Night Owl Cards

    OK, now that I've established myself as an oddball in the current collecting landscape -- preferring vintage cards and all -- it's appropriate that I show off some recent "oddball" arrivals in my collection.   This runs the gamut and covers 85 years of trading cards and some of it isn't even cardboard.   Let's see:   Fired-up by my first acquisition of a 1960 Leaf high-number Dodger card in Rip Repulski, I decided to grab another one with this Joe Pignatano. It has a few minor flaws (it was listed as "good," which is usually "good enough" for me), but it still looks great.   That leaves just Stan Williams to complete the team set. Upon landing the Repulski, I received an email informing me that the Williams was available for a reasonable price on sportlots. But I didn't jump on it (I'm rarely financially ready to pounce on opportunities) and it's not there anymore.     Here's a card -- and an owlie greeting card -- that ...

   Here is the other 1975 Topps-focused post I wanted to get to before the 50th anniversary year is over.   I've reached sort of a milestone in the 1975 Topps buyback chase. It's been exactly 10 years since I first decided to collect these and see how far I could get. I admit I've gotten farther than I thought I would, particularly when I was first starting the mission. But my approach has always been to keep pressing on. As long as I kept finding new ones -- and I can still afford them -- I'd continue.   I just went over 82 percent of the set in buyback form with the addition of three cards. One is the Bob Forsch here.       These are the other two. I now have 542 of the 660 cards in the set in buyback form.   These three cards would be considered "commons" by most collectors, but they mean much more than that. All three have puzzled me for years. I couldn't figure out why they were so elusive. None are particularly notable. I'd reason that I cou...

 (I've experienced a lot of low points in my 50 years as a Dodgers fan but last night's game might have topped them all. I think I finally see what lots of other Dodgers fans have seen for years. Time for Dave Roberts to go. Also time for Cardboard Appreciation! This is the 356th in a series):   You are viewing my 537th buyback from the 1975 Topps set. Yup, I'm still on this thing. In fact this year happens to be 10 full years since I first decided to collect the buybacks in the '75 set in an effort to get one of every card.   I knew then that it would be an impossible task. I still know that. But I also had no idea that I would get this far in the quest. I've passed 80 percent of the set in buyback form (81.3% to be exact). Didn't even know way back then that there were that many to chase.   Even with the boost from 2024 Heritage the quest is getting more and more tricky -- prices have rocketed on some of the ones I still need and I'm all too aware that som...

  All right, a quick post to get the bad taste of the last post out of my head.   Perhaps you've been wondering what I've been doing the last month? Yeah, you know about all the work. It's March and all that. But this is a baseball card blog! What else? Sure, you know people are sending me cards. That's plain as day. But what else? What am I -- individually -- doing to help my collection, my hobby? You know, anyone can ride a motorcycle up and down the street as a hobby -- there's plenty of that going on and will be for the next seven months -- but am I doing something actually constructive in my hobby? Am I contributing to my own collection?   I'm happy to say that I am -- even with precious little time.     Just recently I completed the 2006 Topps Dodgers' gold team set. Strangely Jose Cruz Jr. was the last card to arrive. But the '05 Dodgers weren't a desirable lot.   TCDB says Jose Valentin is also a needed Dodgers gold. He's mentioned as a ...

  I've mentioned before that work has been even more of a time-suck than previously. It's infringing on blog posting and I don't think I can go to my bosses and say this is the reason why something's got to change, but something's got to change!   The first three days this week I worked more than the usual eight hours (plus a couple hours on Sunday) and I was prepared to do the same Thursday. I had a story interview arranged before I started my shift and I thought, "welp, I just added more hours that I won't get paid for!"   But it didn't turn out that way. Thanks to some general panicking about the weather, every single sports event in our area was canceled last night. So I ended leaving work at 10:45 p.m! That never happens. Usually I'm there until 12-12:30 and on busier nights (like tonight), I'll close up shop around 1:30 a.m.   So I got to leave work early. That's a red-letter day around here! (I don't have much). But I should...

  I am about the only card blogger that I can think of who has multiple blog posts dedicated to old-school checklists. All those posts were generated by nostalgia, pure and simple. I cannot reasonably expect those checklists to return to current sets nor pretend that I enjoyed pulling them out of packs way back then. But the look of them -- the very '70s look of them -- I do enjoy and they make me smile, as ugly as they are.   I can respect them for the purpose that they served at the time -- it was the only way to track your collection. The checklists in current flagship show up on the back of random action/celebration shots. Those cards have no purpose -- front or back -- and need to go. If you're going to placate a few old-school collectors by including checklist boxes on the back, make the fronts themed, something like notable highlights from the past year seems easy enough.   Anyway, due to the current treatment of checklists and recognizing that nobody needs to be p...

  Apologies for the negative self-talk in the blog title here. This isn't about you, it's all me, and I need to work on that. But I thought if I wrote things out I'd finally get myself into gear. I've needed a few binders and the pages that go with them for several months now. The completed -- or about to be completed -- sets are piling up. I don't like stashing complete sets in boxes, that's a terrible fate for something so carefully crafted. So they are stacked and waiting all around the card room, and, yes, a couple are in boxes as a last resort. In stacks are my complete 2024 Heritage set and my soon-to-be-complete 2024 Topps flagship set. Another stack contains what I have for 1987 Fleer. It's a long way from completion, but it's there, quietly telling me that a binder is needed for that, too. Two sets that should be in binders are now in boxes -- the almost complete 2024 Heritage minis set and the getting-there 1985 Donruss set. These guys need to ...

  By my quick calculating card blogging is at its lowest point in terms of frequency and number since my first few months of blogging. I counted about 12 card blogs now that write at least 5 days a week. Then there are around 50 card blogs that write less than that -- a few times a week, once a week, a couple times a month. So that's maybe 65 blogs that write about cards at least once a month. The amount of former card bloggers that I know is five times that amount. This means interaction is down and that's a bummer, but the good part is everyone -- card bloggers and former card bloggers and definitely non-card bloggers -- still collect cards. And they also (*phew*) still remember who I am.   I received a major reminder of that last week and I'm still getting to that later in the week, but here is an appetizer:   These are 1975 buybacks -- all needs -- from Cardboard Catastrophes (who is still blogging, thankfully).    Jeffrey's a Yankees fan, and he guessed th...

  I knew this would happen this year. I even sent out a warning early in the year, saying that topics would be very 1975 Topps-centric in 2024. To review, Heritage is covering the 1975 Topps set and there are original '75 buybacks in the set that I am pursuing along with the main set. Also I'm running a countdown review of the original set and I just put up the latest edition the other day. That's a lot of two-tone cards, many of which are from almost 50 years ago , and there's not really an end in sight, and I feel a little bit sheepish about that as I know some collectors don't care about this set (WHY?), so I should probably mix things up a little more.   But also this is MY BLOG so never mind what I just said. I've got MOAR '75 TOPPSY TO SHOW!!!   I recently received an envelope from Greg of The Collective Mind . Both Greg and collecting buddy Stuart opened a case of 2024 Heritage (I'm so jealous) and I'm looking forward to those posts. (Stuart h...

  I mentioned on my 1975 buyback milestone post that I was easing up on the chase after reaching 500 buybacks for the set, so I could focus on some other card things. But a few other buybacks trickled in before I made that decision so I'm now at 505 of the 660 cards in buyback form. Here are the last five that arrived from the recent binge: Some good ones there. Happy to get the Dock Ellis out of the way, though it wasn't exactly cheap. Two of the cards in that group have not shown up on the 1975 Topps worst-to-best countdown yet, which means they're in the final 200. We're getting into the 100's now, all these cards to come are great -- heck a whole bunch prior to the final 200 were great. This isn't 2017 Topps you know. Time for another edition of the countdown:   199. Frank Taveras, card 277 The card that introduced me to Frank Taveras. It was an instant favorite, and every Taveras card to follow was a disappointment (especially when he went to the Mets). I r...