Night Owl Cards

One of the things that I've most enjoyed about my continuing quest to complete the 1973 Topps set is the perspective that these cards provide. I do love backgrounds on my cards, something that is in much shorter supply on modern cards. As I've mentioned before, I like seeing "baseball" on my cards. That's not just the player in a uniform. It's other players and the field and the stands and fans and fences and equipment and everything that makes up this great game. I collect Baseball Cards, not merely Some Dude's Cards. Take a look at one 1973 Topps card in all of its background glory: Drink in all it has to offer. Empty stands. Guys chilling in the dugout. Equipment on the ground. Players in the distance with hands on hips. There is a story to these cards. Recently I received two separate stacks of 1973 Topps from two of the collecting veterans of our community, Mark Hoyle and Commish Bob . (I would like to state for the record that I ...

Mention "1973" to someone who lived through it and a number images may come to mind: Watergate, gas lines, the Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia. I was a kid in '73, as blissfully unaware as I could be, watching cartoons and Sesame Street and eating Spaghetti-O's. I missed out on the '73 "angst," and instead remember it as that time immediately before I became aware that the wonderful game of baseball was also played by men on television and you could collect picture cards of them. I am now aware of just about everything '70s when it comes to cards. And the 1973 Topps set is a special look into the decade that is as unvarnished as anything issued back then. There is no wild design to divert from the photo. We get a front-row seat into exactly what was going on in baseball that year. And every element is delightfully obvious. I recently received a handful of '73 cards for my set from Mark, who is on Twitter. They arrived in exchange for a...