Ranking Topps Baseball Card Designs (1990-1999)

by Paul Semendinger

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As we wait for the season to begin, I thought it might be fun to look back at some of the old Topps baseball card sets and rank the designs.

Here are the 1980s designs year-by-year:

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

Some thoughts:

1990 - I'm not a big fan of this design. It looks cheap. To me it is one of the worst Topps set designs ever.

1991 - I really like this set. It's one of my favorites, clean crisp, nice.

1992 - Also a nice set, but as they tried to imitate 1991, it came up a little short.

1993 - A nice clean set, but it's lacking somehow.

1994 - A bad design

1995 - A worse design, some player names are difficult to read. The script is ugly.

1996 - A great design, BUT, the player names are still difficult to read.

1997 - I love this design. A home run. The best of the decade. The gold is sharp. I love the players' name fonts on the bottom of the card.

1998 - Like 1992, they tried to replicate the previous year, but fell a little short.

1999 - Almost as good as 1997, crisp, clean, clear, gold... very nice.

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MY RANKINGS:

1. 1997

2. 1996

3. 1999

4. 1991

5. 1992

6. 1998

7. 1993

8. 1994

9. 1995

10. 1990

How do you rank these designs?