Night Owl Cards

This has long been an obsession of mine but probably isn't an obsession with very many other people, so I fully expect blog clicks to be in the "whatever" range. But I'll see your "whatever" with my "whatever." Onward. As someone who collected as a kid in the '70s, I've always noticed so-called "big head" photos. That's what we called them then. We thought they were weird. Who wants to see a giant head on a baseball card? We wanted to see action, or at the very least someone with a bat or a ball in their hand. But, of course, like everything nostalgic, as the years passed and cards continued to hammer collectors with nonstop action, I started to long for those "big head" cards, or remember them fondly anyway. There was a resurgence of "big heads" in the late '80s/early '90s with the arrival of Upper Deck, and I think it was noticed enough that other collectors began to refer to them, althou...

Even as a youngster, when my world was nothing much more than Scooby-Doo cartoons on a Saturday morning, I knew that 1971 Topps was different. I just didn't know why. I didn't know that the bad guy wore the black hat. I didn't know that motorcycle riders wore black for a reason. I didn't know that black made the Oakland Raiders "outlaws." I just knew that '71 Topps had black borders and they looked AMAZING . The '71 Topps set came out four years before I started collecting. But like most sets of that time period, I would see a card here and a card there. The thought of owning one '71 card consumed me. Then, when I owned one, I couldn't stop thinking about how cool it would be to own five. Today, I am 36 cards away from completing the set. Something that for years I thought would be an impossibility is getting closer and closer to being reality. Turning the pages of a binder filled with entirely black-bordered cards is still a thrill, b...