1996 Topps Baseball Forum

The 1996 Topps baseball card set was significant for at least two different reasons:

1.  At a total of only 440 cards, you'd have to go back to 1957 to find a smaller base set.  Remember that 1957 was the first year that baseball cards were manufactured in same size that they are today.  Essentially, the 1996 Topps set is the 2nd smallest base set ever produced by Topps since 1957 through today. 

2.  This was the first year that Topps didn't release a Traded/Update since it began doing so consecutively in 1981.  Topps also wouldn't release a Traded/Update set in 1997 and 1998, but then would do so every year afterward through today.

I wasn't collecting baseball cards anymore in 1996--I had quit 5 years previously, and wouldn't begin again for another 5 years--so I missed out on all of the fun.  What are your thoughts or memories of collecting the 1996 Topps set and the that era?    

I missed out at that time, too - and had stopped around the same time you stopped.

I kinda hated it. I like full teams, or as close to it as possible. The idea of picking 12-15 "worthy" players just irks me. Now the 792 card (and 825!) sets of previous years were excessive. But 440 was annoyingly low. Not great memories at all. 

And they still had room for prospects and rookies. Ugh. 

V3

Because of it's small size, I've focused more on adding the insert sets to the back of my binder.  I recently discovered the 9 pre-production cards that I've included as a type of parallel as well as the some cards that never were like the A-Rod and Mantle cards that came out in the mid-2000's.