Night Owl Cards

I was sorting my newly arrived 1976 Hostess cards when the Don Gullett card jumped out at me, as newly acquired cards tend to do.   I knew I had seen that photo before. Or rather, my brain knew it had seen that photo before. It's always reminding me of random bits of information that are preventing me from remembering what streets I drove down yesterday. True to form, my brain was right. The photo used for Gullett's 1976 Hostess card is the photo used for 1975 Topps card. Topps provided the photos for the Hostess cards so this isn't a surprise. There are several examples of this and I probably should make a post out of it when I acquire enough Hostess cards. Then my brain went off on a tangent and started stewing about how Don Gullett never smiled for his baseball cards. Although Gullett's promising career was ended early by arm problems, he has enough cards for his inability to smile to be apparent. Take a look at any one of them. Gullett always seems to be on the verg...

  The trouble with me and O-Pee-Chee cards of the '60s, '70s, 80s and early '90s is that I am so fascinated with the differences from the Topps sets from the same year that I ignore OPC cards that look the same as the Topps cards. I mean what's the point of collecting another card that looks like the Topps card in every way? This is particularly true for OPC sets that don't note that it is an O-Pee-Chee set on the front. And, yes, I know there are always differences with the backs -- because there is French -- but as much as I emphasize how you must read your card backs, backs are backs. So, I'm in danger of never completing an OPC set as much as I like them because the cards that are different from their Topps counterparts are SO fascinating that it makes everything else boring in comparison. For example, the 1977 O-Pee-Chee set, which I think is the greatest of all the OPC sets because of all of the variations from Topps, is on my radar. But the only cards I e...

I've completed another set. I'd say it seems to be the month for it, but there's no coincidence about it. My objective this year was to stop goofing around, assembling cards from this interest and that interest, and get to what makes me the happiest -- finishing some of the greatest sets ever made. Most recently, I completed the 1976 Kellogg's 3-D set, the first Kellogg's set I've ever finished, but it won't be the last. The last card I needed arrived the other day. It's the Don Gullett card, No. 3 in the 57-card set, and it showed up enclosed, and Don seems a bit lost inside his prison. So I got him out. That's better. Gullett is relatively free now, although I make sure to leave my '76 Kellogg's cards in top loaders because I just can't take the cracking that seems to occur whenever no one's looking. My '76 Kellogg's set is relatively free of cracks, save for a couple of small ones, and I'd like to keep i...