Night Owl Cards

I'd like the Dodgers to sweep tonight, but I'm not confident about it. The Yankees would really have to be in rough shape to lose to Brent Honeywell Jr. and friends. But it could be one those 13-11 games, so there's a shot, and if it's going to happen it will be the second time the Dodgers have swept the Yankees in the World Series. The first happened in 1963. I wasn't around in '63. So I've often wondered what that was like. The Dodgers sweeping the Yankees on the grandest stage is my dream come true (why it needs to happen today ). Damn, the only time in my life I've wished I was 10 years older. All I can do is read about it . And go back in time the way only my little blog can do to see what life was like 61 years ago.   Since this is a card blog, I'll address the card portion first. In 1963, the Topps monopoly was picking up steam with only Fleer mounting a minor challenge.   Fleer put out a dandy little set in 1963. (The green card backs might b...

  Like many folks, I've enjoyed the good fortune of a few extra funds lately. I've been a good owlie and dedicated almost all of it toward real life requirements and needs. I finally got that new roof so I can end years worth of hand-wringing over squirrels and rain clouds.   But I've also used some to gain some long-sought cards, which you've seen here over the last couple of months. And you'll see some more. I also decided to grab a smattering of cards for trade bait. These are cards that I care nothing about but I know others value quite a bit. They are from that late '80s/early '90s period, and I'm not going to show them because I want to use them for when I think it's the right moment. But probably the most coveted one that I grabbed -- no, it's not the '89 Upper Deck Junior -- is this one: For those of you who ignore cards from this period, that's the 1990 Leaf Frank Thomas card. I have no connection to 1990 Leaf and very little int...

My readers are far too kind. I've written Night Owl Cards for 12 years and I've received so many incredible gifts over the years, some of the greatest cards ever made and various other crazy memorabilia. All of these have come to me simply because I write words that some people enjoy. There are no expectations on the other end, other than that I keep writing. They are simple thank yous, attached to significant cardboard. I consider it a great honor. I never expected any of this. We are operating in weird times. People have become too defensive, less trusting, more apt to look out for No. 1. It's taken a pandemic to take the edge off of some folks' hardened exteriors and place the focus on the importance of caring for others. I've been the recent beneficiary of that pandemic mind-set a few times just on this blog and I have two specific examples based on envelopes I received on the same day. The first is from Rod of Padrographs . You know him as delive...

Remember this card? I pulled it out of a repack box that I bought with a gift card just after the first of the year. As nice as it is to say, "I have an autographed card of Hall of Famer John Smoltz," uttering that sentence rings a little hollow if you know I'm a Dodger fan. And with all of the Braves fans blogging about baseball cards, I knew this wouldn't stay in my house for long. The card is still in my house. But that's only because I'm determining right now if I want to trudge through the newly fallen snow to the post office before I go to to work. It's in a mailer ready to go, destined for John at Johnny's Trading Spot . John wanted this card quite a bit and we negotiated for awhile until he struck upon some possibilities obtained at a card show, or wherever he turns up his marvelous finds (I get the impression that everywhere in the south are street-side stands that sell sportscards). He turned up some finds that I was interested in an...

I was intrigued by garveyceyrusselllopes' post this morning on early 1960s Jello cards because like many collectors I've never been able to tell the difference between Jello cards and the Post cards that came out at the same time. Oh, sure, there are lots of places you can go where they'll tell you how to figure out the difference, but that means actually having to reeeeaadd something that isn't a card blog and I'm so laaaaaaaaazy. So even though I have the information right in the next room in the form of the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards, I just kept right on going, "maybe I have a Post card, maybe I have a Jello card, oh, well, I guess I'll never know, la di dah!" I'm glad someone finally put a stop to that. Jim's blog post referenced Wrigley Wax's blog post from a couple of months ago that had information on how to tell the difference. This basically concerns only the 1963 Post and Jello cards because with the 1962 Pos...

As a small-town consumer who frequents big-box establishments, there is no more welcome statement than this: "Register X is open. No waiting." Prepare for the inevitable stampede. As a former checkout clerk, I would say only, "Register X is open." I'd leave out the "no waiting" because I knew what it did to people. I didn't want to be responsible for trampled beings. But this is evidence that one of the major annoyances of childhood never ever goes away. We hate waiting. Two of the most frustrating obstacles for me as a kid were things that cost money (I had no money) and things that required waiting (I had no patience). So you can imagine what baseball cards on cereal boxes did to me. Frosted Flakes -- this box shows the very first Kellogg's 3-D cards I ever obtained from 1977 -- would promise you a single card inside, which would touch off a battle for ownership among my brothers. The rest of the cards you could get IF you cut ou...