Night Owl Cards

I am not inferring anything about these two gentlemen. This is merely a blog title to get to a point. The February edition of Beckett Vintage magazine is now available everywhere and anyone who wants to read the article I wrote for it has probably done so or has pretended to do so. I've been charmed by the people I know who have absolutely zero interest in baseball cards who have read the entire piece and have supposedly enjoyed it. It's nice of them to say so. I am just getting going on another story for Beckett Vintage. I know my story topic and I have the deadline date. So this may be a regular thing, guys, and that's pretty awesome and also pretty weird. You see, in some ways I have been an adversary of Beckett and publications like it. I am the enemy of the very industry that I enjoy and adore so much, the magazine industry. I enjoyed magazines so much growing up and wanted to write for them so much that when blogs came along, I was instantly attracted to t...

When you sit and stare at a stack of cards, and then sit and stare at them again, and then sit and stare at them again , you eventually realize something about them. Some cards make me happy, some cards make me unhappy, and some cards, well, I just look at them and think "what's this supposed to be?" That's rather obvious, I guess, but I thought it was interesting that I could get all of that out of one stack of cards sent to me by Zippy Zappy Kenny from Cervin' Up Cards . I'll start with "happy" first because some people get through only the first few lines of a post and then are distracted by college football, or food, or going outside and actually living. Shallow people. Here is the happiest happy. It features the following happy elements: vintage, Brooklyn Dodger, card from the '50s, known baseball character, dude named "Preacher", card off my want list, and just the right amount of wear. Seven happy points for 1954...

Here is another tale about my want list. It's a pretty thorough list. Maybe not as thorough as some, but more complete than others. Like I said a few posts ago, I don't have a lot of enthusiasm for updating it with all the parallel nonsense of 2014. But there is the other end of the spectrum, too. You won't find on my want list any cards from earlier than 1952. Why is that? Well, frankly, five-plus years into this blog, I'm still not over the fact that people send me cards. And it's that part of me that thinks it's a little presumptuous to even be listing 1952 and 1953 Topps, let alone stuff from what I consider to be the prehistoric era of cards. So, there isn't a want list for something like 1950 Bowman. Do I like 1950 Bowman? Sure! It's got Brooklyn Dodgers in it, don't it? But, really, nobody's going to send me those kind of cards. I received one surprise from Dave of Tribe Cards way way back when he sent me a 1950 Bowman ...

When I was a kid, I drew a line on the breakfast table between the cereals that were edible and the cereals that clearly were not. On the side of "fun to eat" was Cap'n Crunch, the Monster Trio (Count Chocula, Frankenberry and Boo Berry), Corn Pops, Sugar Smacks (dig 'em), Magically Delicious Lucky Charms, Coo-Coo For Cocoa Puffs, and Fruity and Cocoa Pebbles. On the side of "that's not food" were dreaded concoctions like Product 19, Rice Krispies, Corn Flakes and Wheaties. Wheaties was the worst. I refused to eat it. My brother, though, was a cereal nut. He'd eat just about every brand. He'd willingly get up at 7 a.m. (this is when he was a teenager, mind you) and also willingly pour a big bowl of Product 19. It was sad. He'd also eat Wheaties. And claim to like it. I figured it had to be because of the athletes. Bruce Jenner was on the Wheaties box at that time and it was a huge deal. General Mills had worked long and hard ...