Night Owl Cards

I am in the final stages of completing the 1973 Topps baseball set. In fact, if I do a little fudging, I've basically completed it. -- No, I don't have all of the cards in hand. The Cleon Jones, Joe Niekro, Leo Durocher and Yankees team cards are on their way. So is the elusive final checklist card, ol' number 588. But more on that later. -- No, I haven't acquired an extra Walter Alston card (a high number) or an extra Mike Schmidt rookie (Ron Cey's second-year card). Both reside in my Dodger card binders and I'll consider the '73 set complete even without the two extras, although I do intend on getting both at some point. -- No, I haven't grabbed all the non-numbered team checklists. I still have the Red Sox, Indians, Twins and Padres to go. I'll get them, but I'm not going to delay my announcement of completing the set for them. -- No, I haven't bothered with the manager variation cards or the team checklists with extra stars o...

I have determined that it is almost impossible to rank the all-star cards from 1975-81 -- what I call the "Golden Age of All-Star Cards" -- with any kind of objectivity. I'm really trying, because objectivity has been pounded into my head as a valuable thing to possess. But I basically threw up my hands after a few minutes of the whole business . I can't do it. Once you slap that all-star star or badge or banner on a card, it immediately becomes special. How can I eliminate any of the cards from the countdown if all of them are special? But press on I must. Because I do it for you. I give and give and give ... Anyway. The point is there are a lot of cards that you probably think should be in this Top 20 countdown, that I think should probably be in this Top 20 countdown, that aren't in the countdown. For example the 1975 Topps Pete Rose card, a card that I looked at as a tiny cardboard god when I was a kid, is not in the countdown. I don't even...

I think it's pretty well-known that the Yankees have a facial hair policy. No beards. No girly hair. But mustaches are OK (and, so, apparently are Nick Swisher mohawks. That's right, no beards, but that monstrosity is fine.  I'll never decipher the Yankees). I think it's also well-known that the Reds had a facial hair policy for three decades, beginning in the late 1960s. It was some knee jerk reaction to hippies running wild and infiltrating our baseball teams. And it's probably known that when players leave the Yankees, or left the Reds back in the day, some of them grow facial hair because they had been deprived of this manly pursuit for so many years. I am going to focus on the Reds, because there's already way too much attention paid to the Yankees, and because I first noticed this phenomenon with the Big Red Machine teams of the mid-1970s. When players left the BRM, many of them suddenly appeared on their new teams sprouting mustaches and othe...

Although the Fan Favorites sets are fantastic in a wide variety of ways, it's easy to spot the cards that are a little bit off. Topps is basically a victim of its success here. It has created sets and designs that are so familiar that collectors notice immediately when something is not quite right. One of the most significant issues is with the 2003 Fan Favorites Monte Irvin card. Irvin is on the 1952 design, but his signature is missing in the box. There is another version with the autograph. But I won't be pursuing the other version. But there are other examples of some "not quite right" cards that weren't corrected. In many cases they are small things, but I notice this stuff, as I'm sure other collectors do, too. The Fan Favorites cards with the 1985 design always looked a little off to me, but I thought it was only because the letters in the team box were too small. I guess they are a little smaller than the letters on the actual 1985 ...