Night Owl Cards

  I made it to the monthly show across town today. It was the first time I was able to get there since January, having missed the last two because of poorly-timed weather.   This is good because the big Syracuse show is in a week and I'm probably not going to be there due to the lack of a vehicle.     The monthly show is definitely not the Syracuse show. I was reminded again by the ever-pervasive fantasy card tables that you can ignore at the Syracuse show because there is so much regular card show goodness. Today's show featured two tables that got my money. There were probably four tables total that offered the cards that interest me -- i.e. sports cards not encased in plastic.   But all things considered in the hobby (*waves hands at everything*), I'll take it.   This show will not be long for my world if one particular dealer decides it's not worth it (two of his seller buddies who used to accompany him at the monthly show have ditched it for Syrac...

Cards ceased to exist as I knew them in 1989. Actually, it probably happened in 1985 when Topps issued the U.S. Olympic team set. But that was a subset, which was grouped together and featured a design that differed from the base cards. In 1989, Topps presented 10 cards of players -- who knows WHO they were -- in their college or (lordy, what is this? ) their high school uniforms. And Topps didn't have the courtesy to group them together as their own subset or create a whole new design for them. No, they dispersed them into the base set as if they were regular major league players. Topps noted a difference only with a "draft pick" logo in the corner. Also by selecting 10 players, Topps didn't even have the forethought to consider the legions of collectors who used nine-pocket pages for their collection. So, even if they wanted to separate the NON-major leaguers from the other cards in the set, they couldn't. It would look like this: No place for Robin ...