Night Owl Cards

We are living in that no-man's land between last year's cards and the first Topps release of the 2017 season. There are two full weeks left in new cardboard purgatory. I'm eager to put 2016 and its cards behind, but when you can't get your hands on 2017 cards yet, there is nothing more new than cards from 2016. Plus I need to clear out some cards from the scanned folder. So here is one last look back on cards I scanned in 2016 but didn't feel like showing you when it would have been more appropriate. I believe this card came from Cards On Cards . It's a numbered item from 2016 Chrome. I think I didn't show this because I was so devastated by the fact that blue chrome cards used to be my all-time favorite "fancy" cards back when THERE WERE BORDERS. This card makes me sad. But it's too rare not to show, so here you go, after the fact. I pulled this card out of the only Bowman pack purchase I made last year. I admit I was st...

In 1978, I was introduced to the concept of "double-printing." I didn't know the term for it at the time. All I knew was that I was pulling cards of Barry Bonnell at a puzzling rate. I didn't have any idea who this Barry Bonnell character was, or why I had triples of his card after only a few trips to the drug store. I was buying more cards than ever at that point, so I figured that it had something to do with that. But soon I noticed that I pulled other players' cards over and over again. Lenny Randle and Cecil Cooper and Pete LaCock. Star players like Pete Rose and Ron Guidry. And nobodies like Jose Baez and Tommy Boggs. A few years later, I learned that Topps double-printed a number of cards in the 1978 set. It continued the practice for another three years, which is why Tucker Ashford kept reappearing in '79, Larry Hisle was all too common in '80, and Matt Alexander was wearing out his welcome in '81. If you look in price guides, there is a...