Night Owl Cards

  I'm making good on a promise I wrote back in July with this post, with just one day to spare.   During the last One-Card Wonders post I finished all the 1970s one-card wonders and said I wanted to do the same with the 1980s in the next post, which I said would happen before the end of the year.   Well, the end of the year is here and I can't let all those people who have been waiting for the last five-plus months down! So don't worry, be happy! The last OCW post of the year is here!   In this episode I'm covering 1988 and 1989, the only years I haven't touched from the 1980s. I'm also tackling not only the Topps sets from those two years but Donruss, Fleer, Score and Upper Deck, too (This means I'm technically not done with the '80s after this post because I still haven't uncovered OCWs for some of the other 1980s Donruss and Fleer sets).   As a reminder, I define One-Card Wonders as cards of players who appeared on one major release only. I discou...

  Normally I disregard such things, but yesterday I was plowing through updating some of those insane back variations for my 1989 Donruss Dodgers.   You know the kind -- "this one has a period but just one asterisk, this one has a period but two asterisks, and this one has two asterisks, but no period!" Fascinating stuff.   I decided to strain my eyes for the sake of checking boxes because I was sent several of the variations from reader and noted collector Bill K. (He's been mentioned a couple times recently on Johnny's Trading Spot). He sent more than just those -- a lot more that you'll see in a couple days. If someone is going to go through the effort of sending those, I'll see it to its conclusion.   So I was squinting away wondering the whole time, "who in the world figured out the differences and why does anyone care?" I'll never understand that. But while I was updating, for some reason, the 1970s children's TV special "Free To B...

  In my current state of gathering 1988 Donruss (down to one card as of today!), I was reminded of a border feature from the mid-'80s to early '90s on those Donruss sets. The border patterns lined up if you positioned the cards just so. So I did it, just to finally see what junk wax fans were talking about and ... yeah, to get an easy blog post. The first four Donruss sets all featured white borders, but in 1985 it started go with colored borders and it also started doodling inside the borders. I was not a fan of Donruss doodling, as I've said many times most of those '80s Donruss sets just don't look that professional to me, compared with their counterparts at the time. But I'm not above collecting them or lining them up. The 1985 set featured black borders and red racing stripes that you could line up with any other card. Then in 1986, Donruss decided to just put lines all over the entire card. It's pretty easy to line these up with approximately 100 lines...

  A couple of weeks ago I received this box from Jon, a reader who has sent me a number of cards in the past. I knew it was coming. He sent an email shortly before it arrived and then I realized that we had communicated about this shipment through email in the past, but you get to my age and emails from more than a week ago creep out of your brain as if they were never sent.   But when I saw the box, I didn't know what was in it, just that I had agreed to receiving it and that it was card-related. And I wasn't about to go searching through old emails. I'd rather just be in suspense.    Even after opening the box I didn't really have an idea. But I started to get suspicious because -- golly -- that's not a careful way to package trading cards. But upon closer inspection, this made sense. A whole lot of sense. Although me accepting it, I don't know, maybe I can see about being held to that legally. Because this is what we're talking about: Yeah, that's a f...

  I've mentioned a few times that I'm trying to collect the Fleer flagship sets from the 1980s. I've also mentioned how I've been fighting disinterest in trying to wrap up the last few -- specifically 1985 and 1986. And I haven't even started on 1987. So it would be foolishness, borderline dumbery to start another set pursuit very similar to those above, from a baseball card brand I have even less interest in than Fleer. Yet, here I am, accepting 1989 Donruss cards. What is wrong with me? I knew this day would come. Although I've always joked about how I like these cards but I'm not collecting them , I've considered '89 Donruss an underrated set in a sea of junk wax mediocrity. Donruss wasn't exactly putting out classics during this time and immediately after '89 it would fall into a three-year funk. But '89 is something different. At least to me.   I like the rainbow treatment at the top and bottom, the color spectrum theme is totally un...