Night Owl Cards

Even though the PWE has become much more prevalent in card exchanges through the mail -- who can afford postage prices anymore -- I still see a bit of attitude about it from time to time. Mostly this is in reference to ebay sellers and their lame packaging. Those complainers have a point sometimes. But other times I look at it and think, "it's a plain, white envelope. That's perfectly legitimate for one card." PWE's can pack a surprising punch. Also, there's something meaningful about a PWE that other packaging doesn't possess: "Here's something that I found just for you -- one card -- and I just had to send it." I received three such PWE's recently. One of them contained the card above. It came from R.C. , who got in on Topps' online 3-D promotion before the cards sold out. The 3-D effect is almost impossible to show on a scan, and I don't do gifs, but, trust me, it's quite effective. It has an updated Sportflics...

Until a couple of weeks ago, this green-tinted parallel of Dodgers prospect Zach Lee was the only card I had from the debut set of Topps Heritage Minors in 2011. Although I enjoy minor league sets, it's more for their kitsch value. The old cards, the wacky poses, the ball girls and trainers, spotting some well-known major leaguer just starting out in the bowels of professional baseball. But Heritage Minors I'll probably never understand and definitely never purchase. The cards come at a bit of a premium because they're on Heritage card stock, yet they're still a bunch of nobodies. They don't deserve that fancy stock. That's for major league players. Along with that, I'm being asked to spend my hard-earned money on a bunch of guys who will probably never amount to anything on an MLB level. Yeah, I know, prospecting is about finding that needle in a haystack, but I'm much too poor for that nonsense. So, all I've got then are guys who played ba...