Night Owl Cards

As someone who began collecting baseball cards in 1975, I am adamant that it was the best year to pick up that hobby. And, in general, I've proclaimed the '70s as the greatest year for a kid (or anyone, really) to start buying packs. People who also started collecting in the '70s have raised their fists in agreement to my very biased proclamations, and we all feel good about ourselves for an hour or two. But was 1975 really the best year to begin collecting? Didn't other years have cool cards and sets, too? Didn't other years have cool hobby situations? Of course they did. Some of those years may not be my bag but, sure, objectively, there were other great years to begin a cardboard obsession. So I looked through the past 65 years and came up with a few in which it would be heaven to begin collecting that year. If you started collecting these years, there is probably a terrific chance that you would be hooked for life. That's how good the card situation...

In the few years that I've been running this blog, communicating and trading with fellow collectors, I've noticed a few things about us collecting types. I'm not going to list them all because that would mean I would have to sit down in a darkened house at 3 in the morning and actually try to come up with a list. No way I'm doing that. I'm just going to mention one thing. And that thing is: have you ever noticed how fired up collectors get when they find out that another collector needs just one card to complete a set? They get fired up. I mean REALLY fired up. I'd say it's like when the teacher asks a question and a student knows the answer and raises his hand so vigorously that he practically dislocates his shoulder. But it's more intense then that. It's almost as if a siren goes off in every collector's head and they immediately run to their collection to see if they have that card for their fellow collector in need. Before you know it, ...