Night Owl Cards

(Today is National Honesty Day. I have always tried to be honest on this blog. Some may get offended, some may quit reading, but at least I'm trying to be true. It's when people are fake that I start to have problems. Time for Cardboard Appreciation, this is the 321st in a series):    I pay almost no attention to Topps' many online/on-demand releases. As a traditional collector, it's difficult for me to get used to cards being available only online -- I've been trained to physically go to a store for so long. Most of the time, it's no loss -- I don't want that dumb-looking card with the regurgitated theme anyway. But every once in awhile, they hook me. I found out about this 75th anniversary Rookie of the Year set from Wrigley Wax , who went nuts with all the Billy Williams parallels. (I have no intention of doing the same). The set is sharp, the black borders reminding me of 2007 Topps. And since the Dodgers have more Rookies of the Year than any other tea...

    I've received a few small envelopes over the last week or so that have included vintage cards. Couple that with the vintage that caused my jaw to drop a couple of weeks ago, I'm in a vintage frame of mind, more so than usual. So I think I'm going to call this "Vintage Week" and show some vintage throughout the week, ending with what will be one hell of a vintage post on Friday (fingers crossed). Not every card will be vintage in these posts, let's face it, not every card I want is vintage. But each post will include at least one vintage card. First, let's set the parameters of what is considered vintage. This is a question that comes up repeatedly. I instinctively think of vintage as any cards that arrived before I knew what a card was. I can do that because I'm old. There will be none of this "my first cards were 1987 so vintage for me is 1986." That idea, to me, is horrifying. The most recent year for which I didn't know what a base...

Man, December is kicking my butt and it doesn't even have to do with any holiday stuff.   I just have a couple of cards for you and it shows you how much energy I have that I labeled the post "a couple of cards" after sitting here for too long trying to come up with a title. I grabbed two cards in Diamond Jesters' latest time-traveling trade and they both happen to be from 1968 Topps. I'm on record as not enjoying the 1968 burlap design that much, so how do I explain my pick-ups? Well, 53-year-old cards are 53-year-old cards. They always have an advantage over newer and shinier cards whether they look like grandma's kitchen wallpaper or not. Secondly, I can't resist players like Frank Howard. Even though he wasn't playing for the Dodgers by this point, he's still someone I wished I could have seen play. 6-foot-7 batters don't come around very often. Everyone 6-7 and above is either Aaron Judge or a pitcher. And you know how much people loathe ...

I think I've figured out a temporary work-around with my temperamental scanner that will allow me to scan items until I can get a new one, or at least fix the current one. So you should be seeing freshly-scanned cards in the posts to come. But meanwhile, I'm taking advantage of a post by Shoebox Legends a week or so ago in which he cleared out his scan folder of images and magically created new content! I can't think of any more perfect time to create such a post than when your scanner is on the blink! Normally, I don't have a lot of leftover scans (I certainly don't have all the spare autographs and fancy stuff I saw in Fuji's "I Just Had These Lying Here" post). Pretty much everything that I scan winds up showing up on Night Owl Cards. But I managed to scare up a few images that will generate some words from me. Some of these pictures were dedicated to posts that never were, some never made a post I wrote. I guess they were cut for time ....

I knew it would happen. After all that talk of shopping this past weekend and avoiding stores at all cost, I knew I would get the urge to buy some cards. Personally, I blame a couple of online orders for Christmas gifts I placed for other people. That will always set off the desire for a little something for myself. So it was that I found myself driving to the giant Walmart on the edge of town at 11 at night after a Sunday of working on my day off (it's a long story you don't want to read). I figured all of the Black Friday shoppers were safely nestled in their beds by then. But not quite. As I walked toward the store, I noticed a typically smokey car pulled up just beyond the entrance doors with its motor running. This is always annoying to me, but I figured it was Walmart, something like that is practically part of the decor. As I approached the doors, a guy from inside the car yelled out to me, "Hey, sir! Sir!" I glanced over instinctively. He gestured a...