The "OMG what did I get myself into?" lot part 1: I love the 90s

Well I guess it's about damn time I got around to this. "What?" you ask, "Posting for the first time in a couple weeks?" Yeah, that too, I guess. But I'm talking about finally digging into that "OMG what did I get myself into?" lot I picked up on Facebook Marketplace. As a reminder, it looked something like this before and during loading it in my car:

I know I mentioned a number of times that I was putting lots of effort into sorting through everything, and while I'm technically not quite done, I'd say I'm finally in a good place to show off generally what I'm keeping, making available, and dumping.

I may go into a bit more detail as these posts go on about what I found, but basically in terms of what filled those monster boxes in my trunk, it was baseball base and inserts from the late 80s to the mid-to-late 90s. And better yet it skewed much more toward the latter than junk wax crap that I have more than enough of. There was a LOT of cards stored completely randomly for some reason so it took lots of time to arrange them by set, but that ended up proving to be a rewarding enterprise as you'll see in a future post or two.

However, today I'm starting with the easiest items to cover: the base and insert singles I'm keeping for myself, mostly from 1995-97 sets I decided not to collect since there weren't enough in the boxes to justify trying to complete them. I was pleased to hit a number of my favorite PCs from 90s Tigers to the Griffey/Gwynn/Maddux/Ripken quartet to a few Michigan guys. The base portion is pretty solid but I think some of you will be pretty blown away by the inserts I added (which only scratch the surface of what I came away with!).

So please enjoy this bunch of cards I'm adding to my collection from the hobby's best non-vintage decade:

Like I said, lots of former Tigers! Big Daddy and Pudge are from the super busy '95 Fleer, a set I probably wouldn't have put together even if there were enough cards in the boxes to justify it. From '95 Score we have well-known '90s Tiger Fryman, '80s dude and the "Big Wheel" Lance Parrish on his second-to-last team, and Mr. Padre on a typically fun Score subset. Repping that year's Stadium Club are Pudge again plus one of the franchise's best closers in Henneman. And finishing up the year is a trio (continued in the next scan) of Cecil, Junior Griffey, and yet another Pudge. The stacks of Stadium Club and Ultra definitely weren't near enough for a set chase but I'll spoil the fact that I did end up with a complete set of Score Series I, just not the second series that included the trio above.

Most of what you see here is made up of '96 Bowman, a set I hadn't really prioritized. I found a pretty nice chunk of the vets portion of the set in those boxes but there were a lot of prospects missing, and I'm not really interested in the set anyway. Ripken and Maddux make their first appearances in this scan while Pudge, Gwynn, Fielder, and Fryman can be seen once again. One other newcomer is SS Carlos Guillen on one of his RCs. He appears with the Astros but of course was swapped to Seattle in the Randy Johnson deal, then flipped a few years later to Detroit where he was a fun and effective contributor for around eight seasons. And don't be too surprised to see Pudge once more out of '96 Fleer, a set I have a lot of singles from because I love the design. The stack of those from the boxes is one of the smaller ones but maybe someday I'll own all of it.

The last of the vertical base (sort of, you'll see...) are from '96 Select and Upper Deck. That the former are oriented that way is funny since only the checklists were made that way that year; As you'll see below, the rest of the base set is horizontal! It was pretty common for the decade's biggest stars to grace end-of-the-set checklists and that's what we have here in Griffey and Maddux. Big Daddy is the lone representative from another set I have a lot of but would love to own, 1996 Upper Deck. Moving on to the horizontals, corner guys Fryman and Fielder were the two I pulled from a somewhat small bunch of '95 Stadium Club. And Fryman pops up one more time thanks to the credit card-inspired '95 Studio product.

See what I mean about 1996 Select? Relative to the size of the set the pile of cards wasn't bad but once again wasn't enough for me to want to work on it, so here's eight more base cards I pulled for myself. Griffey, Maddux, and Ripken (twice!) get even more additions to their PCs while Pudge and Fielder, who started us off, represent the Tigers once more.

As I looked through the various boxes, most of which were filled with randomly assorted run-of-the-mill 90s products, I was floored to find one stuffed with Finest cards from 1994-97! While I'll have more to say about those in one or more future posts in this series, you'll get to see lots here, with even more exciting items in the next section. Here you're looking at cards from the 1995-97 versions, all of which have one thing in common: protective peels. What's great is that between this purchase and what I already had in my collection, I was able to set aside this group of 29 cards so I would have both unpeeled and peeled copies.

It took a bit for me to get the peels started on each--I mean, they have been in place for around 25 years! It's great having copies in both states since you get the "original" aspect with one and the better looking "freed" version with the other. I thought I'd include the pile of peels in the shot for fun.

And that leaves us with two more scans, which may be the best part of the series already in just the first post. A couple of the boxes had some groups of inserts bundled together, with others found randomly throughout the bunch, and I came away with a few very nice stacks of cards that serve as a great reminder of why I have a tag called "90s inserts rule" here. Just feast your eyes on these:

Sure, the '96 Bowman Foils of Gwynn, Fielder, Fryman, and Tony Clark (his first appearance today!), all of which came out of a pretty large stack of that parallel, aren't much to write home about, but obviously the big draw here is one of the OG must-have parallels: Refractors! Shiny, colorful, and originally much harder to find than the watered down versions of today, the ones you see above are from 1994 and '95, with the former being the second you could find without peels on them. I was more than happy to add a Fielder to my collection from '94, but the PC duo of shortstops Tram and Larkin had me over the moon! What beautiful looking cards. The '95s aren't exactly chopped liver either, and again I was glad to pair a former Tiger in Fryman with another PC I'm having fun building in Froot Loops himself, Mickey Tettleton.

The fun continued with more '96s and some '97s to boot. Though it's technically part of the base set I included Cal's '96 Finest silver card here because those were tougher pulls. '96 Score and its inserts were very, very well represented in these boxes (again, more to come) and I dug out two chase cards of today's star in Pudge: a Dugout Collection Artist's Proof (from the Series 2 set) and a Gold Stars card, whose name I associate more with Leaf.

And lastly we have one of my all-time favorite products in '97 Donruss, which is right up there with the 2001 version for me. I came away with quite a few from some of the inserts you see above and I'm happy to say lots will be available for trade, but more importantly for me I scored six outstanding cards from that product where pretty much every chase card was a winner. Barry's from the numbered Armed and Dangerous set (#0836/5000) and therefore knocks a card off of his wantlist. Maddux is the second PC guy I've found from the color appropriate Dominators set (Larkin is the other). I've been chasing the Cal Ripken Jr. "The Only Way I Know" insert since I bought his book of the same name, and card #9 above (#4439/5000) is my fourth of the 10 I need to acquire, including the one exclusive to the book. Griffey is the front man on possibly my favorite of the available inserts, the double-sided Franchise Features, with Andruw Jones joining him on the other side of this one numbered 1963/3000 (and slightly damaged from having to peel it apart from another, unfortunately). And lastly we have examples of both the Silver (limited to 2000 copies) and die-cut Gold (just 500) Press Proofs: Fryman and Griffey, respectively.

So holy crap, what a great bunch of cards on their own, and that doesn't include the complete and near-finished sets, potential trade bait, and other items that were part of this purchase which, as a reminder, set me back just $30! I look forward to sharing more with you once I can summon the energy to find a way to present and summarize it in a way that makes sense, and that includes letting everyone know what I'll be making available for trades/giveaways.

Before then, expect a show recap if I make it out to my usual monthly haunt tomorrow, plus my latest eBay pickup.