Night Owl Cards

  On one hand I think it's a decent accomplishment to finish the 1980s Topps Traded sets. That's nine years of sets. I feel pretty good about that.   On the other hand, the only one of those sets I truly "collected" was the 1984 set and some of the 1986 set. Traded sets from that time arrived more conveniently -- send a check in the mail and all 132 cards showed up at your door in a tidy box. It wasn't exactly difficult to assemble.   My only regret in finishing this entire run of sets is I don't have all the colorful boxes from each year. What you see in the picture is all I own. I'm most distressed that I no longer have the blue 1982 Traded box as that's the first one I ordered and the set I have the most nostalgia for -- those red backs! I suppose I could buy the empty boxes.   But to celebrate completion I've pulled 20 of my favorite cards from these sets to count down. Many of these are familiar cards and you'll expect certain ones to show...

  Sorry about the intermittent posting, work decided to act up the last three days. But it's Saturday now, the perfect time for mindless wonderings of the card kind. I received a nice assortment of 1986 Topps Traded from Cards On Cards a couple weeks ago. He'd obviously jumped at my want list, I know he's always appreciated the '86 set. And he knocked out a decent chunk of my needs. This latest selection got me down to the final 15-20 cards I need for the set (then another arrival today from John whittled that down to the final seven). I don't need to tell you that '80s Traded sets are enormously fun for catching known players in unusual uniforms. But they're also fun because of the airbrushing tricks executed in '80s sets. Airbrushing was still a thing in this decade and not confined to Traded sets either. But for the most part, you can find a greater percentage of painted hats in the Traded set than the regular set. Also, 1986 sort of marks a turning...