Night Owl Cards

I may be an adult who collects trading cards but I don't like my trading cards to remind me I'm an adult.   Here's how:   Most of the cards I value, almost all my favorite sets and all my favorite players, come from three decades -- the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. These are the cards that produce the greatest memories when I look through them in my collection.   But looking for memories after that gets a little dangerous. The 1990s is full of adult concerns, worries and incidents ... and all that angry music. I can say the same for the 2000s, 2010s and 2020s. Best just look at the cards and be done with it, don't start dredging up memories, you're not gonna like it.   So when I looked for cards that interested me in the latest Diamond Jesters' Time Travel Trading post, I instinctively picked cards from the '60s, '70s and '80s. I didn't even realize I was doing it. They were just naturally the ones that appealed to me.   '60s     First up, a 1961...

    I don't think I need to tell you that I love lists. Half of my blog, probably, is some sort of list. I love making lists. I like compiling those lists into a series (a list of a list). I like organizing my cards according to lists.   I've been doing that since I was a relative tyke, sitting on the bedroom floor, laying out 10 cards (five on each row) in order of career batting order on the back, selecting the next card off the stack to my left, and then shifting the lined-up cards over one according to the new arrival's stats.   Lists are an easy way to make information digestible and entertaining. Creating lists enjoyed a big boost in popularity in the early 1980s, as there seemed to be new books every week about this list or that. Lists fell into overkill, especially since the advent of the internet and a whole bunch of fly-by-night websites that want clicks. But a well-maintained, thoughtful list is always interesting to me. I gravitate toward lists: Top sitco...

  It's another Labor Day spent at work for me. I tried to think of the last time I had Labor Day off and I eventually gave up. I know I was off in 2002, but since then, no idea. It's safe to say that I have worked way more times on this day than I have not. That's the nature of this job and our school system in this part of the country. School starts immediately after Labor Day, which means school sports start then, too. In fact, Labor Day used to be the unofficial start of school sports. They've since pushed into August, a full week or so before classes begin. Still, no matter when they start, I'm not getting a third day off this week. It'll come later on this month. I am writing this post at work right now. I had hoped it would be an easy night with the new set-up that I had mentioned in my blog post last week. But, of course, it's work, so there's a snafu immediately that makes tonight just another grind. So I'm writing this post quickly.   I ofte...

  I was surprised to discover that the last time I updated this series was more than a year ago .   I like writing this series, and it's not super work-intensive. But I also try to balance it out, so I'm not running these all the time. Apparently I balanced things out a little too much.   As a refresher, this is where I pick a card year or two and find players in that set who had just one card for their whole career. They didn't appear on a multi-player rookie card or in any other major set (I discount minor league issues and sets of that nature). They are true One-Card Wonders.   The last time I did this I said I wanted to wrap up the 1970s, so that's what I'm doing now. The last years to finish are 1972, 1973 and 1976.   The most surprising year here is 1972.   There are just four One-Card Wonders in the 1972 Topps set, which is 787 cards large. Interestingly, two are bunters.   #77 - Ron Theobald, Brewers #331 - Stan Swanson, Expos #366 - Jimmy Rosa...

  My Father's Day was nice and all too brief.   Staying home was imperative. Anywhere I would want to go on this day would require a drive and we definitely are not doing that on Father's Day. So, the day consisted mostly of watching baseball -- A's/Royals, Cardinals/Brewers, then Giants/Dodgers. Yay, a victory! Beat back those BusterPoseys!    I also talked on the phone with my daughter (a big deal for any Gen Zer), which was the obvious day highlight. I ate pizza and chicken wings, my requested dinner, which thrilled my wife who didn't have to cook. And I opened some baseball cards. The 2025 Heritage blaster and the gift card were Father's Day presents. I haven't decided how to handle the gift card yet. (It will not be used on any Series 2, the amount dupes I've seen pulled from a single retail box is offensive even before getting to the price hike).   The Heritage box went pretty well considering I'm getting down to the "Handful of Base Cards Plu...