General Forum

I know I'm old school and those days will never return, but does anybody else fall in this same boat?  I can instantly recognize what year any Topps card is from 1952 through about 1991, just by looking at the front of the card.  Since they changed their card stock to the glossy "modern" look, I can't identify any set by year by just looking at the front of the card.  I'm kind of nostalgic for the old days!!  :)

Honestly, I think it's simply familiarity with the cards. How many sets did Topps release each year prior to 1990?

Once the Stadium Club, Finest, and all the other companies with their respective multiple brands hit the market, there are now too many sets we're all looking at to be able to instantly identify these sets. It's not a surprise to me that I can't easily identify the Topps sets between 1993 and 2010 because I wasn't actively collecting new baseball during those years, however, from 1996 - 2002, I was actively collecting hockey cards, and even in those years, I have a hard time looking at a card and saying "That's xxxx-xx [brand]." Too many base sets, with way too many insert sets (with even different designs).

That’s a good point I hadn’t considered. Just looked at 2017. There are about 57 major release sets listed. I also looked at 1967. Three major sets are listed. Topps, O-pee-Chee, and Topps Venezuelan, all with basically the same design. No wonder instant recognition is virtually impossible now!

I think a lot of it is nostalgia too. I've been collecting non-stop since I was four years old, but I have the greatest fondness for the 1988-98 era. That's the era where I can tell what set and year it is (usually) with my eyes closed, just by the feel of the card.

The last few years are hard for me to tell the base sets apart unless I look at the backs as said above. Over the 20 years ago Topps had a couple of sets where they used similar greens, Browns, and whites that are tough to distinguish also. Early 90s had some similar looking cards also. Topps either gets lazy or has a lot of leftover ink to use up it seems at times.

along the same lines, my adult son recently gave me his phone with the Quizzup app with a game MLB players where you choose the name from 4 choices when shown a picture.

he told his wife that he said I would crush it

I got 33 in a row correct, and said that was enough for me, ha ha..

so the cards translate to a useless skill like this ha ha

mark 

I'm good with Topps baseball up to 1994.  2000 is obvious because the year is printed on the front.  And I'm good on 2013-present.

I can recognize 1933 Goudey all the way up to 2009 upperdeck after that I have to look at the back of the card especially the 2010 Bowman and 2011 Bowman base cards 

can I say I can spot a T206 a mile away :) 

Pre-1990 there was basically just one flagship set for each sport from Topps and whoever else was making cards at the time. Since then particularly in more recent years there have been dozens of sets from the same maker. Some of them using similar designs, plus now there are so many inserts (not the parallels the inserts) that have totally different designs from the base set. Back in the day the inserts, usually no more than 3 or 4 at the most were either similar to the base flagship set or were unique enough to be identified. 

I was really hoping this thread was about a Jian-Yang-esque app.