Birthday Month

I've been noticing a trend the past couple of years where people are referring to their birthday month instead of the actually day. Thereby giving them a reason to celebrate every day of the month instead. 

Is this really becoming a thing? You think you're so special that you decided a day wasn't good enough anymore and you needed to take the entire month to celebrate??

My birthday is at the end of the month. I'm not really into celebrating it for the entire month of May, nor bragging to people about it. I don't even tell people at work. The only reason they know is because my boss keeps track of it to make sure everyone receives B-day wishes. 

Not that my birthday has ever been that special in the past 9 years anyway. I don't hate it. I just don't make such a big deal out of it. 

But maybe it's just me. Do you celebrate the whole month in honor of your date of birth? If so, do tell. What am I missing here? Or am I just being a grouch? (very possible I'm sure)  
 

May the 4th go away

 It's not a holiday to me. I don't care about what its become and I certainly don't want to celebrate it. But people who know me casually, still greet me with a text message every year with it. 

I don't mind. But at the same time, I could care less about it. The only thing I loved about Star Wars was its Expanded Universe. And (at this time) they haven't any plans to continue that story line, so for me, I have zero interest in anything Lucasfilm brings out. 

I only have one Star Wars shirt and two ties in my closet. Which a rarely wear and would give away in a heartbeat. Star Wars is just a thing of the past to me now. I'll always love the old books and stories but now that it's under Disney, I couldn't care less about the thing that meant so much to me in my earlier days. 

1994 Fleer

 For the last set I ever collected during my childhood, it turned out to be Fleer. The cards looked absolutely stunning and I had a feeling I was done with Topps for good after this. 

A card where the photo took front and center. Which at this time was already being done with other premium cards look Topps Stadium and Donruss Studio. But boy oh boy did Fleer bring the thunder with this one!

After that, I stopped collecting all together. Why? The baseball strike. When I saw greed take away the World Series that year I (and several others) stopped caring about the sport. 

To be clear, I never gave up on baseball. Just on collecting. And though I think this contributed to baseball cards losing their popularity it certainly isn't the only reason. 

These days Topps has the exclusive rights, so competition is lacking and (in my opinion) the product has too. It's impossible to collect a set on your own without spending 5 times the amount its actually worth. Cards are too expansive and the hobby's dead to me now. 

But whatever monster its turned into today, won't offset the fond memories I had growing up. 

Have a good weekend folks! 

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.