Since nobody wants to give a broader range of details, I guess I will do it. "Overproduction" of baseball cards really started in 1982 after Donruss and Fleer won their court battle against Topps to produce MLB cards in 1981. All 3 companies started battling to make the most stuff and have the most packs visible in all of the stores that sold cards. Back then that was gas stations and grocery stores. In the mid-80s, it expanded to stores like Woolworths, KMart, Toys R Us and so on. Then Score joined the group in 1988 and Upper Deck in 1989. Don't forget Sportflix that joined in 1986 but just wasn't significant due to the horrible design of the "cool technology". After Upper Deck produced the best product at that time in 1989, all the companies had to up their game. But they knew they couldn't just go premium yet. UD forced Topps to create Stadium Club, Fleer to create Ultra, Donruss to create Studio and Score to create Select. But all those companies still needed to make the base products first. I honestly don't mind seeing people call the 1980's cards "junk wax" but they need to know that those cards spawned a fantastic batch of products in the 1990's. People want to merge the early 90's into the "junk wax" term and I agree for 1990-1993. But after that, the cards got awesome for the rest of the 1990's. We just didn't know it at that time. There were so many awesome cards made from 1995-1999 that most people STILL don't know about because they were more rare than today's 1/1's from any product or company.
I'll end this with a simple thought... I'm much more interested in those 1993-2003 inserts and parallels for my PC than anything that has been made since 2010. I have most of the 1980-1992 base/insert/oddball cards for my PC, but I'd be happy to get any of the missing ones in a trade! Another note: the oddball cards from the 1980's were awesome and I loved that Topps got together with Utz to make cards the past couple of years. Oddball cards from a specific region, store or company always make things more interesting to me. That really hasn't happened in a long time until Utz and Topps teamed up in 2019. I won't buy 2022 Topps MLB cards, but I will chase the Topps Utz cards if they do it again this year!
NO PWE's EVER!!! PLZ PM me 1st before sending a trade or buy offer.
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Largest total PC card collections by Team, then Athlete (as of 3/31/23):
STL Cardinals (MLB) - 8700+; Carolina Panthers - 2800+; GB Packers - 1700+ cards
Mark Martin (NASCAR) - 2034 cards; Jimmie Johnson (NASCAR) - 1776+ cards; Jeff Gordon (NASCAR) - 1563; Ricky Rudd (NASCAR) - 828; Ozzie Smith (MLB) - 692+