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...

  I was making good progress with this series for the last couple of years, steadily going back in time as I figured out the best card for each team for a particular set I completed. But then I had to go and complete some 1980s sets and we are hurtling through time in the opposite way. As a reminder, if I complete a set, I stop at whatever point I was at and cover the set I completed.   The one I'm covering this time is 1989 Fleer. ... Yes, I hear your groans. I'm groaning, too.   As I've said many times, I gave '89 Fleer almost zero respect in 1989 and in the decades to follow. I ignored it in 1989, didn't buy a single pack. And I never felt like I missed anything.   But one day, Johnny , sent me a whole box of the stuff and, what the hell, there are players on these cards from when I still really adored baseball, so, sure, let's add it to the pantheon of completion.   There is no real personal context for these cards. My 1989 card story is BUY ALL THE 1989 TO...

  I did not collect a single non-baseball card for the first three years of my collecting history.   Although I do recall 1976 Topps football cards working their way into my collection, I don't think I bought a pack of the stuff.   Then came 1977 and two non-baseball sets grabbed me: the super-colorful Topps football set and the Star Wars blue-bordered Series 1 cards. Everyone collected those Star Wars cards.   But that was just the first non-baseball blip in my collecting history. They would come and go. In 1978, I bought a pack or two of Topps basketball. In 1979, I'd return to collecting Topps football and then I wouldn't buy another football card for two decades.   In 1991, I'd purchase the Pro Set hockey cards as well as the Pro Set Musicards.   It's all been very sporadic.   That's because it's always been baseball first.   I'm fascinated when I see collectors treat all sports equally, jumping between baseball, basketball, football and hocke...

  The last couple of days, I've been gathering envelopes from my latest card order from a few different online sites. Since they're coming from several different people, a host of unfamiliar return addresses show up in the mailbox, and I just assume they're coming from ebay or sportlots. Then I opened one envelope and the above Christmas greeting came out. You'll notice the salutations are in French. It says "best wishes." It's not an owl, but a penguin is close enough when he's carting a sleigh of goodies. The return address was in French, too, from Quebec. When I opened the card, a baseball card was attached inside. This is that card: Now, if you read the post that I wrote on obtaining a bunch of cheap-o 1980s Fleer cards from the baseballcardstore site, you know that I said that I had accumulated all of the '89 Fleer cards that I needed for the set from that site except for one: the Craig Biggio rookie card. I assumed the Biggio rookie, even t...

  As a child of the '70s and '80s, the increasing exclusiveness of the collecting hobby has always thrown me.   To see cards described as "high-end" has never seemed right, and to see the prices people are charging for rather ordinary cards these days makes almost zero sense to someone who was paying 15 cents per pack as a kid. For the first half of my collecting life, cards have always been available. They were right down at the drug store or corner market. And they were cheap. Someone with a paper route could save enough money to buy a few packs every week if they wanted. This is why I like cards from the 1980s so much. The cards from the '80s were cheap and they ARE cheap. The vast majority of '80s cards cost hardly anything to own and that's the way cards should be. Save those costly cards for old, moldy tobacco cards or that Nap Lajoie guy who I always saw advertised in collecting catalogs for far too much money. The '80s would never do that to yo...

    The past year has forced me to expand my means of obtaining baseball cards. While purchasing cards at the store or on COMC has vastly decreased, buying on ebay and Sportlots has increased.   Consider it a trend for 2020. There have been many other hobby-related card trends this year (check out my end-of-the-year post for those), some of which I've participated in a little. But one of the blog crazes of late -- trading on Trading Card Database -- I've avoided so far.   Unlike hoarding toilet paper or plundering card aisles, I'm down with trading on TCDB if that's what you want. It makes sense for certain traders. But I'm not one of them. Yet.   First, to trade successfully on TCDB, you have to upload your collection on the site. I'm sure you don't have to upload the whole thing, but the thought of listing out even one-seventh of my 100,000-plus cards makes me want to crawl into a corner. Second, I like to keep my trading outlets to one or two avenues. If ...