Night Owl Cards

    When I first started reading card blogs, I didn't know there were so many kinds of collectors.   Growing up in the 1970s, there was basically one kind, or maybe two -- set collectors (those who could afford to complete the set) and team collectors (those who couldn't). Decades later I may have picked up on something called "a player collector" but I didn't know any of them.   In my insular collecting world -- basically the way it was for most collectors before the internet -- I figured everyone collected like I did. That's how my friends collected. And when I returned to the hobby in the early 2000s, the few guys I knew around work collected that way, too.   That all changed for me when I started writing a blog. Not only were there player collectors on top of everything I had known, but type collectors -- parallels, short-prints, autographs, relics, Hall of Famers, guys blowing bubble gum, standing for the National Anthem, featuring weird names, shown with...

  It's been a fairly stressful week, between traveling, a delayed doctor's appointment, the loss of a beloved player from my youth, and now the most taxing World Series matchup I could possibly conjure up as a fan. The weekend will help a little (stupid sports teams still have to play on the weekend, tho) and so will the collection. I just happen to be wrapping up a super-simple sportlots order with the final cards trickling in. I like simple orders. Big-ticket and super-cool arrivals are always fun but they contain a certain amount of worry what with prices paid and condition concerns. Simple orders are just simple cards, they don't cost much but still they fill holes and are always wanted.   Some of those cards were upgrades and they've already been filed away with a smile. A 1983 Topps Ron LeFlore, a 1986 Fleer Bobby Castillo, items that should have always been pristine but weren't, and I was horrified. But now the monster is back in the closet.   Others were reg...

  When you have incoming card packages constantly arriving as a blogger, clutter isn't something confined to the stacks of cards, envelopes, notes, those cut-up pages of three pockets and top-loaders and penny sleeves galore, clogging up space on desks and tables and floors. It's also the clutter that you see in your phone gallery and on the desktop of your computer. I often take pictures of arriving cards for future posts and then they sit and stare at me for weeks, I think the little photo icons are actually stamping their unseen feet impatiently, until I finally write about them. I hate being stared at almost as much as I hate to-do clutter. There is also one whale of a box of incoming cards that has no space to land (it's sitting on the floor trying to avoid being kicked right now). So I've got to make way. Here is where I'll start: I received an envelope -- or was it two, don't recall -- from Torren' Up Cards recently. One of the items was an unopened, ...

  I received some cards in the mail today that will require their own individual posts. But before I do that, I must clear the way for them with some earlier acquisitions that my feeble brain is unable to figure out how to make them their own readable posts. So, massive regurgitation of not-so-recent arrivals it is!!! Let's start with the marvelous Roy Campanella Shakey's Pizza card above and some sends from Rod of Padrographs . Rod recently held a small team group break in order to downsize his collection and I signed up for the Dodgers. All of the above cards (one is not a baseball player, I am aware) are either cards I didn't have or can repurpose in some fashion.   I don't associate Ernie Lombardi with the Dodgers at all -- 100 percent Reds. But the Dodgers are listed on the back of the 1980 Cramer card, with the other teams he played for, and Lombardi did begin his career with Brooklyn in 1931. He's also listed with the Dodgers in the set on TCDB, I'm not s...

  As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I have an article in the newest Beckett Vintage Collector magazine, which is the October-November issue. It should be on store magazine stands soon if not already.   I also mentioned that the article is about those famous "missing players" from Topps sets, those players active at the time when Topps issued a set without them. Virtually all of those cases came about because Topps and the player did not have an agreement.     I tried to find as many examples of these as I could. I've heard many of them before. The Bowman-Topps feuds that left players like Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella out of one set or the other. The famed Maury Wills absence from Topps sets until 1967. Rusty Staub and Mike Marshall in the '70s and more recent cases like Barry Bonds and Ichiro.   There were a lot more players who had licensing conflicts with Topps than I thought. Some of the lesser-known players...

Once, I used to get envious of collectors and their card shows, one popping up every month or sometimes nearly every week. "Oh, ho, hum, it's time to go to another card show." I guess I'm still a tiny bit envious, but I channel it a little better because I know that when certain collectors have so many card shows to go to, sometimes that means more cards for me! This happens time-and-again with bloggers situated in card show heaven. Folks like Dime Box Nick and Commish Bob. And there's another one who keeps blessing me with card show goodies -- Johnny from Johnny's Trading Spot . He plopped several stacks of cards on me recently and then sent a PWE, too, and then, today, another PWE showed up. Hokey smokes, Bullwinkle. I've finally sifted through the cards, what I need and what I don't and have some needed items for you to see now. Johnny even completed a set for me, but I'll get to that in a minute. Right now I want to get to thi...