Topps Traded 1992 - 1995

After using the same box design for eleven years, Topps finally changed things up in 1992 (which was also the year that Topps did away with the wax wrapper). Here is the design they came up with:



You can see that the colored box is gone, replaced with a white box. There were still 132 cards in the set, though 25 of the players were from Team USA, since this was an Olympic year and baseball's first as an official Olympic sport.



The 1993 box is similar to the '92 box, but not a duplicate like the '82-'91 boxes. This was the last year of the 132 card traded set, and again, Topps included the Team USA players.



The 1994 set had a couple changes. First, you can see that the box is completely re-designed. It is longer, and the cards were placed in three stacks. The new shape didn't fit at all with the others, so I made myself a box that would work better....



....and I used the old colored boxes design for the labels. The size of the set grew by eight, as a "Traded Finest" insert set was included. The cards would have been released at the time that the players went on strike. I wonder if Topps anticipated that and printed fewer sets, anticipating a lack of fan interest.

The 1995 set had more changes. First, the set grew in size again, this time to 165 cards. In an even bigger change, Topps sold the cards in foil packs instead of as a factory boxed set. That means that I had to make a box for this year....



....and again, I used the old colored box design. This would also be the last time Topps put out a traded set until 1999. I wonder why they ditched it for three years? Lack of sales? Lack of interest? Both?

Now it's time to take a look at a Cub from each set:



1992 - 6 Cubs....Sammy's first Topps card as a Cub



1993 - 2 Cubs....Randy Myers, who saved an NL record 53 for the '93 Cubs



1994 - 4 Cubs....including this tribute to Ryne Sandberg, who retired during the '94 season.



1995 - 4 Cubs....Jaime Navarro had a decent year for the '95 Cubs, going 14-6.