Night Owl Cards

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 ...

(Good news everyone. According to the always useful holidayinsights .com website, today, May 11 th , is "Eat What You Want Day." If that isn't a day to appreciate, I don't know what is. Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 30 th in a series): I'm tired, and a long work week lies ahead, so I'll keep this short. When card companies began placing high school and college players in their flagship sets in the late 1980s, I was instantly disgusted. I paid good money for cards of major league players. What did I want with a picture of a high school kid? Little did I know that this was the beginning of a whole new segment of card collecting, producing a card of a top prospect as early as possible to take advantage of the growing legions of collectors who wanted players' "rookie cards." I had only begun to hear about rookie cards in the early 1980s, and had made sure to hang on to a few key ones, like the '75 George Brett and the '80 Ric...