Night Owl Cards

I've made several not-so-serious threats to chuck my card collection and pursue only oddball cards. The threats aren't that serious because there is really only one type of oddball card that would make me happy enough to collect those and nothing else. Those oddballs don't exist in Kaybee sets of the '80s, or Hostess sets of the early '90s, or today's Panini sets, or Post issues from the '60s, or Kahn's hot dogs cards from the '50s. The oddballs that thrill me from collecting head to toe rest in the '70s, with a foot dangling in the early '80s. The bestest oddballs are Kellogg's cards from the '70s and '80s, Hostess cards from the '70s and Burger King/Coca-Cola cards from the '70s and early '80s. This is purely a nostalgic preference as I grew up in the '70s and early '80s. But I contend that those oddball issues are still somewhat more of novelty than at least the later issues because back then ...

There are certain topics that circulate through the blogs over and over again. Sometimes the same topic comes in bunches, only to disappear for awhile, and then re-emerge a year or two later when new blogs start up. One of these topics is finding cards of players on teams for which you never knew they played. It pops up repeatedly. Jose Canseco as an Expo is often cited. Al Oliver as a Dodger is another one. There are probably many more that I forget. I decided to finally do a post on this, just to keep my blogger license. You have to write about this topic -- and players with goofy hair -- or "they" will come and find you and tell you can't waste your time rambling about cards anymore. I didn't have a lot of time to dig up cards, so I went directly to my Topps Traded sets, since that's where a lot of these examples occur. I don't have all the Traded sets, or even half of them -- including some pretty common issues, like from the late '80s. So I k...