Night Owl Cards

As a kid, one of the great tricks of adulthood was the big people's ability to get me to do what I didn't want to do with a single declaration: "Because I said so." No reasoning. No elaboration. It was an amazing power. And I did whatever the big people demanded. Because they said so. I admit, as an adult now, being able to say those four words and watching some little person do what you want, is a pretty big perk. Unfortunately, that perk wears off when the little person becomes a bit bigger and single sentences don't work anymore. These days I say lots of things that could be considered instructions, orders, advice, etc. And nothing happens. Because nobody is doing anything just because I said so. That's why I honestly don't expect anyone to follow any advice I give out on this blog. I don't expect anyone to do what I say when I rant. And I certainly don't expect anyone to give me cards just because I say I need them. I get ign...

This is one of the high holy cards of the Golden Age of collecting for me. The Golden Age of cards may mean something else to the general collecting public. But to me it means the card sets issued between 1975-80. Those were the first six years of collecting for me and where the most memorable cards in history reside. There are a special few for each year, and this is one of them for 1977. Looking at this card with our hindsight eyes -- with 35 years of collecting gone by since this card first blew me away -- we can find a host of flaws. But I refuse to look at it that way. I look at it as I did as an 11-year-old. When I see it that way, I feel the old feelings coming back. I like the "in-action" approach. I like Griffey's smile. I like the up-close-and-personal crop. And I like Griffey's bright, yellow bat. It practically looks like he's waving around a light saber. It was 1977, after all. The year Star Wars first came to be. This year was a terrific...

More than ever, I am cautious about entering group breaks. Sometimes it's for money reasons, but just as often it's because the sets being broken will yield a bunch of dupes for my collection. As a team collector I've accumulated quite a few Dodgers cards. I tried to figure out how many about a year go and came up with a guess-timate . I'd say I've added a few hundred more since then. And I've probably added about the same number of doubles. So I'm wary when another group break is announced. Nachos Grande , which holds a lot of group breaks, held one a month or two ago and the sets featured were ones where I didn't need many Dodger cards. I was going to skip it. But then Chris said that he'd be opening a box of 2001 Upper Deck '70s Decade. Goodness gracious, I love that set . Even though I had all the base Dodgers from the set, I was hoping for a hit or an insert of the Dodger variety. Even one of those would be worth the price. So...

This is one of the fancier night cards that you will see. The base card version is snazzy as it is, with the artificial night light glowing behind Rubby De La Rosa's fireball delivery. But the diamond parallel version? Tremendous. I was lucky enough to be able to snare this from Jeff of My Sports Obsession . Jeff was just minding his own business, trying to post cards on his own blog, for crying out loud, when a gaggle of Dodgers bloggers descended upon him. When I first started as a young blogger, the primary team of choice for bloggers was Indians, Mets or Braves. Now it's Dodgers. It creates awkward situations in which unsuspecting bloggers don't have enough of my favorite team to go around because hungry Dodger collectors surround them constantly while screaming "FEED ME!" I've missed out on a card or two because of this, but I know how to work a room, so I haven't been forced to shop elsewhere yet. And I won't if I can continue to get cool ...

So far, I have less than 10 of the Topps Lineage '75 minis insert cards. I actually think that's pretty good, considering I haven't been at a store that's sold Topps Lineage since my trip to the card shop a month ago (the end of August is not a time to spend frivolously). I have some more on the way. But just the other day, I received three of the minis from Jeff at My Sports Obsession . Here they are: The part that doesn't look right about these cards is not the current players on a '70s design, it's the really old players on a '70s design. Whitey's last card was in the '67 Topps set. This card looks strange to me. There are a few players in the Lineage set that were playing in 1975. Off the top of my head, I can think of Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, Hank Aaron, Willie McCovey and Reggie Jackson. That gives me a chance to contrast and compare their '75 card with an old-timer's Lineage card. The cards don't have a lot...