Night Owl Cards

  Fifty years ago today, Major League Baseball played the All-Star Game in Milwaukee. The National League won, 6-3 (yay!). Bill Madlock and Jon Matlack shared the MVP award. (Reggie Jackson went 1-for-3).   At the break, the Dodgers had played 92 games or 56.8% of their schedule. This season -- 50 years later -- the Dodgers reached the All-Star break having played 97 games or 59.9%. Yet I read a social media complaint just a week or two ago about how the All-Star Game -- the supposed "midsummer classic" -- takes place too late because more than half of the season has passed.   The All-Star Game hasn't shown up at the halfway point of the season in a very long time. (And we're not even close to halfway through summer).   The ASG regularly pops up on either the second or third Tuesday of July. It's been that way for decades. It doesn't matter when the season starts, or how many games have been played, the second or third Tuesday of July is when the ASG exists.  ...

  Another monthly card show has come and gone.   I was surprised it was that time again. I had scrambled the dates and thought it wasn't for another two weeks and didn't realize it was today until yesterday! I had planned on not doing anything today, but I guess I'll get out of bed for a show!   It's a real life of leisure around here, knowing that there's a show to go to every month. I took my time getting there this time. I didn't have a lot of money (it was supposed to be in two weeks!) and there were other things to do.   I showed up with about two hours left in the show, just enough time to visit two of my regular tables, and see what they had.    A couple of 1969 Topps needs crossed off the list. I had been eyeing the Lee May card online for a couple of weeks but gave up after it was swiped from my ebay cart. Good thing though, because I could buy it for less here! It's an off-center beauty, just like '69 Topps should be.   The Gary Wagner is one...

  I've been meaning to follow up on a couple of posts and the longer I've waited, the more follow-ups I've added. I'll write about all of them now, but I'll try to keep it from going on for too long (not that I've cared about that in the past!)   Starting with the card show I went to last weekend, I mentioned on that post that I had acquired the 1967 Topps Carl Yastrzemski card, which allowed me to replicate the 1975 Topps '67 MVPs card that shows the Yaz card and the Orlando Cepeda card side by side.      Like so. But I didn't realize at the time that I had picked up another card at that same show that allowed me to complete another MVP card in that same subset. It's the 1969 MVPs card.   And here they are: I had the Killebrew card already and got the McCovey card last week. Not sure how I missed that. Completing these two MVP card matches made me go through the whole subset run to see what I had finished already. I have all the cards that make up ...

(The 10th anniversary giveaway is essentially at its end. We're down to the 2010 Topps short-print Cy Young card and the 2017 Topps short-print Jackie Robinson card as prizes. The next selection goes to mr haverkamp. The card he doesn't choose will go to Sport Card Collectors. If either or both declines to pick, the choice then goes to Bru and after that, Fuji. I probably won't string it along forever though, so somebody claim those cards! It's time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 276th in series): Those of you who started collecting as kids probably remember the year you started and the first set you ever pulled out of packs. Those sets are near-and-dear to your hearts. I know they are to mine. You can't convince me that the 1975 Topps set wasn't the greatest set ever created. But for those same kids there were other cards, older cards, that floated in and out of your collection. Maybe they were cards of an older brother or sister. Maybe the ki...

A year ago, I was never madder at a card product than I was at Archives. A product that I had always viewed as a disjointed disappointment full of unfulfilled promise had committed the almost unforgivable act -- short-printing some of its own base cards so severely that it was nearly impossible to complete the set without spending more money than is reasonably expected to complete a modern set. It wasn't much of a deterrent for me because I never try to complete Archives (still, it was the principle of the thing). It's a jumble of 3 or 4 different past designs that makes for an odd completed puzzle. It's a disconnect for my senses and seeing it either compartmentalized by design every 40 cards or so, or a jumble of just those three/four designs would give me a headache if I were to see it in a binder. So I simply try to get the Dodgers each year. Yet, it's 2016 now and I'm still lacking two Dodgers from last year's base set. One is the Jackie Robinson car...