Night Owl Cards

   It's January, so it's time for a football-centric post.   Football these days is full of fret and consternation. There's a big Bills game today that will have me all uptight (I'm writing this beforehand so either "Go Bills" or "the Jaguars have ugly uniforms"). And that's the way it's been for decades, lots of good vs. evil and plenty of disappointment.   But it wasn't always that way. For example, I picked up this 1976 Topps football card of Patriots quarterback Jim Plunkett recently while ordering a Dodger card and looking for something else to help out with shipping. This jumped right out at me, I love that set and Plunkett brings up good vibes despite my view of the Patriots these days. In fact, I don't remember him with the Patriots at all, nor with the 49ers --just with the Raiders when he led them to a Super Bowl title and all the talk was about this "old guy" that Oakland picked up off the scrap heap (Plunkett was...

  How about this? I'm posting about completing a fairly large set for the second time this week!   It just happened this way. Don't expect another one of these for months, unless cards start falling from the sky.   The final card to finish the 1979 Topps football set arrived this week. This set is one of two Topps football sets from my childhood that I collected and now hold an incredible amount of nostalgia, despite only casually following football back then. I finished the 1977 football set at the end of 2020 and, now, more than four years later, the other beloved football set is done.   I received a big boost on this set in April of 2023 when I came across a binder of '79 Topps football at a show and the dealer offered it to me for 30 bucks. That's when I began to really chase it. Although it's loaded with stars, there aren't many pricey cards in the set and I wasn't faced with trying to land a bunch of superstars at the end. In fact, this was the last c...

  My first sportlots order of the year is finally here. There always seems to be one straggler card I'm waiting for two weeks after everything else is in. But content is content, it doesn't matter when it appears on here.   Ol' Walt was the late arrival -- almost got to the point where I sent a "I think the mail lost my card" messsage. But instead I get to declare that this card finished the Dodgers team set for the TCMA The 1960s II set from 1981!   This kind of card is about all that I ordered this time around -- stuff that either finished or got me closer to finishing team sets or set sets. The whole order turned out to be smaller than my usual sportlots order. I guess I was trying to save a little cash. The total seems slight, but it still packs a punch with me!     More TCMA stuff, but I'm nowhere near completing these team sets. I'm making a dedicated effort to finish the 1978 TCMA 1941 Dodgers set, which the Kirby Higby card is from at left. Hoping ...

  I feel like my position on the NFL is stuck between two prevailing opinions of football, with few sharing my perspective.   On one end are the people who are madly devoted to the league, they tailgate, leap on tables, hold Super Bowl parties, place bets, play in five fantasy leagues and collect the hell out of the star players. On the other end are the people who have dropped football from their lives -- It's barbaric, it shortens lives, it worships only money and some of its participants are some of the worst humans in sport.   I am neither of those perspectives (though I share traits from both). I like the NFL season -- far more than college football, which I can't wait to ignore forever. I am excited when the NFL starts, I appreciate it when there's no more MLB season, I enjoy the community that encircles the Bills and it is one of the few connections to my favorite city and the time I lived there.   I can't give it up. But it wears on me. too.   When was t...

  A couple of different things I've read or observed lately, on top of currently collecting the 1979 Topps football set made me compare '79 Topps football and '79 Topps baseball in my head. The main thought was: "why do I like '79 football so much and am so blah about '79 baseball?"   There are a few reasons I can come up with off the top of my head:   1. I was immediately unimpressed with 1979 baseball when I bought my first packs. It was my fifth year of buying baseball cards and I was also a brand-new teenager. I was ready to criticize the status quo. I do like '79 Topps, but I can see its issues pretty clearly and saw them then.   2. 1979 football is just the second year I bought packs of football cards (1977 was the first). You tend to have affection for the first couple of years of buying cards. Unlike the fifth year.   3. 1979 football is heavy on colorful design elements, while the '79 baseball set is relatively reserved for a '70s set....

  The monthly card show this month featured an autograph guest for the first time. It was former Buffalo Sabres forward Ric Seiling, who was a starter during the late 1970s and 1980s. I didn't follow hockey as a kid so I didn't recognize the name (my wife, who did follow hockey back then, knew it). No matter, I was late to arriving to the show and they always set up autograph guests early in the program. He was getting ready to leave as I was walking in the door.   Because of the commotion of the first autograph guest and a bunch of jocularity going on, no one saw me come in and nobody was there to take my money -- the second time this has happened at this show.   There are signs that the organizers are still figure things out. Even though they've expanded to a larger room and there are more dealers and they are now offering shows at other cities, there is still a haphazard feeling to the proceedings. To be expected, sure, I mean this town hasn't had a regular card show...