2009

How old do you have to be to experience nostalgia?

My daughter and her friends get nostalgic, but it's that weird kind of nostalgic that only college-age kids experience, that nostalgia that isn't really nostalgia because it wasn't even 10 years ago.

You know that song "We Are Young" by Fun? If that pops on the radio -- well, it means I have no control over the radio station, for one -- it will throw my daughter and her friend into fits of "remember when" as if this 2011 song came out when The Brady Bunch was in prime time.

It's bizarre, and as a parent you can't help but announce in response "that was yesterday!" But as the years go on and my daughter and her friends have moved on, I can't help but get nostalgic over stuff that was brand-new not even a decade ago, too.

For instance, 2009.

You remember 2009, right? The movie "Up"? That horrible "Boom Boom Pow" song? But some things were kind of good in 2009.

For example, this was the last year that real competition existed in the baseball card world. Upper Deck was actually producing baseball cards with logos and everything, and nobody but nobody was reduced to surrendering hard-earned cash on Panini's re-imagined world of baseball players as hazardous-waste engineers.

The year 2009 was the first full year of this blog and I was involved in the modern card world full-force. I knew every product, I bought every product, I tried to complete many of them and became as familiar with the cards of the day as I had been since the early 1980s.

Today, I can't keep up with what's being released. And when I feel that panic that team collectors know all too well -- another set? I've got to get those too! -- I sit back and remember:

There are still cards from 2009 that I need.

I received a handful of cards from Matt of Sports Card Collectors that were from 2009, including the Goudey 4-in-1 card you saw at the top. Here are two others:

These Stadium Scenes cards from '09 Piece of History were pretty snazzy back then and I never saw one. It's weird -- and a little Upper Deckish -- that the silver Stadium Scenes card is numbered lower (/149) than the turquoise card (/999) since the silver color is the same as the base-set cards.

These cards make me want to update all my Dodgers needs on the want list right now (if I'm lucky I can get it done by the end of the week). Instead of scrambling over all the cards from the newest Topps Set of the Week, why don't I focus on all these needs from nine years ago?

But, anyway, SCC wasn't done with the numbered cards.

We've traveled out of 2009 now so we're in the land of unlicensed, no-logo cards.

Both of these cards feature their serial numbers on the front. What's your opinion, are serial numbers meant for the front or the back? I prefer the back. It often mucks up the front and putting the number on the back gives people an excuse to read their card backs.

Also, that Bowman Platinum squiggle makes Seager's butt look big. Not that I'm looking.

Last card from the PWE. It's another Panini offering, from the more tolerable Diamond Kings. This is an artist's proof parallel of some sort. I've never understood these artist's proof holdovers from the '90s.

But that's likely because I hold little nostalgia for the 1990s in most cases.

None of the years in that decade can match up to 1975. Or 1983. Or 1987.

Or even 2009.