Night Owl Cards

  Fifty years ago today, Major League Baseball played the All-Star Game in Milwaukee. The National League won, 6-3 (yay!). Bill Madlock and Jon Matlack shared the MVP award. (Reggie Jackson went 1-for-3).   At the break, the Dodgers had played 92 games or 56.8% of their schedule. This season -- 50 years later -- the Dodgers reached the All-Star break having played 97 games or 59.9%. Yet I read a social media complaint just a week or two ago about how the All-Star Game -- the supposed "midsummer classic" -- takes place too late because more than half of the season has passed.   The All-Star Game hasn't shown up at the halfway point of the season in a very long time. (And we're not even close to halfway through summer).   The ASG regularly pops up on either the second or third Tuesday of July. It's been that way for decades. It doesn't matter when the season starts, or how many games have been played, the second or third Tuesday of July is when the ASG exists.  ...

  Yesterday, Robert from $30 a Week Habit showed off the 1986 Topps Jerry Rice card he just landed for 25 bucks.   The card had some minor corner scrapes but he said it was preferable to paying the $75 for the card that he had been seeing prior to then.   I have very little knowledge of mid-1980s football sets, but $75 for any card from 1986, superstar or not, rookie or not, seems outrageous to me.   I'll say that for any mid-1980s sports card that wasn't issued in rare quantities. I don't think anyone should have to spend exorbitant amounts to land an '85 McGwire or Gooden, an '84 Dan Marino or even a 1986-87 Michael Jordan. Were any of those cards issued in limited quantities? All mid-1980s cards should be cheap. None of this "I wish I had a Jordan rookie," which I see collectors lament all the time. Every man, woman and child should have one by now! When I was collecting as a kid, teenager and into my 20s, you paid high prices for cards only if the car...