Night Owl Cards

There is a hierarchy to the cards in my collection and the best of the best cards in my collection are stored in binders. I haven't counted the number of binders I own lately. A quick run-through in my brain says somewhere between 70 and 80. Almost all of those binders are double-bagged (two cards per pocket) so that tells you how many cards I think are special. The majority of the cards in my binders (with the exception of the Dodgers collection) are part of completed sets or sets I intend to complete. If the card isn't part of a set I want to complete or a Dodger, there's a good chance it's going in a box. When I add cards to a binder that is not yet completed, I will usually organize the set by team. My completed sets are organized by card number. Putting an incomplete set together by team is just an easier way to store them when a set is not finished. When I start to get really serious about trying to complete a set, I'll put what I have of it in orde...

I've been in a bit of a 1990 state of mind lately, which isn't the greatest place to reside if you're talking cards. It's possibly the pit of all baseball card years. But I recently completed the 1990 Topps set and that's allowed me to see that set and the year in cards in a somewhat new light. I certainly won't claim it was one of the greatest years to collect, but I do have enough strength, finally, to determine the best set issued those 12 months. In 1990, a new decade mind you, the number of card sets grew at an even greater rate than the pace of the late 1980s. We were now up to seven major sets, and a host of other minor sets, such as Classic and Sportflics. For the sake of brevity -- and my sanity -- I'm keeping this post to just the seven major sets. It's still two more than I've covered in any previous edition of this series. And it will keep me in good practice for the 1990s insanity yet to come. Because the number of sets to cov...

A little while ago, I received a package from fellow supertrader Adam of Infield Fly Rule . It's so good to have a destination again for all my spare Rockies cards (and all Rockies cards are spares). In that package, I came across two different topics that I wanted to discuss. The first is how nostalgia can pop up in the strangest places and with the strangest cards. For me, the most nostalgic cards, by far, are cards from the 1970s. So many memories and pleasant card moments from that decade. Cards from other eras hold some nostalgia, too, but I would never expect junk wax cards to produce many fuzzy moments, particularly anything from the early '90s. Those were not great cards, nor great times. So how do I explain the rush of feelings I received when I saw these cards come out of the package?: 1990 Score? Why in the world would anyone get melty over that set? Well, every time I see a few 1990 cards grouped together I am immediately transported to a small colle...

You folks with excellent long-term memory function may recall that I was looking for names for the early Score sets -- 1988, 1989 and 1990. I didn't get a ton of input, which is understandable as they aren't the easiest sets to name. Even my offer of a few cards for your naming trouble drew only four responses . That's OK. I've got my names, and I didn't even need much help. I'm calling the 1988 Score set the "rainbow set." I was liking the suggestion to call it the "candy" or "LifeSaver" set because of the various colors. But there are purple cards in the set and there is no purple LifeSavers in the original 5-flavor roll. I know that's being picky, but you don't understand my brain. It would scream "THERE IS NO PURPLE LIFESAVER, FOOL" over and over until I'd have to rip up every '88 Score card I own, which actually might not be a bad idea. But the colors that are featured in Score: purple, blue...

Over the course of the last week or two, I have informally "named" a few more sets. After much reflection (i.e. none), I decided to go ahead and formally name those sets in the "Define the Design" page of the blog. You can see the new names along with all the other set names selected so far, on the aforementioned page . But I better go through the details here, just in case anyone accuses me of trying to sneak in undeserving names on this very, very serious subject. The 1958 Topps set is being called "the scrapbook set." As mentioned before, it really looks like the old scrapbooks in which people pasted images and letters onto colored construction paper. I can practically see the dried glue stains. The 1996 Topps set is now called "the cyborg set," thanks to the squished head image that is on almost every player's card in the set. It reminds me of John Connor shape-shifting his way through the Terminator movies. A very strange choice ...

I like  A Pack To Be Named Later  a lot. It's a great concept. I should have thrown my name into the list of all of the blog's fine contributors a long time ago. But when the blog was being formed and the call was going out for writers, I didn't volunteer. The reason was I didn't think I'd be able to contribute much. I'm not a football or basketball or "other sports" pack buyer. I am mildly intrigued by some of the non-sports cards, but anytime I consider buying a pack, I think that all I'm doing is taking money away from my true love, baseball cards, and I return the pack to the shelf. Also, the majority of the packs that I buy come from retail and I'd more than likely be repeating packs that others had already posted. I think "APTBNL" works best when each post is of something that's never appeared on the blog previously. Still, I've decided to put aside my reservations already and see if Matt F. will have me over at ...