I don't think Topps made a more iconic flagship set in the '90's than this one. And it's not just the photography, although that did take a huge leap forward, too. I always assumed the introduction of Stadium Club had something to do that. Many of these images would be right at home on a Stadium Club card. But apart from that, there's still a whole lot to '91 Topps that bears discussion. First of all it’s huge – 792 cards, or six sheets of 132 cards instead of five as had been the norm for years of Topps base sets. By 1994 this number would be reduced by half. Second, this was a set of “lasts ..read more

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Upper Deck at the top of their game. Take it in…. This was 1997, people – the crest of the wave. Every great brand of the ‘90’s was still active – not just active, prolific – so the competition was still fierce, and as a result the cardboardologists at UD were giving us their all. It’s also the year of Game Jersey and that one wacky die-cut SPx set everyone thinks of when they think about SPx. Oh, and Junior hit 56 home runs and got the MVP. Just a banner year in general. Talking about Upper Deck cards in 1997 is a bit like talking about that band The Offsprin ..read more

What a mess this was.  Don't get me wrong - it was also awesome. The cards are great, and I have a whole lot of 'em. And I don’t blame Topps – in fact I love the concept and really love the cards. If you take out all the drama Project 2020 was a huge success and almost certainly had a hand in rejuvenating the cardscape. But things did get a little squirrelly there for a few months. Simply put, the concept was 20 iconic Topps rookie cards each interpreted by 20 artists for a total of 400 "base" cards released a few at a time over the course of the year via direct sale on Topps.com. That m ..read more

I’m doing this set because I wanted to do an “easy one.” As easy sets go, this one isn’t quite as easy as it used to be, but it’s also not two dozen cards deep which is a step in the direction of easy that I can appreciate. There was one big marketing gimmick at play here that will always be is the first thing I think about when I think about 1996 SPx (apart from that distinct shape). Do you remember what it was? See it on the bottom left there? It's tiny... That’s right – ONE CARD PER PACK. Uno. Singular. You might expect your average collector might shy away from such a thing as th ..read more

There were years when I added thousands of new Griffeys to the collection. As the years went by, thousands became hundreds. This year I probably added less than 200. I tend to spend a lot more when I’m actively making posts as I prefer to have the real cards to scan. That used to require I spend a few bucks to land a particularly troublesome insert or parallel every now and then, and "troublesome" used to mean five or ten bucks. Now it means $40-$100. Hence, fewer grey whale Griffey gets in general. My collecting strategy nowadays can be summed up in one word: opportunism. There is still the ..read more

Well, cards are officially back. Prices are right back to where they were before the “crash” and often much higher, there are new collectors everywhere as well as old collectors made new again, and there's money – so much money – coming into the market as a whole. It’s weird how niche this all used to feel. I am hoping that as the card companies try to keep up with demand they don’t usher in a new era of overproduction. It’s clear from all the new releases popping up what seems like every week that Topps is cashing in on their exclusivity license while they still have it. And yesterday it was ..read more

So this is the part where I usually give a recap of my collecting year. Well, the biggest news on the collecting and blogging front is that I don’t have much time for collecting and blogging. As my eldest son grows up, so do his hobbies; and we’ve reached a point when some of them are actually pretty appealing to me. For example, one day he came home from school raving about Beyblades, and now we grab every new Takara Tomy and Hasbro Pro release on the market because Beyblade is fun as hell. Then there's Hot Wheels – I mean, what little boy/grown-ass adult doesn’t love Hot Wheels? They releas ..read more

Doing a write-up of this set today, in 2021, is like doing a write-up of Abbey Road today, in 2021. This is a set that everybody loves and that has gracefully stood the test of time. One wrong move and I’m sure I’m going to hear about it from its many fans, so I’ll tread carefully (relax, I love it, too). 1993 Upper Deck came at an interesting time. We were approaching the end of the junk wax overproduction era as was heralded by the sudden appearance of foil in most base sets. Ultra and Leaf were already doing it, and pretty much every other set was already poised to make the leap to foil ..read more

I used to watch Project Runway religiously with my wife and sister. Feel free to give me shit about it. We got pretty into it, too, drafting designers serpentine, fantasy football style, keeping track of winners and losers on a big board, and even picking up a little fashion knowledge here and there. My own biggest takeaway is that I don’t understand fashion because what won was usually ugly and/or scary to me. My second-biggest takeaway is a basic understanding what it is that makes a “collection,” namely a certain cohesion among all the pieces so they all go together for different applicati ..read more

Any '90’s collector who’s spent enough time in online card circles eventually comes across these things and thinks the same thing: What the H-E-dubs am I looking at? Even years after first encountering them and months after finally landing one they remained a mystery to me. I did not like this feeling. So here I have compiled all the information I can glean from the Interweb about this not-quite-oddball set for the good of the card-collecting community. This post contains everything I know. If I leave anything out that you’re aware of, I want to hear about it. Away we go: Folz was a nationwi ..read more