Night Owl Cards

  Twice a year I run through my doubles for that particular year's card products and pull any night cards that could find a spot in my night card binder.   I do that in the spring and then again in the fall when I'm filing away the cards for the year.   It's time for the first go-round for 2025 cards, the few that I have. As I've mentioned many times in the last 5-10 years, night cards aren't as fun these days because Topps crops cards too close and you rarely get to see the best elements of a traditional night card -- stadium lights, neon advertising, etc.   But I press on, because there are still empty slots ... many, many empty slots!   Here are the 2025 cards that make the binder so far:   117 - Orlando Arcia, 2025 Heritage   Fills an empty slot! Very exciting.     81 - Twins, set checklist, 2025 Topps   No-brainer, one of the most distinctive cards in flagship this year. Stadium lights and even a lit-up scoreboard! This card replace...

  Since finding night cards in current product isn't as fun as it used to be, I don't look for them more than a couple times a year. Usually it's at the start of the card season and at the end of it, although the season never really ends. So, let's say I look for them when Topps flagship comes out in February and then again when I'm stuffing those cards in a box around October/November. The 2023 cards are like the 2022 cards, which were like the 2021 cards, which were like the 2020, etc., etc. It's close cropping on the main subject so you can't pick up on any ballpark atmosphere. Boring cards, basically. Determining whether a player is photographed in a day or a night setting comes down to the lighting in the photo in most cases.   These are all night cards, and so is Riley Greene above. You won't find a light in any of the photos, except for the scoreboard lights behind Brandon Marsh, but the darkened setting is a tip off. All you got to do is compare ...

  Topps released its Update set last week and in my customary fashion of the last few years, I absolutely did not rush to Target to see if I could find some.   This time of the year is for putting away the year's cards, not for adding more of them. Boxing up the current year's cards that have been on display in my card room since last winter has been the late October/early November tradition around here for quite awhile.   I usually put away the brands I know I won't buy the rest of the year first and then Topps flagship is the last to be filed (what to do with this year's very late arrivals, Allen & Ginter and Stadium Club? Well, if I get any, they'll probably go straight to the box).    I ended up with 253 cards in the 2022 flagship set, which is around 38 percent. Thirty-eight percent is the definition of Casually Collecting A Set. I've been so casual about it that as I was boxing them up, I realized I hadn't looked for night cards from the set. I...

I'm hoping that this is the last post in the 10th Anniversary Giveaway, although I'm probably going to need at least one more. I've enjoyed throwing the giveaway, but it hijacks the blog and limits what you can do. For example, I am soooooo far behind in acknowledging recent packages I've received. I can't be one of those bloggers who just ignores cards arriving freely at the homestead, so this giveaway is making me a bit jumpy. One package of cards that I absolutely must jam into this giveaway is the big box of cards from Johnny's Trading Spot that I've mentioned in several posts. I'm still not done with that because I haven't shown all the Dodgers that I needed from that package. And I haven't shown this night card from the package either. Remember when the Rockies played in Miller High Stadium? Yeah, I forgot about that, too. I didn't even know that the stadium was demolished a full 16 years ago. But the Rockies are easy to forge...

The Awesome Night Card series has slipped from a once-a-week staple to once-a-month to "has it really been five months since I've done one of these?" The future doesn't look good for the ANC series. It will always be a part of the rotation, because I'm still collecting night cards and you never know when one will suddenly strike my fancy so forcefully that I will be required to post it. But the days of seeing an ANC post even once a month are gone. And, you know, I think that's OK. I just don't have a lot to say anymore on today's ballplayers -- the primary topic of most night cards -- and could use a break in stressing my mind trying to "stay relevant" in the baseball world. I'll bet Josh Hamilton could say the same thing. He hasn't played since 2015. I just read a story in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that said Hamilton was supposed to show up for some Hall of Fame festivities down in Arlington this weekend, but he called ...

The last time I wrote a post, I led off with a Nolan Ryan card. The last time I wrote an Awesome Night Card post, the topic was no-hitters . And I'm showing a card I received from Johnny's Trading Spot for the second post in a row. I can repeat myself with the best of them. I'm showing this card basically because I've never seen it before and I am fascinated with it, mostly because it's taken me so long to find this particular night card. It contains a lot of things that I love in a card. It captures a moment in time -- Nolan Ryan's sixth no-hitter on June 11, 1990 against the A's. It shows a salute to the fans, a tip of the cap. It comes from that time when satin jackets were the height of cool. You can also see a scoreboard in the distance and that's awesome. And, of course, it all happened at night. The only dorky part is the lettering on the photo that says "No Hit KING". I don't know why "king" is all in caps and...

This is my favorite card recognizing a Dodger no-hitter. Donruss also put one out of Kevin Gross in its 1993 set, but it scans like crap, and the Score one lays it all out for you. Who, what, when, where. It's there. With the first no-hitter of the season pitched last night (yes, I was working and thank goodness for earlier Saturday start times on the west coast), I looked back on which cards I have that recognize Dodgers no-hitters. There aren't a lot of them. If you pitched a no-hitter before the 1990s, good luck, unless you're Sandy Koufax. Really, the boom in no-hitter cards, recognizing personal achievement on the field, was in the '90s. Score, again, brought it to the forefront with its marvelous no-hitter subset , acknowledging the surge in no-hitters during the 1990 season. The Kevin Gross card followed two years later. The next Dodgers no-hitter happened in July of 1995 when Ramon Martinez pitched one against the Marlins. This is what I have t...