I played 2E until I got sick of it and moved on to other roleplaying games for a while (mostly WEG Star Wars and WW Vampire). I got a bit tired of D&D "being in a rut" with the class-based system while most other "modern" RPGs were going to an ala carte menu of choices to build characters.
Still, if I was to go back to a previous version of the game these days, 2E would be my version of choice. I'd likely stick with just the "core" books, maybe some of the earlier Complete books, but not any of the Player Option books. And while I'd happily use any of the 2E game worlds, I'd steer clear of the modules for 1E or homebrew fare - most of the 2E modules were railroads and/or tried to be too grounded and failed to account for the fantastic elements of a non-medieval fantasy world.
However, this was the edition I got myself published ("The Winter Tapestry" in Dungeon), which had been what I'd dreamed of doing since I started playing D&D. Unfortunately, it happened a few months before TSR went bankrupt, so I backed away from my dream of working as a game designer.