Night Owl Cards

As I continue to gather stamped buybacks of 1975 Topps cards, my enthusiasm for the quest ebbs and flows. Oh, I'm always enjoying it, without a doubt. I am thrilled that I've found an interesting way to continue to collect the first set I ever bought in packs as a 9-year-old, and long after I've completed the actual 1975 Topps set and the mini version. But sometimes I still wonder why I'm doing this, mostly when I see the outrageous prices some demand for these buyback cards, when the same unstamped version -- you know, the actual card not marred by a foil stamp -- goes for much cheaper. How in the world does that make sense? But other times, my zeal is through the roof. That's when the '75 buybacks are arriving rapidly and the players depicted are more than your average commons. Recently, I received some 1975 buybacks from Sportlots. Their assortment isn't as vast as COMC (that goes for most everything actually), but I usually can find stuff on S...

This tastefully appropriate advertisement for the blog you are currently reading will soon reside on my sidebar. I keep thinking that my blog layout needs a rejigger and something like this should be the kick in the pants that I need. But I doubt I'll do anything. The owlie ad was created by Mark of Mark's Ephemera . He is after some of my 1971 Topps. Seeing that I have a few extras, and now a feathered friend in a cummerbund touting the virtues of reading Night Owl Cards, I am more than happy to ship some off. You may be surprised to learn that I don't believe I am all that wise most of the time. Often I'm berating myself for being a stupid owl. So a logo like this will keep the pressure on to come up with only the wisest of musings. I happen to have probably the wisest musing that I've ever placed on this blog right here, right now. Here it is: Rick Wise has not one, not two, not three, but four cards in the 1972 Topps set. To my knowledge, he has ...

You probably heard about, or even saw, a team called Maine-Endwell win the Little League World Series Championship on Sunday. The ESPN announcers did a decent job of explaining that the players on the team come from a community of around 10,000 people just north of the Pennsylvania border. The community is actually a school district. The Maine-Endwell Spartans have been a state power in football for awhile and are now well-known as raising really good 12-year-old baseball players. But I knew most of that already. From the time I was 13 until I left home, I lived a block from Endwell, N.Y. I used to watch the Little League World Series championship game every year on ABC. It was fun to see kids my age competing on national television. Even though they always seemed to be from Washington or California. But as the years went on, I stopped paying attention, and began to get annoyed with the amount of time ESPN devoted to it. That all changed this year. I watched three or four of...