Night Owl Cards

  Greetings, my lovely readers.   There is one thing I love to do most when collecting cards. I think you know what that is.   I love to complete sets.   It's not easy to do and it's getting more difficult. But that's OK, I've completed plenty in my time. Even if I never completed another, I'd always have the dozens and dozens perfectly finished sets to view at my leisure.   Still, I press on.   Just yesterday I completed one. It was pretty easy. I finished 1989 Score.   It took not even a couple of months once I received a pile of them from Bru . And then the final handful showed up this week.    First, these three cards from Detroit Tigers Cards and Stuff . Ol' Boobie Maine happened to open a box of '89 Score at the same time I was trying to complete it! I guess that's not all that coincidental. Even 37 years later there's probably someone opening a box of the stuff almost every day.   The Brian Harper was the gremlin in the set that s...

(I am preparing to have my dinner at the office again tonight after yet another prediction of a late afternoon/early evening snowstorm. This is convenient for 9-5 workers, who can close up shop early, but definitely not for me. Let's see if I can get out of the work parking lot late tonight. Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 363rd in a series):   My collecting during the junk wax era was sporadic. I've written many times that I didn't collect between 1986-88 (save for one pack of Topps I bought in '88). I collected Topps like crazy in 1989, then went cold turkey again in 1990. I came back somewhere in 1991 collecting casually and then bought a bunch in '92 and '93.   I can see good and bad points to this. The good: I have no fond memories for mediocre sets like 1990 Donruss or overvalue 1989 Upper Deck. The bad: I missed several players commonly known by junk wax devotees, who were kids at the time and memorized the front and back of every card.   For...

  It's growing more and more difficult for set collectors in this hobby. Let's review:   1. Flagship. You must contend with inserts and parallels filling spots that were once the domain of "base cards," i.e., the cards that complete the set.   2. Heritage (and other spin-off brands). You'll come across inserts and parallels here, too, but also short-printed base cards.   3. Vintage. The demand grew once more people entered the hobby six years ago and the increased cost is fueled by the gem-mint crowd.   When it comes to sets I desire, it seems like no set is immune to the changes of the last 20, 30 years.   No set, that is, except for sets from one particular era: 1986-93. The overproduction era. Junk wax. Nothing about modern day collecting has affected these sets (stuff like collecting copyright and asterisk variations on the back has grown over time but that's easily ignored if you're not into it).   I was reminded of this again when I wrote about m...

  My favorite decade that I have lived in, as a whole, is the 1980s, easily. I've written about this several times. Here is one that sums it up best.   Still, it can't top the '70s when it comes to cards. The '70s will always be my favorite decade for cards. This is the reason why I think I should be done with '80s cards by now. It's been nearly 40 years since that decade ended. You're not the '70s! Why am I still collecting your cards?   Well, that's because there are so many of them. Even though the '80s produced the first set that didn't impress me (1982 Donruss), the first set I didn't like (1986 Donruss) and the first set I didn't really get (1987 Topps), there was still so much to like. That's why I'm still trying to put the bow on 1983 Donruss, 1985 Donruss and 1987 Fleer right now.   And it's also why I just accepted a whole shoebox full of 1989 Score from Bru of Remember The Astrodome .       Lordy, what have I d...

  I like to think of myself as judicious, shrewd, prudent, and all those other synonyms for smart and rational collecting behavior. But I have my moments. Sometimes I can't help myself when someone is offering cards for 10 cents apiece. I mentioned my most recent baseballcardstore.ca purchase a few posts ago and showed off some 1986 Fleer. '86 Fleer is right on the cusp of the era when every card should be a penny ... or less. I have no problem spending 10 cents or a quarter for cards from '86. But cards from '87 all the way through '92? You're going to have to convince me. So how do I explain this? That's a stack of 1987 Fleer from the dime box store. There are 120 cards there for a dime each. That's really overpaying. I can go online right now and buy a complete '87 Fleer set for 10 bucks. So what is wrong with me? Why would I blow extra money on '87 Fleer? Well, I don't really have any good reasons. I do admit I'm not that thrifty wit...

This exercise is getting more difficult the closer we get to the 1990s. In 1989, the hobby added yet another card manufacturer, Upper Deck, meaning there were now five companies issuing a major baseball set. This was just too much for me to collect. I couldn't focus on five different sets, plus Sportflics and all those Fleer box sets. In fact, my view was so narrow at the time that I don't recall ever seeing Upper Deck during my trips to various drug stores in the Buffalo area in 1989. I bought stacks and stacks of '89 Topps, and just enough Fleer and Donruss to show that I was trying, plus several rack packs of Score. But UD? Blissfully unaware. Because of that, I've never understood the appeal of Upper Deck's debut set. But I'm going to try to be as objective as possible here as I determine the best set of 1989. So let's start: 1989 Topps -- the front Plusses: An unobtrusive design after a couple of years of the design being the star. ......