A Time for Revival

You may think I'm speaking of the lord and his love but no, I'm not. Believe it or not, I'm about to speak about something related to comic books (a shocker of there ever was one).
 
Trading Cards

Back when I first got into comics, one of the main things that caught me were the amazing trading cards. The 1993, X-Men Series 2 cards to be exact. Each card was a character with amazing art on the front and character statistics on the back. It was a joy to be able to get a pack and see what characters we got. My brother and I would fight over who got what cards and my mother would buy them herself and then use them as bargaining chips to get us to do chores (the better the card the more work had to be done). In each set there also the special insert cards. They had some awesome gimmicks like foil writing, embossed pictures or even 3D images. Some were easier to find at maybe 1:4 packs while others got much harder and were only one or two per box (24 or 36 packs per box usually). Trading cards were everything great about the 90s and comics for me.
Sadly they were also some of the worst things. Pretty soon the market became flooded with sets. Team sets became character sets as specific ones got there own like Wolverine, Ghost Rider and Punisher. One set became two, became three and different companies started doing different sets adding even more. The market was flooded (which was a very common trait in the 90s) and cards soon died out.
Over the next years, Marvel and DC still tried somethings here and there. They started to gear 'em towards movies, capturing shots from the movie itself and telling the plot throughout on their backsides. In these cards were a few inserts but they took from sports cards and started inserting autographs of the actors and memorabilia cards with pieces of material from the costumes. Marvel has been going back to comic cards for a number of years now but the cards were mostly just single shot art from the comics themselves. Hand-drawn sketch cards are now the hot thing to get. Marvel, DC, movies, Star Wars, Garbage Pail Kids, Family Guy. You name it, it has cards and hand-drawn sketches. But that seems to be all anybody cares about. Pulling the good stuff to resell 'em for more.
I want the old cards back. I want some inserts with awesome 3D holograms and embossed pictures so that I know they're special. I don't want autographs or sketch cards to be the main attraction. I want to get pissed off when I keep pulling Wolfsbane cards and can't pull the damn Wolverine that goes next to it. I want a full set with all-new art and a card #100 checklist at the end. The 90s had a lot of bad things going on for the them and the comic industry. But maybe, just maybe, at least one thing was done right.