Night Owl Cards

  After a hiatus lasting months, I grabbed my first 1975 Topps buyback since the Great Splurge during April, May and June. I was a bit burned out and the prices set on these things weren't helping. I wanted to see if prices went down. That doesn't appear to be the case yet, but a single card isn't going to hurt me, so now the Greg Luzinski buyback is mine. This is the 518th card in my buyback quest to get all 660 cards from 1975 Topps in buyback form. I'm still at 78% of the set -- 78.3% to be exact -- but I have a feeling those buybacks will be languishing awhile so I've got plenty of time to get back to this. I'm also doing other '75 Topps things, like for instance just the other day, I finally acquired a well-center Dick Allen card. My All-Star Allen has been off-center for as long as I've been collecting the set. It's wild to see it without a too-thin left side. Very happy with that. All right, let's get to the countdown now. This is the thir...

I went to Target today to see if there were any 2010 cards. I kill myself. What was I thinking? So, instead I'll post about vintage. Besides, vintage cards will explain the pile of meat in the photo: I am really missing summer right about now. I miss baseball, the lake, vacations, everything. One of the best things about the summer is the food. Burgers. Potato salad. Corn on the cob. Ice cream sundaes. Great stuff. One my favorite summer meals of all is very simple: barbecue chicken, macaroni salad and deviled eggs. Barbecue is fantastic. I love it all. But I've never been one of those guys to buy the massive grill and spend half of July and August inhaling mesquite. I cooked on a grill both indoors and outdoors when I was in college, and that pretty much cured me. But I have noticed that baseball players from the 1970s are HOOKED on barbecue. Of course, it all started with Boog . He was the first former ballplayer I knew that got on the barbecue kick. And now, ...

I don't have any time to post today. I have to go to work, squeeze in some errands along the way, then duck out of work early so I can watch a certain game tonight. So, I'll leave you with this: the Phillies ended up with Greg "Bull" Luzinski, one of the most feared power hitters of the late 1970s. The Dodgers ended up with Ryan "Baby Bull" Luzinski. He didn't even get an at-bat in the majors. Phillies, I think you owe us one. GO CLAYTON!

Alright, I've been threatening to do this for months, so I finally had an hour to kill and went through my cards to find 20 bespectacled candidates for "The Best Glasses in the History of Baseball Cards, the Sequel." The last countdown was Topps only. That didn't seem very fair to me. So I'm doing another countdown of non- Topps cards to see if the claim still holds up: does Kent Tekulve have the best glasses in the history of baseball cards?" He easily won last time, against what was probably much tougher competition. My non- Topps cards only go back to 1981, so there are none of the wacky frames from the '60s and '70s to challenge Tekulve . Also, I limited it to 20 players, instead of the 25 I went with the first time. I realize that no glasses countdown is complete without this card . But I don't have it, so as far as this countdown is concerned it doesn't exist. On with the countdown. Hope you enjoy it as much as the first: 20. Jeff ...