I love the '90s

I think everyone, to a certain extent, feels a certain attachment to the decade in which they're born.

Mine is the 1990s: not the most popular ten-year span in many circles, especially in the baseball card world. The buzzwords you hear are all true -- indulgence, overproduction, chaos, etc. -- but that doesn't stop me from saying that I love the '90s. It's the decade I started collecting baseball cards. No matter what rational reasons you have for disliking the '90s, I'll always be there to defend it. 

If nothing else, the '90s introduced us to the world of throwback uniforms (and the cards that came with them), like this retro Ripken I recently received from John of "Johnny's Trading Spot" fame.

The Ripken came in a Big Fun Game lot I won on John's blog, a prize composed of a hearty stack of (mostly) '90s stars which was nice to snag since I recently started collecting a lot of these guys.

I guess it's hard to be sentimental about ballplayers as you watch their careers unfold in the present, which is probably the reason I've only now started seriously hoarding cards of dudes like Derek Jeter and Frank Thomas who've been retired for a while now.

Mo Vaughn's another one of those guys who somehow slipped out of my player collection canon until recently.

Also: a Roy Firestone-themed insert set from Pacific -- does it get any more '90s than that?

I received another somewhat '90s themed package from another perennial trade partner of mine, none other than gcrl of "cards as i see them."

Another aspect of the '90s that muddles the borders of love and hate is that fact that the overindulgence of the decade was so great that there will literally always be something new to discover from it. It's a world of infinite wonder (or a bottomless pit, depending on how you choose to look at it).

Case in point: I didn't know about these stamped expansion parallels from '93 Upper Deck until very recently (and this one's a new mini-collection hit!), one of the many '90s innovations that's just constantly floating out there in the universe.

Some player collection hits from gcrl, including Rickey as a Padre which has never quite looked right to me (despite the fact that he played for them two different times).

One reason to love the '90s: Jim Abbott.

Of course other decades have their high points, like '80s Mother's Cookies cards which are a rare and exciting treat.

I'm guessing these were dupes from gcrl's Davey Lopes collection, and I'm certainly glad he passed them down to me: coach cards really need to make a comeback.

Trainer cards, not so much (though I'll always take them for the sheer oddity of it all).

Perhaps a couple decades from now, people will be looking back at 2010s pop culture with a sort of wistful eye (and I'll probably be one of those people deriding it).

Heck, I'm already a bit nostalgic for A&G's Dude inserts, and those just came out last year. I think Barber Dude here from gcrl brings me up to a dozen Dudes, which means I still have a long way to go to complete the 50-card set.

At this pace, I'll probably have it completed by around 2030 or so, and by then I'll be one of those middle-aged coots waxing nostalgic about the good old days of the 1990s.