Hurray! For the first time since 2005, at least two fertile Kakapo eggs have been laid for this year's breeding season. Scoop.co.nz has the exciting news. It feels like such a long time since I was able to report such news, and this blog was less than a year old at the time.
The breeding season of New Zealand’s most endangered bird, the kakapo, is off to a great start with at least two fertile eggs laid on Codfish Island and two female birds, previously thought to be too young, also laying eggs.
Conservation Minister Steve Chadwick says these are the first eggs laid by kakapo in three years, and it is hugely exciting that two six-year-old kakapo have laid eggs, because we previously thought the minimum breeding age was nine years.
Yes, I can feel your stares on the back of my neck. And I’m ready for the comments expressing your incredulity at my not including this set in the top 20 of the early decade. First ’93 Upper Deck and now this? This one even has an A-Rod rookie! What, exactly, are you smoking?
Hobbies are golf and racquetball… Favorite singer is Bruce Springsteen; actor is Robert De Niro; movie is Silence of the Lambs; book is the Bible.
While other kids my age were busy doing whippets under the bleachers after school, I was at home, in my room, by myself, blowing my mind with the three-photo cards found in 1992 Upper Deck. Upper Deck debuted the gimmick in 1989, but it was hardly old hat three years later. I mean, did you hear me? Three photos on one card! And they all overlapped! The concept rocked then, and it still rocks today (I’ve stared at this card of Ken Griffey, Jr. now for at least five minutes straight and still can’t figure out if I’m looking at three or four overlapped photos).
I should come right and say it: I was a Score Man in the early Nineties. After what I thought were ugly 1988 and 1989 sets, there was little the flagship could do wrong over the next five years (divided into two distinct parts: the free wheeling, massive mass-consumption trilogy from 1990 to 1992, and the more refined, scaled-back and grown-up sets from 1993 and 1994). That’s quite remarkable, especially for an era when the best description for the majority of sets was ‘treacherous.’ 
And the trick of it was that Score knew their sets were gigantic and that collectors would want a factory set option. Hell, they even encouraged such thinking amongst the rank and file (I bought the factory set from 1990 to 1992). Why else would they have included all those attractive factory set inserts (Cooperstown, DiMaggio, Yaz, World Series)? It was as if they were saying that the only thing you’d get from buying packs (besides possibly completing the set) was pack fatigue. 
While the countless other brands fought tooth and nail for a foothold in the hobby, GlamorShots, excuse me, Studio was the only set with a truly unique position: showcase the players as well-rounded individuals. And do so on great-looking cards. Instead of re-inventing the wheel each and every year, all they had to do was pull down a different backdrop: 1991 saw the classic charcoal, 1992 had a close up on a craquelure newspaper photo and 1993 gave us jersey detail. All that was missing was the hand-on-chin pose in front of the bookcase and soft-focus lighting on stars in the night sky. 
If we remove the overt references to astrology, 1992 Leaf is the baseball card equivalent to the premise of The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh. Struggling brand/team that nobody wants? Check. Hare-brained schemes crazy enough they just might work? Check. 
I’ve always liked this set. Actually… how I feel towards this set goes a little deeper than just liking it. I like like this set (if you know what I mean). Is that embarrassing? Perhaps. But let’s just say that were I invited to Upper Deck’s house for a party in the basement and we just happened to play spin the bottle, and when I spun it just by chance pointed in 1993’s direction, well, let’s just say that I wouldn’t be against spending five minutes in the laundry room with the set. Alone. 
This was a gorgeous set. Sure, some of the inserts were ugly (MVPs, Long Ball Leaders, Spirit of the Game, Elite, Award Winners), but others were fantastic (Decade Dominators, anyone?) and the base set was probably the nicest-looking Donruss design since… well, at least since the black’n’red of 1985. 
There are a few things I’ve never been able to figure out: the inner workings of the female brain, the inherent difference between Go-Bots and Transformers and what the point was of the elongated black and white photo in the lower left of the 1994 Upper Deck design. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’ll never understand women, and I’ve decided that even though I couldn’t tell them apart, I liked the Go-Bots almost as much as Transformers. But that little black and white photo? I think we should get to the bottom of this one together.
And you know what? The various 1993 inserts were attractive additions to the brand. Hey, I don’t mean to imply that a lot of inserts automatically kill a set’s overall attractiveness. They can make a set better if they pull their own weight. And I think that’s the case here, with the possible exception of the Tom Glavine Hero Worship set, but even that one contributes a nifty autographed card. 
Coming on the heels of one of the most iconic sets of the early decade, Topps tried to make this edition even better than the previous one. Because we’re talking about 1992, that meant adding inserts and send-away offers, not to mention opening up the checklist to seemingly include every major leaguer, and everyone they went to high school with–a whopping 900 cards in all (up from 600 in 1991). And yet even with all these base cards, and in one of the best rookie crop years to boot, there are few (if any) major rookies in the whole base checklist. 
