Night Owl Cards

  This is the giveaway post featuring the extras from my winnings from The Diamond King vintage giveaway on his blog last month.   I'll reveal the cards I'm giving away and the entry instructions at the end of the post, so you greedy grubbies can scroll right to the end if you like.   But I wanted to mention that DK's giveaway also encouraged participants to send cards out themselves. This is something I still do, even after 18 years, though not as often the last 5 or 6 years (still there are cards on my desk right now that are waiting for packaging and sending, as it's always been). But Kevin seemed to strike a nerve as I was the beneficiary of three separate card sends that I believe were related to The Diamond King's request.   First let's see some cards I received from gcrl from cards as I see them . Neither of us needs instructions for sending out cards, especially to fellow Dodger fans, but we'll take any excuse!   Goodies of the parallel kind. Will g...

  When you have incoming card packages constantly arriving as a blogger, clutter isn't something confined to the stacks of cards, envelopes, notes, those cut-up pages of three pockets and top-loaders and penny sleeves galore, clogging up space on desks and tables and floors. It's also the clutter that you see in your phone gallery and on the desktop of your computer. I often take pictures of arriving cards for future posts and then they sit and stare at me for weeks, I think the little photo icons are actually stamping their unseen feet impatiently, until I finally write about them. I hate being stared at almost as much as I hate to-do clutter. There is also one whale of a box of incoming cards that has no space to land (it's sitting on the floor trying to avoid being kicked right now). So I've got to make way. Here is where I'll start: I received an envelope -- or was it two, don't recall -- from Torren' Up Cards recently. One of the items was an unopened, ...

(Good evening. How's your bracket doing? OK, now TELL IT TO SOMEONE WHO CARES. It's time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 269th in a series): An important anniversary in the trading card world came and went last year without a mention. Last year was the 60th anniversary of Topps first issuing trading cards in what is now the standard 2.5-by-3.5-inch format. Prior to 1957, Topps' main set each year was 2-5/8 by 3-3/4. And there were all kinds of other measurements from other card publishers. Bowman came to match Topps' 2-5/8-by-3-3/4 model by 1953 but prior to that, it was issuing 2-by-just-a-shade-over-3-inch jobbies. And before that, Bowman cards were 2-by-2 1/2. Play Ball made 2-1/2-by-3-1/8 cards. But when Topps downsized its set to 2 1/2-by-3 1/2, the whole hobby fell into line. It leads me to conclude that it's the perfect size. How could I not think that? For 60 years, nothing has changed. The flagship set and just about every other set i...

Possibly my most frequent daydream when it comes to baseball cards is gaining unfettered access to someone's attic and finding cards in a box or a cabinet or under the floor boards. This thought actually goes through my head when I'm in someone's home for the first time. "I wonder if they have cards in the attic? I wonder if they know they have cards in the attic? Maybe they need someone to help them find them." Then I get a poke in the ribs because someone knows what I'm thinking, and I go back to being an adult. The "attic-as-a-goldmine" thought is so pervasive that the attic is literally my favorite room in the house. In any house. And to those of you who don't have attics, this is my face with pity in my eyes. I'm sure those people who take jobs whose duty it is to buy crap from people's homes have the same feelings that I do. An attic is an untapped resource of riches. Or at least cards. That's all I care about -- the...

Each night the local late night news presents a trivia question to the hack sports guy after he gets done butchering the day's highlights. On the weekend, the backup hack sports guy takes his shot at the trivia questions. My guess is the only reason the backup guy is still employed is that he's no threat to the primary sports buffoon. That is demonstrated almost every weekend when he stumbles through trivia questions that the primary buffoon usually answers correctly. Last weekend's question was: "Which player was on a pre-World War I baseball card that recently sold for over $1 million at an auction?" This is easy for any card collector to answer. And I can even point out an error in the question. The card in question -- the T206 Honus Wagner -- actually sold for over a million dollars in 2000, which is now 12 years ago and no longer "recent." But the poor weekend sports boob's answer was this: "it's either Christy Mathewson or T...

Clem Labine cards on back-to-back posts! It must be Clem Labine week here at Night Owl Cards! Actually, the Labine card is featured because it's my only 1953 Topps Dodger card. It's here to serve as an example for the No. 9 overall card back in the countdown. The '53 Topps card back is one of the most original card backs that there is. That's the reason it is on the countdown because overall I'm not terribly enthralled with it. The same goes with the front of the '53 Topps cards. I know that's practically sacrilegious to say here in card blog land with all the love for the painted pictures. But I can only get myself to admire their uniqueness and the effort that went into them. Just can't get into the final product. Anyway, here is the back: Among the interesting items on this card back are: 1. The insanely large card number. It's got to be the largest card number ever used for a set. I find it interesting that the dugout quiz references blind...