Night Owl Cards

  The latest edition of Beckett Vintage magazine showed up on the porch Monday. It contains my most recent article. The first 50-or-so pages of the issue is about the recently departed Willie Mays. I like the photo spread of every one of his Topps cards. My story shows up on page 72. It's about collector Roy Carlson, who has created a hobby buzz in the last year with his discoveries of picture reuse in Topps' vintage sets. I mentioned that I was doing a story on him in April and it has finally appeared in the August-September issue.    I'm the last person that should be surprised by how slow the wheels operate in the world of print publication, but the ones for magazine publishing are the very slowest. I did the interview in April and wrote the story in May and it shows up three months later. I almost felt like I had to talk to Roy again to update everything!   But I think it's an interesting article anyway. I always feel like I'm doing my job more when I interview...

  I am back after a few days out of town for the holiday.   During that time I engaged in no card things. There wasn't even an Easter card pack to open as there often is. That was very sad. Wandering in the wasteland stuff.   But at least there was baseball on the TV. While waiting for a game to start, I was flipping aimlessly through channels, which is something I almost never do anymore. (The internet connection isn't great where I was staying so old-school entertainment it was!) I stumbled upon an episode of "The Card Life". I think a lot of readers probably know what that is, it's the hobby show hosted by Phillies reliever Matt Strahm, who is also well-known as a card collector. I had no idea that the show was on television, I thought it was youtube/streaming only. But there it was on one of the MSG channels. As luck would have it, they were featuring something I was actually interested in -- the story about Roy Carlson, a longtime collector, who has created...

  Man, it got busy again. So there was an extra day to vote on the Cardboard Appreciation Hall of Fame poll for the second straight week.   The poll pulled in the best turnout in weeks and in the end the 1970 Topps Seattle Pilots card was the runaway winner. The tally after 49 votes: 1970 Topps Seattle Pilots team card: 31 votes 1992 Pinnacle Jackie Gleason/David Cone Idols subset: 18 votes So, the only Pilots team card from a major-release set takes its place in the Cardboard Appreciation Hall of Fame. As a refresher, here are the others already enshrined:     The Pilots card may not measure up to the previous four in the eyes of some, but I welcome a little bit of variety in the C.A. Hall of Fame. Cards are notable for many reasons, and plays at the plate and stadium scenes and smiling faces are just three of many, many attributes that make up a Hall of Fame card. Team cards get a bad wrap. I really like them and I've grown to like them more as I've gotten older. A...