Night Owl Cards

  One of the many running sub-themes of this blog is how unobservant I am, and how concerned I am about it.   I scold myself over and over for not noticing things on cards, whether it was painted hats when I was a kid collecting in the 1970s or widely broadcast errors on current cards over the last 20 years. When I do notice a small detail I'm almost triumphant because finally my brain wasn't on auto-pilot.   I get concerned about this "flaw" because my real-life, salaried job is about noticing things. I'm supposed to be an expert on this. I am scouring whatever I can to get sports stories in the newspaper, whether it's locally or nationally. I've become pretty good at it -- well, actually I've been pretty good at it for a few decades now.    So my theory is that I spend so much time on "noticing" in my work life that maybe subconsciously my brain doesn't want to notice so much when it comes to my hobby. That's what I tell myself anyw...

  I was looking at a football card on one of the online shopping sites the other day. It wasn't anything I sought out, it just caught my eye. As often happens with football cards, I didn't know the set and I didn't know the player (I don't remember what card it was now). But I was curious about him and I quickly looked for what position he played. But there was no position listed on the front. That annoyed me (it doesn't take much). It's been a long time since I've written about positions on the front of baseball cards and I touched on this once awhile ago , so I figured it was time for another one. Let's do a little examination of sets that have not put the position on the front of their cards.   This will mostly cover Topps because as often happens with these historical card reviews, I get to the 1990s and it's just a mess and would take an army of spreadsheets to sort out, and, guys, I still have a full-time job.   But I will mention that Bowman p...

  A couple days ago I was sitting at my desk at work when a co-worker walked in to start his shift. I greeted him and asked him how his sale of his childhood card collection was going. He's the one who brought me his amazing collection and asked me to appraise it. It's the first time I've asked him about it since and it's been going well, slow and steady, just as I figured.   We resumed working when not more than five minutes later, my boss came around the corner with two boxes in his hands and a question for us, "you guys have any use for these?"   I recognized them right away as Topps vending boxes, but I had no idea from what year since Topps used the same drawing of a 1950s boy and girl, madly pasting their baseball cards into a scrapbook, for years and years.   My boss had heard us discussing cards and had apparently heard it before because he had taken those boxes from his mother's home with the intent of unloading ... er, seeing if we wanted them.  ...

  The vast majority of these one-card wonders that I've found have been players and cards forgotten by time. The majority of collectors don't know them, never heard of them. Only those who were collecting at the time, with the dedication that is required of a set or team collector, would know the image and even remember the player.   But is this true of any player whose one-and-only major-issue card was in 1987 Topps? It's 35 years later and 1987 Topps is as well-known and discussed (I would say "beaten into submission") as it was in '87. It's kind of like "Keep Your Hands To Yourself," by the Georgia Satellites. "Keep Your Hands" was a one-hit wonder in early 1987. The Georgia Satellites never reached the Top 40 again. But the song is still so prevalent today and played many a time that it's living in today's consciousness 35 years later. You all know the beginning : "I got a little change in my pocket, going jing-a-ling-a...

I have a feeling there will be more than two of these "Spot the Difference" posts, judging by the reaction to the first one. There were lots of responses to my last post on this topic, both in the comments and on Twitter, with additional examples of cards that feature design color elements that don't jive with the design colors used with fellow teammates. I thought I'd show some of those suggestions here, along with a couple others that I knew about that I didn't show the last time. The 1988 Topps set was mentioned a lot because it featured several color differences and I knew that. The one that gets mentioned the most is the Keith Comstock card, which is actually a variation that was corrected, which is why it received so much attention back in the "error frenzy" of the 1980s. The blue team letters is the correct version and the white team letters is the variation. But enough of that, we're here to find the differences that were n...

The last time I updated this series, we were in 1982. In Action cards. Hockey sticks. A World Series bathed in baby blue unis. And if you've been following this series since the beginning, you know that I am traveling back in time as the sets get progressively older. So why am I at 1987 if the last set I reviewed was 1982? Good question. Since the last time this feature appeared -- just over a year ago -- I have completed the 1987 Topps set. And since I am reviewing the best card for each team for every set I have completed, I feel it is my duty to back track and take care of 1987 first before we go any deeper into history. Besides, it's the 30th anniversary of 1987 Topps -- Topps is requiring me to do this (not really) -- and I know that absolutely none of you are sick of 1987 Topps yet (again, not really). Before we get to it, I want to say that while going through these cards, the number of cards featuring players with chest protectors leapt out at me. Forget yo...