Night Owl Cards

  I'm not doing a very good job banging out these Team MVP posts like I wanted to. After discovering back in March that it had been a year-and-a-half since the last one, I resolved to quicken the pace on these.   But this is the first one since March. Oh well.   My overall goal in this series is to find the "best" card for each team for every set I've completed. I began by going in reverse order from the year of the set. I reached back all the way to 1981. Then I backtracked for sets I've completed since.   Now I'm all over the place, basically tackling sets however I feel, arbitrary rules be damned!   So, right now it's 1986 Fleer. Fleer is the best brand for when you want to write a quick post, because the set's ordered by team, as if it had this very series in mind! Thanks, Fleer!   On the other side -- woof, this is a hurting set. I've mentioned many times that I've overlooked '86 Fleer for decades before finally completing it -- forgot...

(I think Topps/Fanatics has succeeded in curbing my craving for current product. Between the months and months that pass before a new set is released and nothing showing up on shelves regardless, I'm losing my interest for anything that isn't flagship or Heritage. Topps Holiday? Don't care. A&G hasn't shown up yet? Don't care. Thanks, Topps. I'm cured! Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 358th in a series):   I came across this card on social media the other day. It was one of those 1980s cards that I had never seen before, showing a player I had never heard of until that moment. This still can happen with mid-1980s cards when I was apart from the hobby.   Still, it's enough of a rarity that I was stunned. Dave Shipanoff? Who? How had I never heard of him? The first thing I did was look him up on baseball-reference.   I discovered he played for the Phillies just one year in the back half of the 1985 season. He appeared in relief in 26 games, sav...

  I have the three cards that I claimed in the latest Diamond Jesters Time Travel Trade series to show off today.   They all have something in common, which I didn't realize when I was requesting them.     Each of the cards are from 1986. This is interesting to me. Out of all the years in the 1980s -- and  I have a lot of cards from that decade -- 1986 is the year that contains the most holes.   I look at cards from 1986 with some unfamiliarity. This goes back to where I was at in life at the time. As I've mentioned very often, '86 was the year I broke free from my card collecting ritual. For 10 years I made sure to purchase Topps cards (and then Donruss and Fleer) in some sort of fashion each year. But in 1986 I was away at college and didn't bother with cards, not even a little.   This is why I've long considered 1986 Topps as a "mysterious" set. When I was finally collecting it during the first year of this blog, I discussed how fascinated I was wi...

  It's time for my annual Define the Design post, in which I look to name the newest Topps flagship set and take a go at some past sets, too.   Last year I named the 2024 Topps set quickly then tried to attach labels to some past Donruss sets. Some worked, some didn't and some I'm still trying to name.   The two that escaped naming the last time was 1981 Donruss and 1992 Donruss. Still don't have a name that fits for '81 Donruss, it may be just get "the Donruss debut set" to be done with it. But for 1992 Donruss I think I'm going with a suggestion by Bo on the last post.   Not my favorite set at all, as you know, but the blue streaks come in handy because, as Bo said, they are a reminder of the toothpaste that was popular in the late '70s/early '80s. Specifically for me, that means Aquafresh, which we were all about as youngsters.     Aquafresh was unique at the time because it contained streaks of green-blue, and for us kids it tasted better...

  I said after completing the 1986 Fleer baseball set that I'd try to write another post dedicated to the set, as I usually do after finishing one off. I didn't know whether I'd actually do it because I had an idea of what I'd find: Is this the dullest set I've ever completed?   OK, the answer to that is "no." I've probably finished off duller sets. 2011 Lineage springs to mind, although I had a lot of fun with that at the time. 2021 Topps is no great shakes, but at least I didn't have to try to finish it, someone just bought me it. Yeah, there have got to be some other completions duller than '86 Fleer, but the fact that I even thought that question tells you it's near the bottom for me.   There is a reason the set has left my brain for literally years. For a set from the 1970s or 1980s to do that -- I mean so much that I didn't recall what the set looked like -- is practically an impossible feat given what my memory regards as import...

  I recently completed the 1986 Fleer baseball set.   I've said in past blog posts that this was "the forgotten set" in my brain when thinking back on 1980s Fleer sets. Back when I had not completed a single '80s Fleer set, I would always confuse 1985 and 1986 Fleer. This was a time when I was not collecting baseball cards, especially ones that weren't Topps. Sometimes my brain would skip right over '86 Fleer and I'd think the icy blues of '87 Fleer came after the '85 gray flannel suit set.   That's part of the reason I set out to complete all the main Fleer sets from the '80s. These sets contained players that I followed from childhood forward, I wanted all those guys in my collection. So I got 1984 Fleer done, then 1981, 1982, 1983 and 1988. I recently finished 1985 and now '86 is in its own binder.   These are the last four that I needed. If you listen closely you can here Luis from Sesame Street singing "One of These Things ......