As seen at Sea Slugs:

Surprisingly enough, I find many of the early 90’s shows to be on equal footing with most modern series in terms of animation. Sure, we have developed a lot of advanced techniques for making fantastic looking anime, but today’s tight budgets severely constrain the number of top-quality shows. Instead, advancements in improving animation efficiency are more commonly applied - including the Pandora’s Box of CG. Like it or not, anime is an industry, and it’s more lucrative to maintain the same level of animation quality and increase the number of series produced, rather than to maintain the number of series and increase the animation quality. Due to this self-regulating effect, the meticulously detailed cel animation of yesteryear can compete with the slapdash digital ink-and-paint of today.

Indeed.

Here's a perfect example from the turn of the century:

Obviously it's way overdone and should've been made with poorer art and animation, the lesson taken to the heart by many modern production houses (the above example is provided by Xebec).