Night Owl Cards

  What might that be? The Dodgers' second straight World Series title? The Bills' win over the infernal Patriots last weekend? Finally killing off the yellowjacket infestation underneath the siding in August?   Nah.   My biggest win of the year was landing the prize in the vintage giveaway over at The Diamond King a couple of weeks ago. In keeping with the season, DK has been giving away a bunch of cards from his collection. I waited out the numbered and prospect lots and I was rewarded. Vintage! Sweet, sweet vintage.   As a veteran vintage collector, I saw cards in the lot that I already owned, but that didn't stop me from entering because there were several cards I didn't own, including cards on freshly made want lists! Plus, I could always do a giveaway myself with the extras.   There was so much variety in this group that it took me awhile to figure out how to present it here. I'm still not sure that this won't turn out to be rambling without any direction...

(Happy 4th to all! I hope you're having as nice a time as I am. ... OK, I wouldn't want to wish that on anyone. I hope you're having a NICER time than I am. Even if means reading about The Most Defective Sets I Know). 4. TMDSIK: 1965 TOPPS EMBOSSED I am virtually positive that these cards were very cool when they arrived in 1965. They were inserted into packs of '65 Topps and it was something new for collectors. But there's a reason that they are pretty cheap in comparison to all other cards that hit the market during the mid-1960s. The card image isn't terribly clear, unless you hold it under a light. And the deal-breaker, for me, is that a lot of the facial features either don't resemble the player displayed or it's too difficult to tell whether they do or not. This Ron Fairly COULD look like Ron Fairly. I just can't tell without finding a card of Ron Fairly, holding the two of them together, comparing, and doing a whole lot of squi...

Today I interviewed the head equipment manager for the 49ers. He's a very busy guy these days, as you can imagine. He used to be an athlete, but moved into this line of work when an injury ended his playing days. The reason he stayed in his new career, keeping track of jerseys and pads and everything else for NFL teams, is because it appealed to the organizational aspect of his personality. In fact, he said he used to spend hours organizing his baseball cards. The light bulb went on above me. "Hey! I like organizing baseball cards! Maybe I could have become an equipment manager for a Super Bowl team!" Then I looked at my desk at work. Papers from years ago, scattered everywhere. Then I came home and looked at my card desk. Cards, from months ago, scattered everywhere. "No," I thought. "'Rumpled, disheveled journalist' fits me just right." But I really do need to clear off my card desk a little bit. There's a card show comin...

Not long ago, Matthew of Number 5 Type Collection asked us to select our five favorite teams from a list. I looked and looked for the word "Dodgers" on his list, but I didn't see it. So, I went with five other scrubs ... er, teams. Wouldn't you know it, I won a nice stack of cards consisting of the two teams that are most often confused with the Dodgers when people trade with me -- the Blue Jays and the Royals. It was nice getting a team lot that didn't consist of Dodgers for once, just because I enjoyed leafing through cards that were totally unfamiliar to me. When you deal exclusively in Dodgers, you tend to see the same cards over and over again. Variety is the name of the game in just about everything, and this underlined that fact, even if the jerseys were still blue. The cards were so enjoyable that I decided to list my 10 favorite cards from the lot in reverse order. See what you think of these: 10. Joe Carter, 1996 Select Certified A muc...

I didn't bring a list to the card show over the weekend. A list often means Expectations, and it's good to have little to no expectations at this particular show. Calling it a card show is a bit ridiculous, since the few dealers who sell cards are situated in the back of arena. Coins and postcards are the real stars of the show. So I know that there are going to few tables that draw my interest, decreasing the likelihood of seeing cards I want. Also, you never know how many tables will have cards. One year it was two. Another year it was 8 or 10, I lost track exactly. This year there were four, and fortunately I know two of the dealers. With limited tables and limited wares, lacking a list didn't cause any problems. In fact, I'm quite happy with what I landed. Here is a happy little countdown from "she isn't that bad," to "drop-dead gorgeous." 8. 1979 Topps Red Sox grab bag One of the dealers has a large plastic bin full of grab...