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...

I watched the "Jack of All Trades" baseball card documentary on Netflix yesterday. I didn't think I'd like it, but it turns out it was pretty good. It's far from perfect. But the complaints that "it isn't really a baseball card movie" are kind of pointless. Of course it isn't. Who could make money off of a movie that is about nothing but baseball cards? Anyway, it was interesting to look inside the hobby a little and to reminisce about that junk wax period that is now over 25 years old! One of the things mentioned repeatedly in the documentary is how everybody during that period was trying to get rich. Collectors, dealers, card companies. And one theory on how to do that back then was just to produce more . More of everything. More stores. More cards. More sets. Definitely more sets. It's 1992 now in the "Best Set of the Year" series and we're up to 12 sets that I have to analyze. I cried about having to review nine s...

I learned a new word today. A "gallimaufry" is "a confused jumble or a medley of things." So, in other words, my brain is a gallimaufry. I stumbled upon this word while trying to define the assortment of cards that came from the big box that Jonathan sent that didn't fall under "vintage" or "major night owl collection themes." It was a little bit of this and a whole bunch of that. All of it was interesting but not everything is stuff I collect. Several cards covered my set-collecting missions. items created more recently than in the '50s and '60s. This 1973 Topps Lou Gehrig all-time  leaders card for example. I'm still lacking most of the cards from the subset because people hold on to the legends in the '73 and '76 sets like the guys are still playing. It's not a 1933 Goudey, dudes. Leggo! These are all needs from my 1980s Fleer collection quests. Lately (including today), I've received a bu...