Night Owl Cards

    I've written about this card a few times on this blog. It's the first autographed card I ever bought, at one of the first card shows I ever attended back when I was a teenager.   It was a pretty savvy move at the time, though I was not thinking of getting a deal or anything like that. Still the value of Koufax cards and Koufax autographs have shot up in the decades since. I'm very happy I have it.   But my main focus as a collector has not been autographs, it's completing sets and completing Dodgers team sets. Because of that, this Koufax card has always stood in the way. Since it's autographed, I never considered it part of the 1961 Topps Dodgers team set, though I list the set complete on checklists, like on TCDB.   While attending the monthly show in town over the last few months, I've noticed that the one dealer I go to all the time had a 1961 Koufax under glass. Just your regular, "ordinary" '61 Koufax, no signature scrawling on it.   I...

  I mentioned the other day that I picked up this 1953 Bowman Color Gil Hodges card on the occasion of his announcement to the Hall of Fame. It arrived yesterday and I'm proud to display it in all of its majesty.   The various creases and folds, the flecks of paper loss, cannot mask one of the greatest pictures of Ebbets Field to ever appear on a baseball card.   I'm aware that the setting is likely mid-day, possibly under overcast skies, but the yellow sign above and to the left of the red Bulova Watch sign makes it appear in my mind as a scene at dusk. Wishful thinking, of course.   But the star of the show, besides brand-new Hall of Famer Hodges, out in right-center field is the familiar Schaefer Beer scoreboard (with the Bulova clock at the top!). It's one of the certain indicators that your baseball card setting is in one of the most famous bygone ballparks in history.   The scoreboard began advertising Schaefer's beer in 1947 and I didn't know until today...

I wasn't going to post today. I don't have very much time and my muse was out to the shop. So I was going to leave you to stare at Pacific cards for another day. But sometimes, all you have to do is open an envelope and the words just pour out -- which is rather interesting because if I was to express myself in person about what I just pulled out of that envelope it would be "uhb, uhb, uhb, uhb, uhb, uhb, uhb, uhb, uhb, uhb, uhb ..." to infinity. Sheer flabbergastedness. David sent me another little package. He's already provided great stuff like '84 Donruss, '77 Topps, '72 Topps, and a few '56s like the one you see here of Ed Yost. One of the cartoons on the back amused me. But the Yost really was the lowlight of the package. And, yes, I know I just did a grave disservice to the hobby by calling a '56 card a "lowlight." But you'll understand soon. Here is another card out of the package. Dave threatened to se...