Night Owl Cards

  I've written many times about how I adore Kellogg's 3-D sets from the '70s and early '80s. They are my favorite oddball and food issue of all-time, born out of childhood and breakfast mornings staring at the back of cereal boxes. I love them. And they're breaking my heart. Not only have I been struggling to acquire new ones the last year-and-a-half due to the rise in prices on those cards that previously no one wanted, but their brittle nature is causing me to question whether it's worth it to pursue them anymore. An example: I discovered this cracked 1976 Kellogg's Reggie Jackson in my box of Kellogg's cards a few months ago. I was crushed. The '76 set is complete and just about every one is pristine, there's only one that I can think of that has some wear and yellowing. Nothing has cracks. I just love the beautiful white borders contrasting with the red-and-blue stripes on this set. But cracks -- oh, no -- that's all I see. The other rea...

This is no surprise to anyone who reads this blog, and I've written about this very same thing not that long ago. But each time I come across it, I marvel at the brazenness, the balls, the unmitigated gall of online sellers. The online card world is full of price gougers. I'm sure there are people out there, plenty of collectors, who believe this is fine, or at least they accept it as a necessary evil. That's the price of capitalism, they'll say. OK. That's what I think, too, or at least what I say. But deep down, where my real feelings are that sometimes don't come out, I have little use for those people. What they're doing is not cool. They should be ashamed. Slapping unrealistic prices on cards in the hopes that you can reel in a sucker? Does that feel good? Are you happy with yourself? What would your mom say? I'm not against making a profit. But cards should be priced at the going rate. And, let me tell you, 99 bucks for a 1977 Kellogg...

It didn't take me long, after writing this post and getting all lathered up and determined, to stake out what I could of the remaining 1977 Kellogg's cards on my want list. "Well if they're going to make it difficult with 'the pop culture tax,' I am not going to give up! I'm going to go right at them!" I immediately hopped on ebay to see what I could snag. The first card off my want list that I found was Al Oliver. Purchased. Shipped. The second card was Greg Luzinski. Purchased. Shipped. The third card was Rick Manning. Purchased. Shipped. The fourth card was Bill North. Purchased. Shipped. This all happened on a Wednesday night. None of the cards cost me more than 3 or 4 bucks. That left six more cards on my want list. One was George Brett, which was/is available but I'm going to have to pay 10 or 15 bucks for it, so I set that aside. Another is George Foster, which is the first card in the set and apparently that...

This isn't really a complaint, just something interesting that I've been noticing. I'm working on wrapping up a couple of '70s-centric sets right now, getting down to those last 10-20-30 cards, and the usual candidates are being evasive. I wish I could pick up all the stars early in my set-building quests so the end of the build isn't quite so painful but it never ends up that way. The best of the best usually take the most effort. But I expect that. What always surprises me is some of the other players that end up being the final few. Take, for instance, the 1977 Kellogg's set that I'm now trying to complete. I picked up three more cards from that set from Sportlots. The Jose "Cheo" Cruz card was one of them. The other two were Dodgers, already in my Dodger binders but that doesn't help me complete the set now, does it? I would've liked to add more with this most recent order but most of the other wants simply weren...

Imagine pulling the likes of Fred Norman out of an insert set issued by Topps in 2020. You can't. It would never happen. Sure, Norman pitched for a World Series championship team the year before this card was issued, the 1976 Cincinnati Reds. He was the starter in Game 2 of the Series. But he was hardly a star. His stats were respectable but if anyone was going to mention pitching on the Reds -- and no one hardly did because the Big Red Machine operated at the plate, not the mound -- it would be Don Gullett or Jack Billingham. But still Kellogg's placed Norman at card No. 8 in its 57-card set in 1977. Another pitcher. Same set, same story. Doug Rau was a solid thrower for the Dodgers. I thought he was underrated and didn't get enough attention. He was definitely No. 4, though, on a starting rotation list that consisted of Don Sutton, Tommy John and Burt Hooton. Some days, even No. 5 hurler Rick Rhoden surpassed him. But do you see Sutton, John or Hooton i...

Topps Project 2020 just released another Sandy Koufax creation in the last 24 hours. That followed another Jackie Robinson creation in the last 48. I've decided that if I'm going to purchase one of these Project 2020 cards that it's going to be a Koufax or a Robinson. I don't care about the other players featured. But it has to be a card that appeals to me. The "art" has to appeal to me. So far, nothing has. Not even the most recent two. No biggie. I just saved $19.99. And I saved even more if I somehow forgot to order the card and then decided I wanted it days later only to find out it's selling for $50 or $100 or $200 or more on ebay. Collectors are amazed at how much these cards are going for on the secondary market. And, I admit, I've been astonished, too. Who wants to play $300 for THAT? And then we've been told that you can't look at it like a regular card. These are pieces of ART. The artists themselves (some of them are on th...