Night Owl Cards

Remember this card? I pulled it out of a repack box that I bought with a gift card just after the first of the year. As nice as it is to say, "I have an autographed card of Hall of Famer John Smoltz," uttering that sentence rings a little hollow if you know I'm a Dodger fan. And with all of the Braves fans blogging about baseball cards, I knew this wouldn't stay in my house for long. The card is still in my house. But that's only because I'm determining right now if I want to trudge through the newly fallen snow to the post office before I go to to work. It's in a mailer ready to go, destined for John at Johnny's Trading Spot . John wanted this card quite a bit and we negotiated for awhile until he struck upon some possibilities obtained at a card show, or wherever he turns up his marvelous finds (I get the impression that everywhere in the south are street-side stands that sell sportscards). He turned up some finds that I was interested in an...

Everyone is into the 1960 Topps cards because it's the design Heritage is "borrowing" for its cards this year. Although I'm not collecting Heritage this year (just a few packs here and there), I do like the design. Now that collectors have moved on to the latest and greatest sets, like O-Pee- Chee , Finest and Bowman, I thought I'd return focus to the design and feature some of the Dodgers from the original 1960 set. In case you didn't know, this year is the 50 th anniversary of the Los Angeles' Dodgers first World Series championship , the 1959 champions. A team that Bill James once called "the weakest World Championship team of all time." So, when kids pulled a Dodger card out of their packs in 1960, they were something special. Those were world championship ballplayers they were holding there. I have a few of those 1960 Dodgers. I featured them here . But Adam of Thoughts and Sox recently sent some more. He was offering up some well-...

Now the moment you've all been waiting for: This is my favorite "night card." It's Stan Williams pictured against a pitch-black background but illuminated by the bank of lights peaking out from the top right corner of the photo. Combine that with the flashy 1972 Topps design (blue is my favorite color and the color scheme they chose for the Cardinals that year makes the St. Louis cards among my favorites from '72 -- a lot better than that yellow-orange puke color they picked for the Dodgers) and this is a card that I could feature just as easily on "Cardboard Appreciation." I like it that much. But another reason why it's my favorite night card is because whenever I see this card I wonder whether it is (cue the trumpets) THE FIRST NIGHT CARD EVER MADE. I don't really have any knowledge on this, and there are an awful lot of cards from the 1960s and 1970 that I have never seen, so what you're going to read for the next few paragraphs is nothi...