Night Owl Cards

  Last week I bought a blaster of 2024 Topps with the cash that I didn't spend at the card show that I went to at the start of the month.  That doesn't sound like the smartest of moves -- save that cash for something vintage you want! -- but I've been living my card-purchasing life online for the last month-plus and it's getting tired. I needed to buy in person.   I had planned to add some Heritage but it wasn't there. I could have missed it because there were two guys dominating the space talking about their next Magic thingy and I had to squeeze past them. But I was happy with the '24 Topps.     Some of the highlights, there were others that I needed, too. There were also many, many dupes, so I won't be getting any more retail. It's all about Heritage now anyway. (If I was MLB commish, I would reinstate real extra innings first and ban public displays of unnecessary ballplayer yelling next). I did pull my first autograph of the year. This was appropria...

  About the only thing I use Twitter/X for now is to promote the latest blog post, claim a card or two and continue my daily call-out of the 1983 Topps birthday players. I probably wouldn't even be doing that but I started the '83 roll call back when the site was still somewhat normal and I hate quitting halfway through. (By the way, my disappearance from rival Blue Sky is because I'm having password issues that I have no time to address). That means 1983 Topps is on my mind just about every day and will be until next June. It's probably a good time to address 1983 then for the One-Card Wonder series. I did 1985 last time and keep trying to finish off the '80s in one, single post, but there's never enough time. So we'll just inch along with 1983. It is a great year, though. One of the best (except for that postseason). To refresh, I'm looking for players from a single year who appeared on just one card from a major release and that was the only card they...

  I feel like I need just one more 1985 Fleer-related post before moving on to other hobby matters. Between this and the '85 Fleer Traded set, it's the only major set-completing I've done this year. It deserves at least two posts. The 1985 Fleer set -- I think -- marks the end of a three-year Fleer experiment with cojoined cards. The very well-known and appreciated Super Star Specials that filled out the back of most '80s Fleer sets included cards that continued onto the next card in 1983, 1984 and 1985. (Maybe there are other later examples but my Fleer knowledge starts to fade after the '80s). 1985 contains the final two examples of these cards, starting with card numbers 635 and 636. These are a whole lot of fun. But you need both cards in order to put them together like a puzzle and appreciate what you have in your collection. One card isn't going to do it. By itself, it looks like an off-center card -- drastically off-center with no left border.    I would ...

    I forced myself to go to Walmart earlier today because they have the right-size mailing envelopes I need and then they didn't have them and I immediately became annoyed I was there and in a fit of self-loathing for such a stupid decision I walked to the card kiosk thing. The first thing I noticed was 2023 Bowman was out. There were blasters. But I don't buy stuff like that anymore. Outside of Bowman I saw blasters of 2022 Heritage High Numbers and Allen & Ginter and Panini Mosaic. Also fat packs of Optic and Topps team sets for just these teams: Orioles, Nationals, Red Sox, Braves and Cardinals. Come on, find me a Nationals fan here. There was also plenty of 2023 Topps Series 1, but I'm all done buying that. It did remind me though that I need to write a Define The Design post on the set as I try to do every year for flagship. 2023 flagship is fairly easy to name. That graphic treatment at the bottom is totally inspired by today's ballpark video scoreboards. Her...

  I started this series back in 2011. For the first two years I posted three chapters of the series each year. Since then, I've done a chapter a year. I haven't completed the most sets in the world, but at this rate, I'm going to have to live to be a 100 to finish this thing. Maybe I can pick up the pace in 2022? A new episode three days into the new year is a good start. As a refresher, I'm going through all of my complete sets and finding the "team MVP," or what I think is the best card for each team in the set. I've been working backwards through the calendar, but breaking away from the pattern to go back to sets that I've completed since the series began. We're at 1983 Fleer now, a set I finished off last year.   I did not buy much Fleer in '83, quite a bit less than in 1981 and 1982. I liked the 1983 Topps set a lot, and the gray borders of Fleer didn't do it for me. Also, two years of trying to complete three sets had finally wore on ...