Night Owl Cards

   I have written about the year 1987 a lot on this blog. Veteran readers know that I wasn't collecting in 1987. I was in college and no longer interested. In '86 I didn't buy a single pack. I'm not as clear on '87, but I think the same was true that year.   So, knowing where I am now with cards, why would I consider 1987 "great"?   Well, I've written about that, too. My social life was never better. I had found my people, I was settling on a new direction as far as my career, and getting comfortable in it, and I also found my life partner, though I probably didn't know it at the time.   I think about that year a lot, particularly in October, which was the month that year that me and several members of the school newspaper went halfway across the country to a 4-day journalism seminar for college students in St. Louis and tore up the town.   It's insane that it's getting close to 40 years since that year. Forty years since Crowded House'...

  I feel like I need just one more 1985 Fleer-related post before moving on to other hobby matters. Between this and the '85 Fleer Traded set, it's the only major set-completing I've done this year. It deserves at least two posts. The 1985 Fleer set -- I think -- marks the end of a three-year Fleer experiment with cojoined cards. The very well-known and appreciated Super Star Specials that filled out the back of most '80s Fleer sets included cards that continued onto the next card in 1983, 1984 and 1985. (Maybe there are other later examples but my Fleer knowledge starts to fade after the '80s). 1985 contains the final two examples of these cards, starting with card numbers 635 and 636. These are a whole lot of fun. But you need both cards in order to put them together like a puzzle and appreciate what you have in your collection. One card isn't going to do it. By itself, it looks like an off-center card -- drastically off-center with no left border.    I would ...

  I joined this hobby, was sucked into it, in the mid-1970s. Not too long into my time in the club, maybe a couple of years, I caught on to the one primary goal of card collecting.   The name of the game was completion, set completion.   That's changed in the nearly 50 years since. Sure, there are still set collectors, but we're a much smaller percentage of the entire collecting scene, unlike when I was a kid, when it was just about 100 percent.   Still, I can't get that goal from the '70s out of my blood. It's there forever. It is THE reason why I collect -- to complete the mission, to finish the set, whether it's a team set or a set set. This is what makes sense to me in the hobby, and no matter how much I try, I still can't fully grasp what the heck other collectors are doing if they're not trying to finish sets. What does it even mean? So, my second Sportlots order of the year arrived recently, the last cards showed up today. Without even thinking ab...

  I've been watching the cards from my first Sportlots order of the year trickle in. It seems like it's taking longer than usual. But I'm down to the final two cards that need to arrive. Unfortunately they were supposed to be part of this post. In fact, the plan was that I would have all of the cards I needed to finish the 1985 Fleer set for this post. That was the first mission of the year: complete that set. But I'm still six cards short. One card that I ordered did not show, I received a refund -- Mike Brown, of all players. Two Darryl Strawberry cards were swiped from my cart. Damn player collectors. I think a couple of the others were snatched from my cart, too, but it's possible I missed adding a couple. All of those cards should be easy enough to snag and very quickly, too. But I don't want to wait for those to get this post done. So now you'll have to suffer through two 1985 Fleer posts. Sorry, I'll make it interesting, I promise.   The '85 F...

  Just a quick post tonight, because work is playing its evil tricks. I received an email a few weeks ago from a reader who sometimes comments on this blog as "Pennsylvania Tiger". He said he had some cards for me as a thank you for writing. The cards he mentioned are actually stickers -- the 1981 Fleer Star Stickers set. But they might as well be cards because I will never stick those ever. This set is huge -- it took me a long time to figure that out -- but thanks to some recent work on it, and this particular mailing, I'm down to under 30 needed. Still seems like a lot, but hey, I have some new arrivals to distract me! That's some good fun right there. Not only are all those guys players I grew up following but as I've probably said before, lots of the photos I've never seen -- they're not necessarily the same as the ones in the 1981 Fleer set and I probably should do a comparison post one of these days, maybe when I finish the whole thing. Some of the ...

  My latest sportlots order is in and I went the "even I can afford that" route, which is mostly sportlots' reason for being.   Most of these were cheap upgrades and easy team set-fillers. There are a handful that don't fit easily into a compartment other than "cards I want."   I'm not going to show the upgrades other than the '70 Jesus Alou up top (replaces the one I have with tape on it) and the '76 Lopes Record-Breaker comparison:   The card on the left harks back to my collecting days in 1976. It's a nice keepsake but doesn't fit with my modern collecting standards. I've owned a cleaner copy in my '76 Topps set for quite awhile but another version for my Dodgers binder has not shown up at the house until now.   The other upgrades are related to the 1975 Topps set, specifically the minis. I will continue to upgrade '75 cards for as long as I'm collecting. Some of the minis I accepted just to get the set done so now it...