Night Owl Cards

  Joey Votto announced his retirement yesterday in his usual quirky-and-lovable way . It was another sad reminder that my old gang is breaking up. First Evan Longoria and now Joey Votto. I'll explain. I feel an odd kinship with the rookie class from 2008, at least those players who received rookie logos in 2008 product. That's because I started when they started. I began a blog in 2008, and that was the first year that I was fully into modern cards since the early '90s. I returned to modern collecting in 2005 and 2006 but 2008 was when I became aware of everything, every last dumb product available, because the wonderful blogging world had told me so.   So I knew all the rookies that were around that year, hot or lukewarm. You couldn't miss them, card companies were shoving them down our throats. Ross Ohlendorf, Brian Bass, Kevin Hart (no, not the comedian), Chin-Lung Hu, I knew all their names.   There were some decent players, too, guys like Jay Bruce, Carlos Gonzalez...

One thing that Archives has over its second-tier set peers, like Gypsy Queen and Opening Day, is staying power. Although I've never liked the way Topps has approached or produced Archives, you can't help but analyze it if you are a veteran collector or a fan of history. And this is how Topps gets the word out. Collectors are going to talk about the set whether they enjoy it or not, because the set is tied to history and card collectors' histories. We think we know the way the cards should be because we hold those collecting memories close ... very close. More than most sets, Archives brings out not our love for baseball or a certain team or individual players, but our love for cards. That explains why we want to see this set succeed or -- if it can't match our appreciation for card history -- wither and die. And it explains why we get upset when Topps returns to the 1980 design, two years after it included the 1980 design in the first edition of Archives. B...

As you may have gathered over the last three-plus years, I have very particular tastes. There are things I like and things I don't and the smallest detail can sway something from one category to another. This is especially true with people ... er, cards. Sometimes I can't even explain it. For example, the 1963 Topps set, and now, the 2012 Topps Heritage set. The '63 set is widely known as being colorful with a breakthrough design -- two aspects about card designs that I love. It is appreciated by many collectors and some consider it a favorite of Topps' sets of the '60s. It should be a favorite of mine, too, considering my love for super-colorful sets like 1972 and 1975 Topps. But it isn't. Part of it is I'm just not a fan of the look of early '60s cards and early '60s design in general. The colors, the fonts are off-putting for some reason. I don't know why. That's for another post. As Topps progressed through the '60s, I be...

Look at that fog looming in the background. Did Topps get the Rays out at 6 a.m. to take photos? Anyway, as you know there's still a wild-card race going on in the American League East. The Rays are trying to catch the morbidly inept Red Sox. I know there are a lot of fans snickering over the Red Sox's demise. And there are a lot of Red Sox fans covering their eyes. I'm doing neither. The sole reason I am paying attention to this thing, outside of the "general interest in baseball" reason, is that I need to know: which team has the best chance of eliminating the Yankees in the postseason? This is all I care about. Which team is going to take care of that problem of watching Teixeira, Martin, Swisher, A-Rod, Gardner, Posada, Burnett, Pajama Hamburger, gag, vomit, retch, puke, barf, spew, heave ... bleah. ... Excuse me for a second. .... ... OK, I'm back. Sorry. Automatic reaction. Anyway, which team is going to take care of that problem of ...

Look! It's Marlin No. 6! I bought a few Allen & Ginter rack packs yesterday. Didn't get anything great. Went back and bought the last rack pack hanging there. Still didn't get anything great. All it did was alert me to the usual disturbing collation in Topps products and prompt a strange dream a few hours later. I noticed when I opened the rack packs that the cards were slightly bowed. Uh. Oh. I wouldn't say they were full-on Pringles like last year's Chrome, but it was alarming anyway. The cards are in better shape now that they've been out of the pack for awhile, but I like my A&G squashed-bug flat. That night, I had a dream that I put one of those A&G cards inside a penny sleeve and a top loader. The card was Jay Bruce for some unknown reason. When I put the top loader with the card on the floor, it proceeded to flip around the living room, end over end, because the card was so curled. I woke up sweat covered (but only because it was 90 a...