Night Owl Cards

  I mailed some cards today!!!! Yay me! I knew the way to the post office and everything! I got in line like a big boy and Mr. Post Office Guy recognized me! Little ol' me! Who hadn't been there in at least a month! Heh. So, some card packages are finally out. I didn't get to all of the ones on my desk because let's not get crazy here. The bank account needs to start getting used to double digits. But I feel a little re-energized now that I'm back to transacting like a properly functioning card collector. I feel so good about it that I'm going to show some cards from someone who is still on the IOU list, guilt-free! These cards are from Chris from Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz. I found out he had some 1972 Topps just sitting around and I couldn't stop bothering him after that. But before you see those, let's see some lesser cards. Chris sent several 2008 Heritage High Numbers cards and I totally forgot I was collecting this. B...

A couple of months ago, I was wandering through some online images of cards when I came across the one you see here. It's a 1964 Topps card of Tom Haller, posing how catchers posed back in '64. I had never seen this card before, but I had definitely seen the image before. I had owned the 1969 Topps Tom Haller card since I was a teenager, and I recognized the pose right away. I had also known that Haller was wearing a Giants uniform on the '69 card, but passed it off as that thing that Topps did back then. Haller last played for the Giants in 1967, they probably couldn't get a photo of Haller as a Dodger, even though he played the entire '68 season with the Dodgers. Little did I know that the photo was at least five years old. That would have been much more amusing. There are a few other examples of old, old photos in the '69 set, but I could never figure out why they did this, and it's kept me from fully enjoying this set. Recently, I read an...

I know, I know, I said we'd stay in the 1960s for awhile. But, I'll let you in on a little secret. The card back countdown isn't set in stone. Although there is a basic layout and plan, the individual pieces shift around a bit. There is a lot of fine-tuning going on! Besides, I consider the 1970 Topps set to be part of the '60s. Although the gray borders were completely different from what a lot collectors knew at the time, and signaled a new decade in collecting, the backs were similar to a lot of the 1960s Topps cards. No, Alex Rodriguez is "rich." Card backs in the '60s contained bright colors, and Topps extended that trend one more year with the 1970 set, before entering the "dark-colors card back era" for the rest of the decade. The 1970 card back is certainly bright, one of the brightest around. It would fit very well with the 1972 or 1975 Topps sets. But Topps chose to pair it up with one of the duller card fronts that it would...