Night Owl Cards

  I resolved to do this post about a month ago when Dime Boxes listed some of what he considers the worst of the junk wax era. I ranked my least favorite from this time way back in the blog's early days, so this time I wanted to list what my favorites from 1987-93 are. You probably already know most of them -- I'm not exactly quiet on my card favorites -- but this post is also to counter all the praise for traditional favorites like 1987 Topps and 1989 Upper Deck. I can be contrarian and those two sets were never my favorites when I was buying packs during that time. (Didn't even see '89 UD).   So I'm listing seven of my faves for posterity. Why seven? Because I consider the junk wax era to have lasted seven years, 1987-93. I can't comfortably squeeze 1986 and 1994 into that span, based on my experience of that time. Here is a very quick run through. 1. 1993 Upper Deck: You should know this by now. I'm writing a blog about it and everything . I don't kn...

  Ever since I've been writing magazine articles for Beckett, it's been a goal of mine for one of those stories to make the cover. I guess I'm never satisfied. It should be blessing enough to get paid to write about baseball cards and see those writings show up on store racks all over the country. But you've got to have goals, right? I shipped off my article on 1991 Topps to Beckett's editorial director and Mike mentioned it would likely be going into the main Beckett baseball magazine, not the Vintage magazine where most of my articles appear. I've had one other story appear in the main baseball issue but that was a reprint of my 1975 Topps mini Vintage magazine story. A couple of months later, Mike emailed me back, mentioned he liked the article and said it would make a good cover story. Score! The cover was mine. But, of course, I had to see it in person -- none of this digital-only crap for me. So, the publication arrived yesterday and there was young Chippe...

  Even though it's clear to me that I'm enjoying the hobby more this year and being much more productive as far as my collecting is concerned, I still need convincing. I've collected by buying packs at the store closest to me since I was a wee owl 45 years ago. It's a habit that's been difficult to break when that's all you've known as the Way To Collect. But now that card aisles remain vacant, I keep coming up with good reasons why regular pack purchasing is pretty pointless. Earlier today, while continuing to sort through all of my Dodgers dupes, I noticed again how rookies overrun Topps products. My dupes from the last 10 years were absolutely saturated with rookies that are now long forgotten, even if the product is only a couple of years old. Players like Zach Lee, Trayce Thompson and Alex Guerrero dominated my recent doubles. People can't wait to get rid of these sudden no-names. And when you look back on that product from three years ago, you real...

I haven't written a "Legends of Cardboard" post in almost three years. That's because it's taken me that long to get this card. Who knew a card of someone who barely registered on a major league roster, from 1993, would be so elusive? Yet, every time I searched for the famed Oscar Azocar "bat-hugging" Stadium Club card on COMC, it would be sold out. A few times (such as now), it's available on that site for almost 6 bucks. No thanks. I ended up finding it on Sportlots for 18 cents. And, how about this for a development? It arrived today from someone who lives in my town. Heck, he could have driven over and dropped it in my mailbox. Finally, it's mine. I wanted to hug it like Azocar is doing to his bat. Azocar is the latest Legend of Cardboard -- keep in mind Legends of Cardboard are those players who didn't necessarily excel on the field but certainly excelled on cardboard. He is a Legend of Cardboard because he not only produ...

One card that I received in a recent card package didn't show up on the blog until now because I don't consider it a need in my collection. The sender -- Mike -- said that it is a variation, one of those 1991 Topps back differences where the Topps logo superimposed onto the stats is darker than usual. Like so: I just can't get myself to consider this a variation. I believe the collectors who say they are. But it just looks like someone put extra ink on the roller to me. Is that enough to consider something a variation? This is what I like in my variations: Now that is a MFing variation. It's on the front, not the back, and it knocks you over with its obvious difference. This was known as an "error card" back in the day but it's also a variation. (These days we have to differentiate between our variations and errors because so many variations are intentional). So, like I said here , I like my errors and variations obvious. None of t...