Night Owl Cards

  My most recent COMC order arrived the other day, after waiting a bit longer than they said I was going to wait, about two weeks longer. I don't know if that indicates anything but it's not a big deal right now because it's still not as long as I've been waiting for the Beckett Vintage Collector issue with Rickey Henderson on the cover. I mentioned a couple weeks ago that it probably should have shown up about a month ago, and normally I wouldn't care too much but I suspect an article of mine (or maybe two) is in it. If I had a decent book store near me (aka Barnes & Noble), I could check for it myself, but living among the rubes, I can't do that without planning an outing. I bring this all up again because my articles paid for the 1970 Nolan Ryan I showed last time and they also paid for my COMC order. This is "the other half," although it's a lot more than one card and also cost a lot less. So, let's get to it, since other people aren...

  A couple of months ago, I posted this thought on the occasion of getting down to the final 10 cards needed to complete the 1956 Topps set.   As you can see, I still didn't really think finishing this set was a certainty. It's been my line of thinking ever since I first knew that the '56 Topps set existed and realized how beautiful it was.   But something about that Harmon Killebrew card, now in my possession, flipped a switch. There was something about that card, about this moment, that seemed like the right time. This was the time. If I'm ever going to complete the 1956 Topps set I better get moving right now!   Actually that momentum began with the card I obtained before I acquired the Killebrew.   I added the '56 Yankees team card earlier in January. This was my chance to own something with Mickey Mantle on it in the set. Mantle is standing there in the middle of the back row, seventh from the left, quietly chortling over how much money people are still pay...

  I pulled the trigger on this Harmon Killebrew second-year card a few weeks ago. Not only is it a significant card because it's Killebrew, but it's notable because this is the card that gets me down to needing 10 more cards to complete the 1956 Topps set. That's amazing to me. If you went back and found night owl when he was just starting this blog in 2008 and told him I'd be this close to finishing the set, you'd get a lecture on spewing nonsense. But it isn't nonsense. Here is what's left that is not in my collection: 20 - Al Kaline 33 - Roberto Clemente 113 - Phil Rizzuto 121 - Pirates team card 130 - Willie Mays 135 - Mickey Mantle 194 - Monte Irvin 288 - Bob Cerv 292 - Luis Aparicio 324 - Rocky Bridges OK, OK, I'm not as close as I seemed when you first started reading this. The Mays, Mantle and Clemente cards will take me a long time to retrieve and have probably gotten a lot harder to own now that a whole bunch of people have discovered baseball ...

(You may have noticed some odd posting times for nighty night owl. It seems the body clock is having a bit of trouble adjusting to my new work schedule. And it's manifesting itself in strange ways, like posting at 10:30 in the morning. I can't wait to get back into a routine. Speaking of which, here's the Cardboard Appreciation routine. This is the 114th in a series): OK, here's my Harmon Killebrew story. Although I never met him, talked to him, saw him at a game or waited in line for his autograph, he holds a significant role in my collecting journey. Do you see that signature neatly penned across Killebrew's jersey front? It is Killebrew's autograph, or so I was told. I picked this card up as the second autographed card I ever purchased. I picked it up mere seconds after I bought my first autographed card, a 1961 Sandy Koufax. I was a teenager. It was the early 1980s. Killebrew was a couple of years away from being inducted into the Hall of Fame. What...

I have had two autographed cards in my possession for a long time. I bought them both from the same dealer at the same card show back when I was a teenager. This was before the huge boom in autograph collecting, which gave rise to all the forgeries that now flood the market. There were no accompanying authentication letters or stickers or anything like that with the two cards. But even though there was a little more trust back in those days, there is still doubt regarding what I own. I have no idea whether the Harmon Killebrew card (up top) or the Sandy Koufax card (down below) were autographed by the actual players. Every image that I have been able to find on the intertubes seems to match these two autographs. But I'm not very well versed on what to look for or what other avenues there are for determining if your autograph is the real thing. So I ask those who collect autographs regularly and have experience in varifying such autos: what do you think? Do these look legit to you...