Night Owl Cards

In general, I try to avoid cards with flaws. I'm not into grading so I'm not obsessed with centering, etc., but I do like cards with as few flaws as possible.   I definitely try to skip cards with creases or ones that are written on or drawn upon. Any card that has been altered by something other than good old wear, I try to avoid. But there is one well-known flaw that really doesn't bother me that much. In fact, when I realize a card has it -- because sometimes it's tough to tell -- I get a fuzzy nostalgic feeling.     This card has it. Do you know what it is? I was going through my 1979 Topps football extras to send to Cardboard Junkie in a deal when a slight touch of the card gave me that rush. If you look carefully at Steve DeBerg's back elbow, the arm holding the football, you can spot it.   It's the gum stain. For me, it's the most innocent card stain there is. Normally, me and stains on cards are mortal enemies. I can't stand seeing them, I've...

I am focusing on several card pursuits at once, per usual, and I hate how I drop one after a single purchase or two because my head turns for some hot "young" card thing (it's usually not "young," it's usually vintage). This is why I go so long between completing card sets.   So, I tried to focus on the 1969 Topps chase for a little while and did well enough to get through about three purchases, but then I got distracted by 1975 Hostess, which I felt like I was neglecting, so -- wham -- I placed some cash down on that the other day. But that was after vowing to get back into finishing the 1971 Laughlin World Series set, which I promptly dropped to get this:   Say hello to Harold Reese in all of his weathered glory. This is from 1950 Bowman, and I guess I can forgive myself for going off on a collecting tangent here.   I want to try to get some of the other 1950s Bowman Brooklyn Dodgers sets complete, or as complete as I can. But the only way for me to do th...

I've written many times that I discard most of my rules for condition for a card from the 1950s or earlier. If I have a shot at getting a card from at least 70 years ago, I will not care if the corners are rounded, that there are a few creases, that it shows wear as a card like that should . (But I'll usually veer away from old cards that are stained or drawn on).   But those relaxed rules don't apply to most of the cards in my collection. Anything from the 1970s forward better be in tip-top shape. If it isn't, I'm probably going to upgrade it at some point.   But what about those cards between, say the mid-1950s through 1969? Where am I drawing the line?   I never thought about that until I acquired card #1 in the 1963 Topps set. It showed up yesterday.   This card has long been a Dodger need for the 1963 Topps set. It's fallen under the radar -- for years -- because 1) There are five rookie cards from this set with Dodgers on them that I still need and a coupl...

Email malfunctioning is forcing me to write and publish this on my phone. Let's see how this goes. About a week ago I completed the 1990 Swell set thanks to an envelope from Jeff at Cardboard Catastrophes . He had the last 9 cards I needed. That's eight, I know, the 9th is the Mickey Lolich. This set of 135 cards was pretty easy to finish, and as I mentioned in a previous post, these are much easier to land than the '89 or '91 Swell cards ... at least they're offered up a lot more often in TCDB swaps. This is also probably the first set completion that I can attribute greatly to TCDB deals. I know before I was trading on there, I didn't think I needed TCDB's trade function. I can still manage without it, but TCDB trades seem ideal for low-hanging fruit like '90 Swell. That's gonna be the theme of 2023 as far as set completion, finishing off those low-hangers, because all the big-boy bill-flashers are keeping the vintage sets I...

  I am currently collecting a bunch of sets where I need to think about card condition. That's not a concern with modern cards most of the time (although graded-card collectors give themselves extra things to worry about). Pulling cards out of a pack and adding them directly to a binder is one of the great, overlooked benefits of current cards. The problem is finding a current set worthy of a binder. But with vintage stuff, I'm always on the lookout. I can't be one of those collectors who isn't bothered by moldy, drowned, regurgitated old cards (pre-1950s excluded, of course). I have some standards. For example, I just received a bunch of 1970 Topps cards from Don, a former blogger who I connected with through Twitter (I have his cards ready to go, just need packaging and mailing time). I don't know what it is about 1970 Topps but ever since I started collecting the set, the condition of the cards has been all over the place, much more so than any set from around t...

(Greetings. I am lucky enough that no one in my family must be memorialized during this holiday weekend. But, my dad, who served in the Air Force, once parachuted out of a flaming KB-50 tanker plane just before it crashed and exploded in Louisiana. So that's how close I came to never being born. Thanks to all who served and didn't make it back alive. It's time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 303rd in a series): Fifty years ago, Curt Flood walked away from his job with the Washington Senators and never came back. He was done fighting, done with the abuse. Baseball had broken him and at age 33, he was, according to a former teammate in this article , "the saddest person he had ever met or seen." There are so many Black men from the '40s, '50s, 60s and '70s that carried the weight of the world around with them, enduring every righteous accusation, every racist rationalization that their vast population of opponents could hurl at them, all in the a...

This was the scene outside in my backyard a couple of hours ago. It pretty much looks this way still, except the roads are plowed out a little, enough for me to get to work. We received more than two feet of snow in a 12-hour period overnight and this morning. It makes the thought of "maybe I'll head over to Target and see if there's any 2020 Heritage" a ridiculous one. Obviously I won't be doing that until Monday at the earliest. There's really not much to do around here when the weather is like this. Once shoveling and inside "responsibilities" are finished, I'm down to either playing with my cards or going online to see what other people are doing with cards. It's that second part that gets me in trouble -- or, more accurately, gets me irked. It's just a little thing really. But it's bothered me for years. It comes up quite frequently and I've heard it more often now that Heritage is out. Twice already, I...

I'm not interested in graded cards or grading my cards. But I sometimes wonder whether I would be if I grew up collecting cards in the late 1980s or after that. There was a certain emphasis placed on card condition that began in the '80s and hasn't let up since then. Before that, collectors didn't care as much about condition. We loved those cards fresh out of a pack, sure, and we tried to keep our very favorites protected however we could in that pre-binder page, pre-top loader era. But, man, rubber bands were all over the place in our hobby back then. Still as a kid, in the back of my mind, I wanted my cards to look nice. I didn't put cards in my wheel spokes. I played "closest to the wall" (when you literally threw cards at the wall) with only commons or players I didn't like. I played with my cards, but not as vigorously as others and I wonder if that's what might've sucked me into grading if I grew up during the Investment Era. ...