Night Owl Cards

It took me awhile to pick up on the signals that I need to pull back on trying to accumulate every Dodgers card in existence. The signals were there. They were in every complaint about variations. Every squawk about short-printed base cards. Every lament about the growing number of parallels. Every screed about online-only sets. Each one of these modern-card features made team-collecting infinitely more difficult than it was 20, 30, 40 years ago. But something else told me to let go, too. When I get packages now, often the cards that interest me most are not the Dodgers cards. They are usually either set needs or maybe a non-sports card or -- and this is especially true -- a card of The Chicken. This exquisitely scuffed-up sample of The Chicken's card in 1983 Donruss arrived in a PWE from Matt of Sports Card Collectors . Every other card in the PWE was a Dodgers card. I threw those Dodgers card down on the floor in disgust, spat on them and looked lovingly at my chicken ...

As the baseball card blog world's night owl, I feel obligated to keep tabs on things like this. I haven't come across very many birds on baseball cards. Granted, I haven't looked through my entire collection. I don't have time for stuff like that. But you'd think there would be a stray bird here or there walking on the field during spring training drills or even soaring through the sky in the distance in the background. There doesn't seem to be much of that. Personally, I think it's because birds are freaked out by baseball players. They have their reasons, as you'll see in a moment. But despite their absence, I am going to chronicle instances of birds on baseball cards, whether they're real birds or not. I will update this post as I find more. Also, if you find some, let me know. I'll include scans if you'd like to email them, or I'll fetch the card in my collection if I have it. I know there are birds on old-timey tobacco card...

Gather around collectors and listen to a story about a card collector named Shane. Shane contacted me about a month ago and asked me whether I'd be interested in a trade. He had traded with a couple of bloggers , and I had noticed their enthusiastic response to the cards they received, so I gave it try. Damn glad I did, too. What follows is not the greatest card package I ever received. But it is in the top 5, easily. Shane has a crazy eye for detail as you'll soon see. He hit virtually every collecting interest that I have. The package started out with some cool random stuff like this 1982 O-Pee- Chee card of Fernando Valenzuela, who was a " Etoile de la L.N." in 1981. And there was one of the eleventy billion combo cards featuring Russell Martin. At the last minute Shane added a member of the Nebulous 9 to the package. Jim Tracy's stay on the nebulous list was mercifully brief. Then Shane moved on to set-building needs. He's a set-builder himself, s...