Night Owl Cards

  Let's just stay with the out-of-season Christmas posts here. Why not? Nobody's celebrating late January. As many of you know, Rod of Padrographs is a great guy who opens up a bunch of current product around the holidays and then distributes a lot of it to his favorite bloggers. I'm one of those! Most of the cards he sent this time were Dodgers or Orioles. The Baltimores are for my nephew, but he's in college now, when card interest is way low, so they'll stay with me or maybe be sent to another Orioles collector. He also sent three unopened packs: All of these have since been opened. I'll show off the contents at the end of the post. But I need to get on with the Dodgers because, brother, did Rod boost my 2024 content in that area.   Here is where most of the Holiday team set came from -- before I opened that Holiday dome in the previous post. One of the cards is a silver glitter parallel for Yamamoto. Rod took care of just about all of my Stadium Club team n...

1965 means quite a bit to me. The set Topps put out that year was pretty good. The pennant flags on those cards is one of those "I wished I thought of that" designs. But also consider that the Dodgers won the World Series in '65. And Sandy Koufax pitched a perfect game. Oh, and I was born that year. "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" was the No. 1 song the day I touched down. It's terribly appropriate. The year 1965 was also when Herb Alpert and his Tijuana Brass released "Whipped Cream and Other Delights," a now-iconic, all-instrumental album as popular for its sleeve jacket as its memorable music. This LP is part of my childhood. My father listened to lots of instrumental music. Classical and marching band, mostly. Except for the children's records that my parents would play for my amusement (who remembers "Teddy Bear Picnic"?), the living room soundtrack 11 months out of the year was Beethoven, John Philip Sousa and Her...

We're reaching a period of time -- or maybe I'm reaching a period of time in my life -- in which the Baseball Hall of Fame, especially who's inducted and who's not, doesn't matter much to me. Don't get me wrong. I still tune into the announcement of who gets in each year. I still enjoy the history and listen to the speeches. I've been to the Hall enough that it will always be cool. But I just can't get into the whole discussion anymore. Part of this is because the people who are eligible for election are mostly players from an era in which I didn't pay a lot of attention to baseball. This was true when Roberto Alomar was elected last year, and I struggled to find cards of Alomar. I almost have to root for someone to stay on the ballot a long time -- like Bert Blyleven -- to have an eligible player to which I can relate from a rooting standpoint. So, I'll just offer a simple congratulations to Barry Larkin. It's well-deserved. But...

Three card packages came in the mail yesterday, and I received this card in all three of them. Each person behind the package had good intentions, because prior to the package's arrival I did need this Topps Lineage card. Well ... At least two of the people had good intentions ... With one of the packages, I also received some other cards, including this card: Thanks, Lost Collector . It's a '75 mini break! Boy, do I need a mini break. With another one of the packages, I also received some cards, including this card: Thanks, Adam. It seems odd that a Giants fan would send a card of John Roseboro, considering what a Giant did to Roseboro, but I gratefully accept the card. And with the third package, I also received some other cards, including this ... uh ... Funny. I thought we were in 2011. I think someone needs to try again. Thanks for the Kershaws. I'll be featuring the other cards from the packages at some other point. Well, two of the p...

(I found out earlier today that I had to go into work. It's my vacation. And I have to go into work. In fact, I'm probably there right now. So, I'm going to skip what I appreciate today -- because I'm not in the mood -- and go right to the cards. This is Cardboard Appreciation, the 41st in a series. Now, if you'll excuse me, the grindstone is calling): It's time to give a little love to 1988 Topps . You may have seen the post on Dinged Corners, requesting folks to rank the Topps sets of the '80s. The sets that ranked most consistently at the bottom were 1989 and 1988. Personally, I think 1982 is the worst. The design sucks. The weird hockey stick going down the left side is odd. I think the Cal Ripken rookie card is skewing everyone's perspective on the set. But I agree that 1989 is one of the worst, too, even though that set has great meaning to me. Now, 1988, I think is an overlooked gem. It is simplistic without being boring. If you can use the wo...