factory first

I've decided to collect Topps factory sets, as I stated yesterday. It allows me to catch up on what I missed in the past 15 years in baseball carding. Two of these such sets came in mail today, 1993 and 1999. Lets begin shall we?

I'll bet most people know this year as either; A: the set that had Derek Jeter's rookie card in it, or B: the first set that included the then new Rockies and Marlins. This set is HUGE. 825 cards in this monster, which I believe is Topps' biggest ever. They were at that 792 mark forever and then this comes out and breaks that up (they went back to the 792 for 1994). Its a nice, clean design overall, very 90's looking. Second year for Topps Gold, Black Gold was also here too. The cardstock is different too from the previous years. Its now glossy (kinda) and feels less...cheap than 1992 and before. Maybe it was Topps' delayed response to Upper deck's quality (which for 1993 was a VERY high quality release, as most of you all know). I did collect 93 Topps when I was younger, and I thought it was cool when I fist saw the Rockies and Marlins cards, especially the horizontal split cards which featured two players. Almost junk wax but just at the end of the over-production era. I'll be conducting a review of the 1999 set once I go through it. I have about 7 cards from this particular year and know very little about it, so it'll be an adventure.