The Great Reorganization: Step 24: Taking a Look at 1996

I've made more progress on my Great Reorganization in the past two weeks than I did all of last fall.  Rather than question it, I'm simply going to keep the good times sorting going.

Today, I take a look at 1996.  As usual, my goal is to first determine if any of the sets from the year are intriguing enough for me to collect them.  Out of the sets that I don't want, I set aside some cards for my two Frankensets that I hope to eventually build and the rest get filed away for trades/trade filler.

Off the top of my head, I can't say I have much attachment to sets from 1996.  I would say that 1994 - 1996 were a sort of "dead period" for me in terms of collecting.  I didn't buy much in the way of cards...not back then nor since.

First up, some assorted Pinnacle sets.

Yeah, the Morris ended up upside down...but it seemed fitting for such an ugly set.

I don't own enough of any single Pinnacle set to make this a viable option (nevermind my hatred for Pinnacle's obsession with gold foil).  Pinnacle is most certainly not for me.

Next, Leaf/Donruss.

Once again, I own virtually nothing from either brand - in fact, you are looking at the extent of my collection from both sets!  Moving right along.

Moving on to more intriguing sets, how about Topps Laser?

This Reggie is undeniably cool - but the card itself is much too fragile for me to consider trying to put the entire set together.

So far, this is easy.  No.  No.  No.  and No.  Will that continue?  Spoiler alert:  Probably.

Rather than working our way through the remaining sets (Stadium Club - No, Pacific - No, Upper Deck - No), it's time to move on to the only two sets that have a legitimate shot of me collecting them.

First up, Upper Deck Collector's Choice.

I'm an unabashed fan of the Collector's Choice line.  I have plans to collect the brand in 1995, 1997, 1998, and 1999.  So what about 1996?  Basically, while I like the 1996 set well enough, I don't think it is on par with some of the other years of the set.  However, I recently discovered that I have an unopened box of Series 1 sitting in my desk...how it got there I'm unsure but that box alone is enough for me to say that I'll give this set a shot.

That leaves me with the one set that I remember buying a few packs of back in the day.  Score 1996.

The Score set has a lot of neat photography - it's probably one of the best sets that Score put out (in my humble opinion at least).  While I would like to collect at least one set from 1996, I'm going to have to take a pass on this set as well.  You see, while I do recall buying packs of this stuff back in the day, I didn't buy all that many packs.  As it stands, I probably own less than 100 unique cards from the set - nowhere near enough to consider going after the full thing.  Thus, I'll simply be content to slot some of the better cards from the set into my Frankenset.

And there it is, 1996.  Not the strongest year for baseball cards, that's for sure.  At the moment, it looks like I'll try for only one set from all of 1996...but I guess that will free up shelf space for other years!