'93 is still my favorite year of cards across all brands! The base sets for '93 Leaf, Upper Deck, and Fleer Ultra are still amongst my favorite releases in all my years collecting!! Then you add in Studio, Topps Finest, and Upper Deck SP... I don't think this year gets discussed enough in the hobby, so thank you for this!
So much nostalgia from this year. I bought a lot of 93 topps. Pulled plenty of Jeter but Chad Mottola was the big card in that set. Booked for $3 in Beckett! 🤣
In 1992-93 I was a pizza delivery driver....I spent a LOT of my tips on buying packs and boxes from the card shop that was three doors down from our pizza joint. I still have a lot of those cards especially Upper Deck baseball and I still have a Michael Jordan SP1 I pulled from a box. At one time I had three of them but I sold two and kept the best looking one.
I look at 1993 as one of the top 3 most important years in the history of the hobby as far as card production goes. Cards were still very popular then, still relatively cheap, and like you pointed out a lot of new ideas were begun that year that have carried the hobby to this day.
2004 football would be very interesting. Could end up seeing numerous players over next couple years make the hall from thar draft class and also still has a lot of star players.
You could do an entire dissertation on any year in the late 90s/early 2000s. Inserts and parallels galore, lots of big stars in their prime, game used and autos popping up more, really fun time.
Would love to see videos for each of the years 1994-1999. After starting in modern then dabbling in vintage, I’m wanting to start learning about and buying 90s refractors/inserts now. I feel like it has its whole own era in cards.
My dad bough tons of cards. I have no idea if they're worth anything. It was his favourite thing to do with me. Opening up boxes of cards together. Working on completing the set. Making trades etc. Good times. I wish I listened to him and wouldnt touch my cards as much. His are truly mint. Mine are slightly damaged as most 13 year olds would have done.
If only little me understood what "take care of those" really meant. I have a 93 Jeter SP in my binder. Too bad I took it out and held it and showed my friends a million times. Same with my 91 Griffey Desert Shield. It has a crease. I blame my parents for not buying me top loaders and only gave me binders ha.
This was the beginning of my card collecting days. So many memories of card shops, garage sales, shows, and studying Beckett prices like it was the bible. At 9 years old, I had it memorized to the point I never needed to look up a price and there was no such thing as "comps" to worry about. Graded pricing didn't appear in Beckett until later in the decade, and, like many collectors at the time, I resisted grading as some sort of fad that would go away. Where's that time machine again?
I still have a 93 Finest Baseball box sealed stashed away. I couldn't afford it when I was a kid but in 2014 I acquired a box. Still can't afford the Ryan or Griffey refractors from it. A Jeter Finest Refractor imo would fetch at minimum $400k non graded imo if they made one back then. Nice summary of 1993 and the birth of the refractor. Thanks Chris
I started collecting around 95 and haven’t bought a back since 2000. Baseball finest being was my ‘ holy grail’ when my mom would buy me a pack. But 94 finest, though I never bought a pack, is still my favorite. I love those colors.
Disclaimer: What I write below only considers PSA-graded cards. Based on the ‘93 finest refractor pop counts of the biggest stars (Griffey had the most 10s with 42), I would guesstimate a PSA 10 Jeter refractor would have a pop count of 45-50. I imagine there would be quite a few resubmissions to get the total up over the years. With that being said, here is my theoretical comparison of the 2 cards - draw your own conclusions. ‘93 Jeter Finest Refractor: Print Run = 241 Total pop = 230 (likely to be higher than 241 because of resubmissions) PSA 10 = 48 Overall, PSA 10s make up 21% of total pop and 20% of total print run. There would be no raw copies available, and it would be very difficult to acquire this card in any grade, let alone a PSA 10. The scarcity and demand would be extreme for this iconic card from the first-ever refractor parallel set. ‘93 Jeter SP Print run = 100,000+ Total pop = 21,167 PSA 10 = 21 Overall, PSA 10s make up 0.01% of total pop and 0.002% of total print run. There are thousands of raw copies available and you can acquire in many low to mid grades for very cheap. However, the PSA 10 pop count is half of that of the finest total, making it even more difficult to acquire a 10 than the refractor.
This is what I was thinking too. While the SP is Jeter's best RC, the value of a PSA 10 comes more from the condition sensitive nature of the card, Obviously a raw Refractor would be more than an raw SP but I think the SP PSA 10 would still be more valuable than a PSA 10 refractor.
I really enjoy this series. It always gives me a chance to dig into my older cards and look for some treasures! Thanks for the great content as always, sir! 🙏
1993 Leaf Studio will always be one of my favorites. I loved the shiny facsimile auto and the team logo in the background. So much better than the 1991 and 1992 sets. I consider those sets the Glamour Shots of baseball cards 🤣
The backs where so much better than the fronts which was unheard of back then. I loved the hologram team logo on the back. Such a cool set but as a super fan of the black golds from 92 I was disappointed Leaf didn't have a parallel set in 1993
Thanks for another trip down memory lane. One minor oversight: Donruss Triple Play actually debuted in 1992. Be sure to reprimand your Research Dept. I think 1989 would be a good year for a history video, with Upper Deck ushering in the era of premium brands and all the Griffey mania and the Dale Murphy reverse negative, maybe the hottest error card of the decade.
I love 90's Upper Deck Baseball inserts I still have that Mickey Mantle then & now hologram card that I pulled as a kid. Please do first Baseball Metal product release it's my all time favorite set to build.
Great video but I honesty think there are more than 241 refractors. I believe that once they got popular a lot of whole sheet rolls were backdoored by unscrupulous Topps workers. I also feel that the company that owned the original patent for the refractor foil SGW here in Southern California had a way to apply the refractor coating perfectly onto regular finest cards, resulting in again some of their unscrupulous workers making their own versions. From what I can tell, if you want to detect if a refractor came from a backdoored sheet, the refractive surface will show waves or rather ripples across the surface which shouldn't be there from a card that was produced flat. This is because the backdoored sheets were rolled up as they left the facility in, where, Pennsylvania (or Southern California?) And that rolled up curvature, even if maintained just for a few minutes, was still able to show through once the refractive acrylic surface completely cured onto the paper. I don't know why PSA doesn't reject them, since it's obvious. Slabbed backdoored refractors still get 8, 9, and maybe a 10, but they aren't the original pack issued cards ...In my opinion. and its not like Topps wasn't caught making up numbers on rare refractors just 4 years later as well.
Thanks for doing this video! I had made this suggestion in the previous video you did like this so it definitely hits home for me. Sincerely appreciate your content!
I'd love to see you do a YIBC on 1984. For Topps, it was the first year for their Tiffany set. For Fleer, their Update set had the only XRCs for Roger Clemens and Kirby Puckett. And for Donruss, well their base set is widely considered the nicest and most desirable of the decade.
This was also the first year Topps released their Gallery of Immortals set, which was renamed to Gallery of Champions for 1985. These were small metal cards made of bronze and silver (and later, aluminum). I believe they were released only to dealers who ordered a certain amount of Tiffany cases, although I could be mistaken about that.
PSA 10 pop count for Griffey's 93 refractor is 42. PSA 10 pop count for Jeter's 93 SP foil is 21. I think the scarcity of refractors in the 93 finest set would be balanced out by the lesser pop count of the 93 SP and the price for a Jeter 93 refractor would likely be similar to his 93 SP.
One of your best videos! I collected the 80's junk as a kid. I lost interest in 90's when it became evident they were extremely over produced. I just concentrated on Cal's cards and everyone once and while a box for fun.
Thanks! Cool lookback at 1993. I think the Jeter would go for around $300 K. Remember, the Jeter probably would not reach the $225 K range, as the refractor would be the "grail" card, not the gold RC.
oh man this is stilly favorite year. upper deck had the best photography and design ever it was just so freaking perfect. Topps is my favorite just because it was the first set I came close to completing ever (finally did with the help of online buying of commons for cheap) even donrruss had a snappy design. fleer was the only one that was just kinda meh... I don't even remember what score looked like. the subsets for upper deck were also fun to see just such great variety. mannn
Great video and 1993 was practically the height of my collecting days as a kid. I was curious about your take regarding the Finest Refractors and the infamous "greening" that is showing up on a bunch of them due to improper storage. I had a few 1994 Finest Basketball Refractors that I had acquired that were very sharp condition wise and were in my mind PSA worthy with one exception, they all started showing slight greening. It was a bummer because I had Hall of Fame players (Karl Malone, John Stockton as well as popular players Jamal Mashburn RC and Kevin Johnson just to name a few). Does PSA ignore the greening of these? I didnt want to take the chance and still sold them for good money but it is definitely a thought that crosses the mind whenever I see them.
Yeah the greening is unfortunate. Psa does not ignore it, they will knock a cards grade down. However, some cards have “greened” since they were out in the psa holder, so you will sometimes see 10s with greening
Great breakdown of the 1993 sets. Wow, that PSA 10 Jeter SP is crazy! I wouldn't know where to begin to project a price for a Jeter Refractor from '93. Maybe $300,000? Great job, Chris
Jeter finest would have to be around $500000. I was going to say more but the SP is so condition sensitive that a Gem mint 10 gets a massive premium. Thanks for another fun 90s video. Being a 42 year old these are the cards/packs I remember opening as a kid. I still love these cards to this day. Even though they are all scratched up from playing poker with baseball cards as poker chips. 😂
A 93 finest Jeter refractor would definitely cross the 1 million mark. Would love to see a baseball card review of 1996. All I can say is Leaf Signature Baseball. Auto per pack.
Oh yes! That set is amazing and was super expensive too! It's platinum Proofs were extremely rare and only issued out in the second run! Great suggestion for that set!
Not sure I agree the finest refractor Jeter would be crazy higher than the SP if any. The SP is a pop 21 in PSA10 despite being graded nearly 22k times, it's so crazy condition sensitive. The Griffey refractor has a pop count of 43 on like 240 grades so much much easier to gem.
Good luck doing 97-99. You’ll have an hour long video. I expect to do some educational 90’s vids since I consider myself well educated on them. Liked it. 93 flair I believe was the first arena design. Very classy cards.
I just couldn't wrap my head around how thick the card stock on 93 Flair was. It was a more significant release than Finest that year for 10 year old me.
@@AtomicZombieAndroid we are same age. For me, it started in 94ish. And vividly remember 95 flair and the cigarette type box packs, and the sparkle. Thick, gloss finish, it was soooo luxurious and I couldn’t get enough of it.
1993 Topps finest Refractors was what got me into collecting cards. It was probably one of the most beautiful cards at time. I definitely think that Derek Jeter PSA 10 will go for easily $350,000 given the low pop and how it looked
With that PSA serial number 12345678 I'm sure somebody would spend a million or more if it had a Jeter Finest Refractor but instead it holds a 1989 UD Gary Sheffeild Star Rookie..
The 93 meter refractor would go for at least 1M.. Rookie card of a yankee legend HOF.. Numbered to 241.. From the 90s.. Oh man.. That would be insane!!
2 years ago a Jeter refractor would have surely gone north of $1,000,000. I'd say now it might go between $350,000 to $450,000. We need to start a movement on graded price differences. It is nonsensical, irrational and downright stupid how so many PSA 9's sell for 10% of what a 10 sells for. Not all are like that but that Pinnacle Jeter is $705 for a 10 and $54 for a 9. A 9 should be at least $250 imo. The Topps gold Jeter 10 is $1500 and the 9 is $120. Over 90% drop on a 9 for a slighly dinged corner? No way man!
There were due-cut cards in the 60’s… no? All those stand-ups, the funny rings in 66 Topps football, later in hockey, some die cuts with team logos I think? There’s gotta be more! Topps laugh in, had die cuts… 🤓😜
It may be my phone, but I have a hard time hearing you. If it is my phone, please someone let me know. Thanks for the video, Chris. Always appreciated. 🙏
At least double the SP 500k But who knows maybe a million, especially during the boom it probably would have sold for a million and then dipped back down to $500,000 lol
can you do one on basketball insert sets that would be cool. Also the Derek Jeter Finest if real would have been 500k card psa 10 no doubt. **Do you think the values of psa 9 should be that dramatically different?**
