Night Owl Cards

One of the best things about cards from the 1980s is how accessible they are. In my card collecting travels I am constantly knocking heads with "rarity," "exclusivity," and "just too damn expensive." So it's nice to know an entire decade in which the majority of the cards are not only available, but attainable. I've taken advantage of that by completing most of the sets that I want to complete from that decade. I've owned a complete set of each year of Topps flagship, from 1980-89, for awhile now. And I'm in the middle of looking to complete the few non-Topps '80s sets that interest me. But I don't expect those projects to take very long. They're from the '80s! They're all so gosh-darn agreeable! Yet, there remains some sets that have been inexplicably elusive. The ones that bother me the most are the 1980s Topps Traded sets. Yeah, I know, most of those I could buy tomorrow if I wanted to -- but for whatever r...

I haven't noticed many repacks dangling from card displays over the last few months. I don't know if it's my less frequent trips to the usual retail outlets or if the Fairfield people are taking a breather. But I've missed them -- a lot. Target always has repacks, but lately they've been trying to force those $19.99 repacks on me, and I'm not paying 20 bucks in one shot on big-box store cards ever again. Meanwhile, Walmart I don't think has offered a repack since 1973. But I was in Rite Aid a week or two ago and spotted one of those "100 cards for $5.99" boxes hanging from the lowest hook on the display. It looked lonely. So I brought it home. The repack repaid me immediately with the above spectacular night card. These night cards from the '70s/early '80s are my favorites and any time I unearth any card from this period that I have never seen before, the box is automatically a bargain. Mick Kelleher was easily the star of the sh...

Roberto Clemente as a Brooklyn Dodger. Wow. Somehow, the mere act of issuing a card listing Clemente as a Dodger makes me feel a little better about the Dodgers blowing the chance of having one of the greatest right fielders in history playing for their franchise. If you don't know the story, Clemente was signed by the Dodgers and sent to their minor league team in Montreal for the 1954 season. He played 87 games for Montreal, but batted only 148 times, mostly because the Dodgers were trying to hide him. You see, at the time there was a baseball rule that said any player who received a $4,000 bonus had to be on the major league roster within a year, or another team got to draft him. The Dodgers were victims of their own success as they didn't have any room on their roster for Clemente with such a packed lineup. The Pirates weren't tricked by the Dodgers' hiding tactics and snapped him up in November 1954. It just shows the Dodgers didn't make all their dumb-ass...