Night Owl Cards

  When I completed the 1969 Topps set eight months ago , I was certain that I was finished with trying to build vintage sets. I had been through my share and I wasn't getting any younger and it wasn't getting any easier.   That's still where I'm at -- not going to take on any other set big projects, nope, not doing it, not never, not never again.   Still ...   If I was to build a vintage set again, there is one that makes the most sense -- 1968 Topps is right there.   Now, before you get all "but the Nolan Ryan rookie" on me, here is why this set makes sense to build:   -- It's the next set in the line of complete Topps sets in my collection. You can go in either direction for that. The next set on the front end is 1993 Topps, which is far easier but also holds zero interest for me. 1994 is more interesting but not enough to leap over another year. So, the back end is 1968 and finishing that would wrap up 25 complete sets in a row for me.   -- It woul...

    I don't have a lot of mini collections. I can't focus on that many hobby things these days anyway, but I've never been the mini-collection type. If I did venture outside of my set/team/player-sphere, one of the collections I would set up is cards of players who later became broadcasters when I was starting to learn baseball. They were my first baseball teachers. Yeah, sure there were youth league coaches and my dad and all that, but I wanted to know about Major Leaguers, not that "keep your eye on the ball" stuff. Fortunately there were guys on TV who told me all about major leaguers. Sure, there were people like Vin Scully and Keith Jackson and Lindsey Nelson and Frank Messer. But the ones who knew all the inside stuff were usually called "the color commentators" and they were usually former ballplayers. Ex-ballplayers like Joe Garagiola, Tony Kubek, Ralph Kiner and Don Drysdale were invaluable to me learning about professional ballplayers and what ...