I've been (ever so) slowly reorganizing my entire baseball card collection. Over the past few months, I've made some great strides including putting together my Reds' frankenset and most of my non-Reds frankenset. In addition, I've been working on figuring out exactly what sets I want to collect (and by default, which sets I'm giving up on) for various years including what I did this week which was taking a look at the year 1992.
1992 offered a fairly wide variety of sets, but it was really the last year before the baseball card set dam broke and showered all of us with way too many options. By my count, there were only a few sets that I actually had to make a tough decision on - most of 1992's sets were kind of trashy!
Donruss:
On the plus side, this set conjures up instant good memories for me every time I see it. I distinctly recall getting some packs of this stuff in my Easter basket back in 1992 and I still remember being so excited to see baseball cards in my basket rather than candy! (What can I say, I was a weird kid I guess.)
Unfortunately for Donruss, while the memories that I have of the set are definitely positive, I don't own enough of the product to consider actually trying to complete the entire set. Therefore, Donruss goes in the "nope, not collecting" pile.
I also briefly considered 1992 Fleer and 1992 Score, but neither of those set designs wow me nor do either sets offer up any sort of positive nostalgia on my end. Therefore, both of those sets also go in the "nope" pile.
That leads us to the last two major sets of 1992: Topps and Upper Deck.
Starting with 1992 Topps, I must say that I do like the design. It's a simple set - but it gets some points for being the last of the "cardboard" flagship sets. I also remember being enamored with the little stadium picture on the backside of each card.
Another point in Topps' favor is that I already own a fairly large chunk of the set. Put it all together and I think that I WILL be trying to collect the entire 792 card set - look for an addition to my want list soon(ish)!
The last set from the year 1992 that was worth serious consideration was 1992 Upper Deck.
After much deliberation, I opted to NOT collect the '91 Upper Deck despite liking the set quite a lot. I simply couldn't make myself do the same thing here - and so, I decided that I would add 1992 Upper Deck to my list of sets that I'm going to collect as well as the 1992 Topps set.
The choice was actually quite easy since I love the '92 Upper Deck set. The photography is top-notch, both on the card fronts but also on the card backs. In fact, many of the card backs have better photographs than what you find on the front of the cards. I mean, just look at the Paul Molitor card above, that's a great card back! The other thing that went in Upper Deck's favor here is that I already own a good chunk of 1992 Upper Deck cards. Much like '92 Topps, having a big head start toward completing the set is definitely something that can sway me in terms of deciding whether or not to chase an old set these days!
In the time it took me to write this post, I ended up going on eBay and ordering myself a box of 1992 Upper Deck. I'll be sure to show my spoils from that box - and hopefully once it's busted and collated I'll be close enough to the complete set to be able to put up a reasonably sized want list on the blog!
And that basically does it for 1992. Sure, there were one or two other sets out there which aren't bad (Stadium Club for one) but I don't own anywhere near enough cards from the remaining 1992 sets to even consider going after them. I also remain cognizant that my overall storage room for baseball cards is finite - so the more sets I collect from years past means fewer sets that I'll be able to collect from years moving forward.
At the very least, I'm happy that my slow march toward full collection reorganization is still moving forward!
1992 offered a fairly wide variety of sets, but it was really the last year before the baseball card set dam broke and showered all of us with way too many options. By my count, there were only a few sets that I actually had to make a tough decision on - most of 1992's sets were kind of trashy!
Donruss:
On the plus side, this set conjures up instant good memories for me every time I see it. I distinctly recall getting some packs of this stuff in my Easter basket back in 1992 and I still remember being so excited to see baseball cards in my basket rather than candy! (What can I say, I was a weird kid I guess.)
Unfortunately for Donruss, while the memories that I have of the set are definitely positive, I don't own enough of the product to consider actually trying to complete the entire set. Therefore, Donruss goes in the "nope, not collecting" pile.
I also briefly considered 1992 Fleer and 1992 Score, but neither of those set designs wow me nor do either sets offer up any sort of positive nostalgia on my end. Therefore, both of those sets also go in the "nope" pile.
That leads us to the last two major sets of 1992: Topps and Upper Deck.
Starting with 1992 Topps, I must say that I do like the design. It's a simple set - but it gets some points for being the last of the "cardboard" flagship sets. I also remember being enamored with the little stadium picture on the backside of each card.
Another point in Topps' favor is that I already own a fairly large chunk of the set. Put it all together and I think that I WILL be trying to collect the entire 792 card set - look for an addition to my want list soon(ish)!
The last set from the year 1992 that was worth serious consideration was 1992 Upper Deck.
After much deliberation, I opted to NOT collect the '91 Upper Deck despite liking the set quite a lot. I simply couldn't make myself do the same thing here - and so, I decided that I would add 1992 Upper Deck to my list of sets that I'm going to collect as well as the 1992 Topps set.
The choice was actually quite easy since I love the '92 Upper Deck set. The photography is top-notch, both on the card fronts but also on the card backs. In fact, many of the card backs have better photographs than what you find on the front of the cards. I mean, just look at the Paul Molitor card above, that's a great card back! The other thing that went in Upper Deck's favor here is that I already own a good chunk of 1992 Upper Deck cards. Much like '92 Topps, having a big head start toward completing the set is definitely something that can sway me in terms of deciding whether or not to chase an old set these days!
In the time it took me to write this post, I ended up going on eBay and ordering myself a box of 1992 Upper Deck. I'll be sure to show my spoils from that box - and hopefully once it's busted and collated I'll be close enough to the complete set to be able to put up a reasonably sized want list on the blog!
And that basically does it for 1992. Sure, there were one or two other sets out there which aren't bad (Stadium Club for one) but I don't own anywhere near enough cards from the remaining 1992 sets to even consider going after them. I also remain cognizant that my overall storage room for baseball cards is finite - so the more sets I collect from years past means fewer sets that I'll be able to collect from years moving forward.
At the very least, I'm happy that my slow march toward full collection reorganization is still moving forward!
Good luck on completing the '92 UD set. You're right, the photography of that one is very nice.
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