Night Owl Cards

I've written a few times that the first sports publication that came to my house was Sports Illustrated in 1976. Because of that, I have all of the SI covers from that year memorized, even for sports that I didn't have a clue what they were at the time. SI cover subjects like Steve Cauthen (horse racing?) and Dwight Stones (high jumping?) are etched in my brain. Of course, the baseball covers were the only ones I cared about, and there were some classics on SI fronts that year, the famed Red Sox-Yankees fight, the George Brett cover boy photo, George Foster staring ominously at the reader as the playoffs approached, and, of course, Reggie as an Oriole. I've known about Reggie Jackson's one season as a Baltimore Oriole since that very year, also the first year I really paid attention to baseball. Even though I didn't follow the sport much during his Oakland A's days, it was still unusual to see Jackson as an Oriole that season. Pending free agency was ...

Heck of a card. Heck of an image. Wouldn't you love to be Koufax back in the day? I'd settle for being one of those kids back in the day. This Bazooka insert from Archives or Heritage -- I'll figure it out later -- arrived in a single-card envelope from Rod of Padrographs . It happens to be the 175th different Sandy Koufax card in my collection. That's not as impressive as it sounds considering 151 of those cards were issued after his playing career and 119 created in the last six years. But for whatever reason Sandy prompted me to recalculate how many Dodgers cards I have in my collection. I last counted up almost five years ago and totaled just over 15,000. Two-and-half years before that I calculated 10,615 Dodgers cards in my collection. This time I came up with 19,927. With the start of the 2018 card season less than a month away, I will be going over 20,000 unique Dodgers cards (with God knows how many dupes) within the next two or three months. My p...

This week I've been the poor sap filling in for someone on vacation. You never hear about the poor sap. You always hear about the people on vacation. "I'm on vacation!" they scream on the social media forum of their choice. And everyone responds with a like or a heart or a hashtag and they all feel good that someone out there has beaten this oppressive system that we've constructed for ourselves if only for a brief period of time. Except for the poor sap. There are no likes or hashtags from them. He or she simply plods forward, in real life, bearing more of the burden than normal, if only for a brief period of time. Fortunately, the vacationer returns today and things can revert back to normal (until I go on vacation). It's just in time, too, because yesterday I was so drained that I actually thought "I really need to get my butt back to a card aisle." It's been awhile. Under normal circumstances this year, I wouldn't consider ...

When Topps Archives was released a few months ago, I noted a Fan Favorites autograph of Ron Cey included in the checklist with mild interest. Collecting autographs is not why I'm in this hobby, but I do have just a few signatures from my all-time favorite player and it was nice to see a new photo of him on a familiar design. Still, this new card was way down on the priority list. As soon as it started appearing online, fellow collectors started alerting me to the card. Have you seen this? Check this out! Yeah, I've seen it. Not really feeling it though. Maybe I had reached my quota of Penguin autographs. They fill up a whole page. And then some. I even have a couple more that aren't easily scannable. Unlike regular, unsigned cards, I think of signed cards as having a limit. Signed cards are supposed to be somewhat exclusive, right? "My favorite player signed THIS card." The thought of having 50 signed Ron Cey cards kind of diminishes that...

I'm not fully convinced that the reason that 2017 baseball cards have disappeared from the shelves of big box stores is solely Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger. If you're paying attention, Archives, Bowman, Platinum, Stadium Club and Allen & Ginter aren't the only sets that have vanished very quickly. In my neck of the woods anyway, Gypsy Queen and Heritage made terribly hasty exits, too. So, the question is: Is Topps mandating a shortened shelf live on product to heighten demand? I have my doubts that this is the case. There is only so much Topps can control. And distribution is often out of Topps' grasp. I don't think distributors care anything about demand (or maybe they do, I'm not a distributor). But I just think it's interesting that cards almost across the board -- except for flagship -- have barely lasted even two weeks on store shelves. There aren't any more people in the card aisle with me than there was before (none and none), so ...

You've read me whine many times about how busy I am during the month of March. It is annually my busiest month of work. Or at least it used to be. I'm finding that June is quickly surpassing it. I won't go into details, because nobody cares, but the added responsibilities at this time of year over the last couple of years has led to many extra hours on the job. It actually begins in May and didn't end until, well, yesterday. Needless to say, I slept until 1:15 in the afternoon today, which is shocking even for this night owl. During my wildly busy time, I put on a good front on this blog, attempting to sample what was new in the card world. But I didn't focus on it at all and there is much I don't know about everything that has been released during the spring -- Bowman, Bunt, Archives, Series 2 -- I know the basic details only. Heck I just got my Dodgers want lists up for Bowman and Archives today. I can't tell you what half the cards that I need ...