Night Owl Cards

  I often think that I like too many card things and I need to rein it in. But here's a list of items often sold at card shows that will make me ignore your table: -- Unopened, sealed product -- Pokemon, Magic the Gathering or any fantasy or modern movie cards -- Basketball cards -- Non-vintage football or hockey cards -- Anything slabbed, especially rows and rows and rows of slabbed cards -- Big displays of relic cards or autographed cards or patch cards -- Discount boxes that contain mostly cards from the '90s -- Bowman anything -- Card supplies (unless I am specifically in the need for something)   Presented that way there are actually many more card things that I don't like.   What I just listed was probably 80-90 percent of inventory at the monthly card show that I attended yesterday. It's getting to be a pattern and I've mentioned it a few times in past posts. And it's not just this show, this show is a microcosm of the current hobby and card show scene. ...

My card collecting friend R.C. sent me a few cards recently. He said he didn't have a need for them and hoped I might find them useful. These weren't your average cards so I can find a variety of uses for them. In fact, I can break the uses down into: 1. Keepers (Cards I can use in my collection) 2. Traders (Cards I'd be willing to use in a trade for the right deal) 3. Giveaways (Cards that I can use in a giveaway next month) Let's see the breakdown with pretty pictures. 1. KEEPERS This was not the only legends short-print in the package but it is the only one I will definitely keep. The 2009 set was the first one to add short-printed legends cards, I believe, and I remember the carefree days when this was a new-and-interesting concept. Plus, the 2009 Topps set is the first one I completed after coming to blogging. And you can't beat seeing Ryne Sandberg in a Phillies uniform. These are each upgrades. As a proud 1970s card collector, I...

You ever play that game in which you calculate how many years it's been since you were a kid and then take that total and subtract it from one of those years when you were a kid and come up with a difference that causes you to instantly turn off all the lights in your house and hide in a dark corner of your room? Yeah, that's not a fun game to play when you start to hit a certain age. It's been more than 40 years since the 1973 Topps set has been issued. Subtract 40 from 1973 and you're in the Great Depression -- in more ways than one. The only time when this exercise is fun is when it comes to cards. I am combining two recent packages that I received because each of them feature 1973 Topps (I can't have every post being '73s, as wonderful as they are). The '73s were central to the package. But with 1973 at the center, each package contained a card from either side of the spectrum -- 40 or so years after 1973 and 40 or so years before 1973. Now th...

The 1972 Topps set has been popular among bloggers at least since I started this thing. But collecting the set seems to have become more of a priority lately. I'm still trying to finish off the '71 set, and then I really should get working on '77 as it's a whole lot easier to collect than a few others I'm chasing. It's certainly easier than trying to complete the '72 set, which features high numbers that are downright evil. But none of that is stopping my interest in the '72s. In fact, I have just added my list of '72 needs to my want list . It's a pretty hefty series of numbers but I'm determined to finish it off someday. Why do I like it so much? Well, I wrote about that already . But, briefly, I like it because it's one of the most colorful, quirkiest mainstream sets ever produced. It is also one of those sets, along with 1971, that were the first "old" cards I ever saw during my initial days of collecting when I was...

If you don't know what 1972 song this post title refers to, then I know one thing about you already: your name is not Brandy. Because if it was, you would have had this song sung to you at least 5,000 times over the course of your life so far, probably a quarter of those times by some drunk in a bar. But if you're not Brandy (what a good wife you would be), and you're not familiar with the dulcet tones of 1970s pop rock, then you probably aren't all that familiar with the 1972 Topps set either. And that's a shame. It is one of the best -- certainly one of the quirkiest sets -- that Topps has ever produced. It is one of my favorites. It is the subject of one blog , which has grown distressingly quiet of late. And it is a new object of affection for one of our favorite bloggers . To that one blogger, some advice: save yourself. OK, not really. But collecting this set is fairly challenging. I'm barely a third of the way through completing it and it's a daunt...