Night Owl Cards

  On Friday, I published post number 5,750 on Night Owl Cards.   It's not a number as nice-and-round as others, but it prompted me to do something I haven't done for the previous milestone posts. Every time I reach a round-number total and write about it here, someone always comments that the total is actually larger because of the various set blogs I've run. So I decided this time, for the first time, to total them all up.   Including this post, it comes to 8,268 total when adding the 1971, 1975, 1985 Topps and 1993 Upper Deck blog totals. I've got some posts on "A Pack To Be Named Later" but I'm not sure how many and I don't have time to search them out and add them.   Which brings me to the point of this post. You've probably noticed I have slowly decreased the number of times I post in a week/month. That's been going on for awhile but has noticeable decreased since last summer. That is completely due the increased workload at my job, in whi...

  This is the card that drew me in to the 2021 Topps Chrome Platinum Anniversary set. I was minding my own business wandering through ebay one day when the card popped up all renegade-like on some unrelated search. "Steve Sax?" I said to myself. "A card of Steve Sax? A shiny card of Steve Sax?" What is this? I knew it was new but I had never seen it before. The fact that it was a card of Sax erased all other previous thoughts I would have had of this set -- "phooey, it's another 1952 Topps design, phooey, it's more shiny for shiny's sake, phooey, how many rookies are in this thing?" But I didn't think any of that. All I thought was, "what the heck is this set?" and "how do I get this card?" About a month later, I received an envelope with that very Sax card. I didn't even need to buy it myself. It came from, I believe, reader Grant, who doesn't like putting his name on envelopes.   I know a card like this, a set ...

  It's Opening Day and, as I suspected, MLB was a wee-bit ambitious. But that's OK.   I'm not here to write about this baseball holiday. I'm here to write about another baseball holiday ... well, what used to be a baseball holiday.   We don't care as much about the All-Star Game anymore. You can argue that point all you want, but if you were following baseball in the '70s or earlier -- heck even in the very early portions of the '80s -- then you know there's no disputing that statement. It's the truth. The ASG was bigger in every baseball fan's mind 40 years ago.   There are a few reasons for the ASG's decline -- the blending of the leagues, the bells-and-whistles installed around the main event, the influence of agents on when and how long a pitcher can perform -- but this is a post theorizing on when the ASG began losing its luster and when that attitude that the game was "nothing special, just an exhibition" started.   It began i...

It's my birthday today. I hadn't planned any special post for today and I'm starting to tire of the All-Star festivities (although I lasted a longer than many others apparently ). But there is something I always wanted to do that relates to the All-Star Game. And since it's my birthday and my blog I can do that thing right now. This is something that I think would interest the fan of any team, and anyone can do it. It's simply compiling your team's all-time All-Star team. By all-time All-Star team, I mean the players from your team who performed the best during the All-Star Game. No favorites here. Pedro Guerrero is one of my all-time favorites and would easily make the team if I was playing favorites. But he was 0-for-Four All-Star Games (he didn't play in the 1985 game). So, he's not on the team. One other rule here: the player must have a card that mentions he was an All-Star prominently on the card. This is a difficult rule, because it keeps...

A few weeks ago, I received an unexpected bundle of cards from a man who apparently has a bottomless inventory and runs Jaybarkerfan's Junk . A lot of us have been the beneficiary of Wes' largesse (I'm not being dirty, look it up), and that includes me on several occasions. I enjoyed looking through the Dodgers he sent and planned to blog about them whenever my perpetually behind behind found the time. But before I had a chance to catalog what I received, a much larger and insane package arrived from Wes. It was downright freakish. How freakish? It contained 80 different serial-numbered Dodger cards. A package like this deserves its own glorious post, one that can properly match the mood and the glee that surrounded me as I opened it. That post will probably arrive later this week. In the meantime, I present you with the earlier package. Consider it the opening. The preamble. The prelude to greatness. Yes, this is just the beginning. But as your mom often said ...