Early '90s mojo, define the design results and a poll

I received these 1992 gold parallel Dodgers from Johngy of Johngy's Beat the other day. Every time I get one these early '90s gold cards, it strikes me how elite they were back then ... and how cheesy they look now.

Personally, I never liked them. Not even in 1992. But I certainly did appreciate how coveted they were at the time, and when I pulled one, it was about as close as I had come to being Charlie when he pulled the golden ticket.

It's for that reason that I'm still trying to complete the gold parallel Dodger sets from this time period -- in homage to the folks who thought these were the most fantastic cards ever, and ... oh, hell, that's not really the reason. It's because I'm an irrational completist.

Gold foil is the No. 2 thing that I wish Topps would scrap, behind whatever card stock it has been using for cards the last 20 years. I will never give these '92 and '93 foil-stamped cards a pass for what they spawned all these years later.

But instead of dwelling on that, let's name sets! A week or so ago I asked people for Define the Design suggestions for a number of sets from 1993, as well as this year's Topps offering.

Since I've already started with 1993 Topps, I'll name that first.

There were some good suggestions for this set. I think the one that fits best is related to old style photo albums. There were suggestions of "the scrapbook set," but that's already the Define the Design name for the 1958 Topps set.

Like commenters noted, the design at the bottom looks like photo corners that held pictures in place in old albums or scrapbooks.

Like so:

Not a perfect match but fairly close. I'm going to go ahead and call 1993 Topps the "Photo Corner Set."

Alan Trammell appears to have the world's longest baseball bat.

The 1993 Donruss set revolves around it's 3-D graphic at the bottom. I was informed by readers that it's cheap, dated and amateurish. I'm not a computer designer of any kind, nor have I ever been, so I'm going to take everyone's word for it.

'93 Donruss is now the "3-D Graphics 101 Set."

It didn't take long to come up with an appropriate name for 1993 Score. I thought the responses were perfect.

'93 Score is now the "Tape Measure Set."


But I still don't have a name for the two other sets that I featured the last time.

I could carry out with my threat to call '93 Upper Deck "The Best Set Ever Made Set." But I'd rather have a somewhat objective and less awkward name.

The suggestion of calling it the "Eye on Springfield Set" was amusing.

Any Simpson fans think that works? I'll have to think about it a little bit.

As for 1993 Fleer, I think everyone is just as lost as I am. It's just so boring.

So I'll think about that for ... I don't know forever.

Meanwhile, there is still the matter of coming up with a name for this set:

In typical wishy-washy night owl fashion I am torn between naming it something obvious, like "the baseball diamond set" or something a little more fun, like after my beloved sea turtle.

So I've created a poll on the sidebar.

Please vote for your favorite. I will select whichever comes out on top.

But no shenanigans.

I'll meow it's you.