Night Owl Cards

  I've been a bit absent from the blog this week because, as I've mentioned before, the Olympics and the Super Bowl are dominating work and it's overflowing into off-time. I've been working on a story on local fans of the Bengals and Rams, because those two fan bases are pretty much non-existent around here, and it's been a lot of work tracking them down. But I've been doing this for quite awhile now and I have my tricks. I've also been doing it so long that I can't get over how young everyone is. I talked to an 11-year-old Rams fan who doesn't remember Kurt Warner. Of course he doesn't remember Kurt Warner. He's 11! But how is that possible that someone doesn't remember him? Wasn't I just being deluged with stories about how Warner was stocking shelves before becoming the Rams QB? Then I was talking to his mom, who's in her 30s. She mentioned the halftime show, referring to the rap stars as "real, old-school rap from my day,...

If 2022 Topps really wanted to draw my interest, it would recognize a significant anniversary in its history this year. It's been 50 years since Topps installed an "In Action" subset into its flagship set for the first time, in 1972. And it's been 40 years since Topps repeated that tactic in its 1982 set. I was quite disappointed when I opened packs in 1992 and found no "In Action" subset. Since that time, the only "In Action" references from Topps that I can think of are online one-off deals. Maybe it was an insert set recently? I don't know. If it isn't part of the base set, I lose track.   Perhaps it isn't necessary to have such a subset now since just about every base card is an action card. But I think there are creative ways to make an "In Action" set today by finding special action shots or using different cropping to make the cards distinctive. But again, stuff like this is usually reserved for SPs and such. I'm wi...

The ultimate reward for a miscut card is that I treat it as its own distinct card. This doesn't always happen. I'm not a collector of miscuts, so often the card will end up in the dupes pile or (*gasp* *how could you?*) in the trash. For a miscut card to avoid that fate, it needs to provide something interesting outside of it being a mere cutting mistake. Enter this 1982 Topps card of Fernando Valenzuela sent to me by Bru .    It looks nice and normal on the front, a familiar shot of the first solo base card of Valenzuela that Topps had produced. Perhaps that alone would disqualify the card from being a distinct miscut. There is nothing about the front that tells you that there's something different. Oh, but the back: That is two separate players on the back of that card, and neither one of them is Valenzuela! In fact, there's more about Hal McRae and Reggie Jackson on the back of this card than Fernando. Even better (or worse) is that Valenzuela is carting around on th...

(Here we are at another blog milestone at Night Owl Cards. This is the 300th Cardboard Appreciation post! I've been running this series since the first one dropped on Oct. 13, 2008 . They arrive much less frequently these days -- and they're a lot longer. But it's still going! I also think we're not too far off from voting for a new member of the Cardboard Appreciation Hall of Fame, so stay tuned for that. But now, it's time for Cardboard Appreciation!): I can't believe how long it took me to obtain this card. It's really my fault. I should have focused on finishing the 1982 Fleer set a long time ago. But I have known about the back story on the '82 Fleer Rod Carew card since the cards came out that year. It's a commonly told story now -- and has been referenced on the blogs many times -- but back then only the magazine rack would tell you. In the spring 1982 edition of Baseball Cards magazine, a segment near the beginning of the edition reviewed the...

I am not as obsessive about variation and error cards as some collectors, particularly when it comes to the minute "errors" that people chase with cards from the '80s. Even with some of the larger differences, I can't be bothered. It's kind of like: if it wasn't common knowledge when I was collecting then it doesn't matter. I knew about "blackless" 1982 Topps cards before I started reading card blogs, but it wasn't much earlier than that. I barely gave it a thought. In fact, to show you how much I paid attention, I thought people were referring to cards that were "backless" . OK, hold on ... There we go. But I must admit the first image is what popped into my head first. I thought "backless" because what the heck is "blackless"? That's not even a word! I don't know who first started referring to those 1982 Topps variations in that way, but the nickname stuck. And now it is common knowledge and there are a...

It is interesting to me how card collectors seem to have so much in common, as far as interests, personality tendencies, how their brains are wired, etc., and still can be so different. There are many things that card collectors do that confuse the heck out of me. ... Why? Why would they do that? ... And there are many ways card collectors think that don't match my collecting thought process at all. I think the influence of the time period in which a collector grew up has a lot to do with the differences. And that's what I'm going to chalk up to the excuse I am now giving to whatever lost soul decided to grade a 1982 Topps Burt Hooton card. Let's go through the reasons why there's no need to grade a 1982 Topps Burt Hooton: 1. The card came out in 1982. 2. It's Burt Hooton. I'm done. But, I'm thinking, somebody grew up in a period when everyone was grading cards and that, yes, even commons should be graded because, you know, they could, u...

It seems strange to say in our phone culture, but there used to be a time when you didn't necessarily take pictures when you went to a baseball game. You certainly didn't take pictures of yourself, I know that. I own zero photographic proof of the first Major League Baseball game I ever attended, the Royals and Yankees at Yankee Stadium in July of 1978. My father may have taken some photos with his camera, he was the picture-taker until my mom took over. But I've never seen any. Any images of that game have resided solely in my mind's eye for 42 years. Such was the case for a number of major and minor league games that I attended through the 1980s and '90s. Camera? Why would I want one of those? There's a game to watch out there! And food to eat! There's no time for snappy, snapping! Well, that thought process certainly changed. Look at the stands of any baseball game. The phone, with that camera, seems much more interesting to many people in the ...