stood out as a giant among the industry. 

1990 Fleer

 The start of the 90s had to one of the worst for baseball cards because in my mind, they all sucked. I decided to collect Fleer for the first time ever because there's didn't suck that bad. It was just very plain looking. But plain looking beats out what the others were putting out at the time. My goodness, if you look at some of the other slop that came out in 1990 it'll make you car sick after a while. 

UG-LY!

So collecting Fleer is what I did. Hint: Fleer would be my "card of the 90s" because I collected more of this companies cards than the other two, so it's safe to say they weren't that bad during the decade. 

It's wild but my brother told me they went out of business in 2005 and were bought up by Upper Deck. Wild. In my mind they had always been part of the "Big 3" when it came to baseball cards. Hard to imagine a world without them. But that's how things go I suppose. 

1989 Topps

 This was the year Topps won by default. EVERY other publisher looked like they'd given up on designing nice looking cards and Topps was the only one with an ok look. I'll be honest, these looked fine and I might have picked them anyway (still better than anything 1988 had to offer) yet I also know it wasn't there best year either. 

My brother told me that he ranks Topps cards for every decade. Starting with the 70s (the decade he was born in) to the current decade. I have to admit...that's pretty cool. For the most part, I guessed which designs were his favorite for each decade (but the last) and I'm thinking that may be something I'll pursue here on the blog at a later time. 

The more I talk about this topic, the more I miss collecting them. With the loss of my gaming group (down to just me and one other person) my board game hobby has slowed considerably. I'm not sure if this is the hobby I'd like to get back into, but it does make me miss those days tremendously. 

Anyway, have a good weekend folks! I'll come back next week to round out the 90s!

1988 Topps

1988 was a year I returned back to collecting Topps cards. I felt this set looked much better than the year before, however, looking back on the cards of that year I think I would've selected Fleer if I had thought about it more. But Dad was always a Topps guy so that's where my brothers and I mainly kept our focus.

I was the rebel the year before, breaking away to collect Donruss. Now I was safely back into the fold and we all collected the same set. This turned out to be one of the rare times we'd ever collect the same set together. 

As the years went on and competition in the market became fierce, we started having different like and dislikes to each set that came out. By the time the 90s rolled around I don't think hardly any of us were chasing the same sets by then, which made it harder to complete a set when you couldn't turn to your siblings for help, looking for the extras they had. 

 

1987 Donruss

 When the new Topps cards came out the next year, I couldn't wait. What I saw horrified me. Ugly wooden borders that just looked terrible. I was upset. I didn't want to collect a set of them. That's when Dad showed me two other companies that also printed baseball cards. So I picked one of them instead. My first Donruss set to collect!

Yeah, looking at it now it wasn't that good looking either but it beats what the other two companies were putting out in my opinion. 

These cards came with puzzle pieces you collected to put together a puzzle of an old time baseball player. I decent idea, but it wasn't gum. Dad said years ago they used to have a cherry cookie in each pack that tasted awful. As a kid though, I was willing to give it a try over the poor puzzle pieces in each pack. 

I remember one of the last cards I needed to complete this set was of Rookie Raphael Palmero whom I met at a local card show in Jackson, MS. I asked him what number his card was. He told me. I looked at my list and said "Yeah, that's one of the cards I need to complete my set, so I'll buy it" I paid a nickel, bought his card and he signed it right then and there. 

How rude was I??? Geez, I'm shocked he didn't slap me across the face and tell me to scram. It's wild, but I wouldn't collect another Donruss set for a very long time after this.