Night Owl Cards

  There are some cards that can only be appreciated -- truly appreciated -- by collectors who grew up in a specific period of time, maybe within only half a decade.   For instance, consider the 1979 Topps George Foster card, which many collectors my age have. If you are one of the legions of collectors who started with the 1987 Topps set or maybe the late '90s, or on the other end, in the 1960s or early 1970s, you can't appreciate the sizeable impact this card had on us.   In 1979, I didn't know a card without a logo on the helmet or hat. Logos were always there -- even if they were drawn on by Topps -- they were there. This was the period of Necessary Team Logos. I didn't know the time in the late '60s/early '70s when Topps would cover the offending hat logo with some black ink. I didn't know the 1970 Milton Bradley set. Conversely, I didn't grow up in the mid-to-late '80s, when unlicensed sets and empty hats re-emerged with oddballs from Burger Kin...

  On the schoolyard in the spring of 1977, there was no card I wanted more than the one of George Foster. I was a Dodgers fan and on the lookout for Dodgers cards, but even a player on the Dodgers' chief rival at the time could not prevent me from coveting his card.   Foster was hitting home runs at a pace that I had never experienced before, on his way to 52 in one season. His card was the titan of the '77 set, bigger than airbrushed Reggie, bigger than prospects Dawson and Murphy (who?), bigger than Fidrych, bigger than Nolan Ryan. Foster's card was a base card. Yet, it had major appeal. That concept and sentiment is lost in today's hobby and vanished a long time ago. Foster's cool was replaced by inserts, first known as "chase cards," and then "hits" and then parallels and then short-prints. All detracted from the base cards, the cards that actually made up the set. I was reminded of how much the hobby and collectors have changed again this mo...

  I feel sorry for early readers of Night Owl Cards. Back then, I'd get to Christmas and all I had to show for it as far as gifts was socks. And then they'd have to read me whine about socks . How about that for content? No wonder the views were so low. Over the years, the holiday gifts have gradually become more card-like. And the last couple of years the card-gifting has gone into hyperdrive. Last year I received an entire complete set from the year, a common Christmas gift for young collectors going back to leafing through the Sears Wish Book. But 2021 was the first time I ever experienced that. Now we're at 2022. Jackpot.   Between my wife and her sister, I landed three different blasters of current cards and what, I guess, is now a Christmas tradition of a complete set for the year! Note to self: do not open too many 2023 packs.   The key part of this is 2022 Topps is actually a set I like, unlike last year's.   Also, I specified what kind of 2022 cards I might ...

(For the first time since March, readership numbers went up in July, breaking the year-long downward trend. But it's August now, a traditional low readership month, so might as well lean into it and restart one of my least read features! It's time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 313th in a series): Without realizing it, I've been doing well in adding Carl Yastrzemski cards to my collection. Nothing nuts or anything (heck, I already have his rookie card), but it's nice to officially have his 1970s Topps cards out of the way with this particular one. I nabbed this card in another Twitter sale from @Tec872 as I continue to chase the '70 set. It occurs to me that Yaz is one of those players who never competed for the Dodgers that I will absolutely hang on to his cards as if he did. I know this is probably a common thing for people more accustomed to player collecting or those who grew up in the '80s and had to have every Bo Jackson card, whether he played f...

I am not as obsessive about variation and error cards as some collectors, particularly when it comes to the minute "errors" that people chase with cards from the '80s. Even with some of the larger differences, I can't be bothered. It's kind of like: if it wasn't common knowledge when I was collecting then it doesn't matter. I knew about "blackless" 1982 Topps cards before I started reading card blogs, but it wasn't much earlier than that. I barely gave it a thought. In fact, to show you how much I paid attention, I thought people were referring to cards that were "backless" . OK, hold on ... There we go. But I must admit the first image is what popped into my head first. I thought "backless" because what the heck is "blackless"? That's not even a word! I don't know who first started referring to those 1982 Topps variations in that way, but the nickname stuck. And now it is common knowledge and there are a...

This is no surprise to anyone who reads this blog, and I've written about this very same thing not that long ago. But each time I come across it, I marvel at the brazenness, the balls, the unmitigated gall of online sellers. The online card world is full of price gougers. I'm sure there are people out there, plenty of collectors, who believe this is fine, or at least they accept it as a necessary evil. That's the price of capitalism, they'll say. OK. That's what I think, too, or at least what I say. But deep down, where my real feelings are that sometimes don't come out, I have little use for those people. What they're doing is not cool. They should be ashamed. Slapping unrealistic prices on cards in the hopes that you can reel in a sucker? Does that feel good? Are you happy with yourself? What would your mom say? I'm not against making a profit. But cards should be priced at the going rate. And, let me tell you, 99 bucks for a 1977 Kellogg...

No matter what you're talking about, from a very young age, one million is a lot. "I'll bet you a million dollars!" "Not in a million years!" Two million is even more than that. Unless you're a popular youtube video or a major league baseball player, two million is almost unfathomable. Yet, this blog went over two million views last week. Actually, it doesn't mean a lot, just that I've been doing this a long time. A quarter of the views were probably Russian robots in late 2016 and another quarter are probably me. But anyway, it's an excuse to hold a contest giveaway. And now you're instantly interested. I figured that I wouldn't offer anything new on store shelves as the prize. There's already too much overemphasis on the newest on the usual social media sites anyway (pssst, they're trying to SELL you something). Instead, the prize is going to be one card that has eluded your collection. What is a card tha...

  (Special note to View From The Skybox : Never fear. I'm OK now. My soul was possessed by college basketball for a few too many stressful hours, but I conducted an exorcism and I'm back! Here is the post that was meant to appear on Sunday night):   I go on quite a bit about the modern hobby's neglect of the base card. It's pretty infuriating for someone who knew almost nothing except base cards for the first decade of his collecting life. But there is one time -- and it's repeated over and over -- when I dismiss the base card, too. It happens when I open trade packages. Often, but not all the time mind you because there is that period in time when a set first hits the shelves, the base cards that fall out are mere dupes. Just something to shuffle through before you get to the good stuff. It's at that time that I feel like a case breaker. And, if I think about it too much, I almost feel guilt and that I am a hypocrite. For example, there is...