Night Owl Cards

  Forty years ago, Topps and Kmart teamed up to release the first boxed set through a retail chain, which touched off those now familiar and ubiquitous sets from Topps, Fleer and many department stores that lasted through the 1980s. But the 1982 Kmart set was unique when it came out. I know. I was there. My brother worked at Kmart at the time. One day he came home from work to tell his fellow baseball-card-addicted brothers that Kmart was selling some sort of new Topps set in individual boxes. We were intrigued. Everything about this was new. A 44-card set all in one mini box? Never heard of such a thing. You can only get them in one particular department store? Wild. I was instantly jealous of my brother. He had access . My brother picked up a box almost immediately. We could afford them even on our paltry salaries. I remember each box costing $1.97.   But getting a box was more difficult for me. I don't remember what time of year it was but maybe I had school to go to, and I...

The Kmart in my town is closing. This was a long time coming. Kmarts all over the country have closed or been in disrepair for years. My Kmart, while almost completely empty just about every day, kept itself up and was worth visiting just to get away from the atrocity ... er, mass of humanity at Walmart and sometimes Target. It had also recently emerged as a baseball card option. So I'm going to miss that, too. When I saw some of those poor souls displaying signs proclaiming "up to 75% off!" by the side of the very busy road the other day, I knew I had to visit Kmart one last time, if only to see if there were any baseball cards discounted. There were. As I walked in, I saw several bins containing a variety of unrelated small items. I spied some 2016 Topps sticker books immediately. I rummaged around a bit more in the nearby bin and spotted several 36-card fat packs of 2016 Topps, Series 2. Each one was a buck. That is too good of a deal to pass up. And th...

The Kmart in my area seems to be dangling by a perpetual thread. This is nothing different from most other communities' Kmarts, that is if they still have one. I've been to enough of them to know that I'm one of the fortunate ones in that my Kmart is relatively clean, well-stocked and there are no drug deals going down in the parking lot. I had long given up on Kmart for being a source for cards. It was never very good in that area, but during the early years of this blog, I was able to find mega-discounted blasters of Upper Deck Spectrum and the like. However, during the last several years, the "card area" shrank until it was maybe a couple of racks, next to the service desk, where you had to shop for cards right next to a couple of female employees gabbing about whatever. I've never felt more like a nerd in my adult life. My retail card choices have been Target and Walmart, and I go to them equally because the card availability is a little different at e...

I'm usually no fan of Bowman, but I do like to sample anything new that appears on the card shelves, as long as it's baseball. I didn't expect to see any Bowman until the end of this month. Not around here. But I was running errands today and stopped at the store for some garbage bags before getting a haircut. I'll give you a moment to catch your breath from that recounting of my epic, adventurous, wild-and-crazy afternoon. Recuperated? OK, to review: Errands. Garbage bags. Haircut. Still OK? All right. While in Kmart, I was amazed to find rack packs of 2010 Bowman. Simply stunned. Kmart is blowing away Wal-Mart in the card aisle. Sheer annihilation. Target's going to have to watch its back soon, too, if it doesn't start moving. I had cash for just one rack pack. So I bought that and the garbage bags. You'll note on the scan that the wrapper is torn. I had 10 minutes before my haircut. I had to open the pack before I got...