Night Owl Cards

(Welcome to what's annually my favorite week of the year, a week where all the things I like converge within seven glorious days. Maybe we'll get into more of why that is -- and why it's not as great as it once was -- as the week goes on. But for now it's Vacation Time! Oh, and Cardboard Appreciation time, too. This is the 372nd in a series):   One of the benefits of playing the Topps card game over on Bluesky that I mentioned earlier is that I come across cards I never noticed all the time.   Most of these cards are either from the 1960s, 1990s or some part of the early 2000s, i.e., times when I wasn't collecting. In 1994, in particular, I was pulling away from the hobby and bought a handful of Topps packs before deciding I wasn't into it anymore.   I never saw this Kevin Wickander card. But when I saw it in an online image a few weeks ago, I immediately purchased a real one for my collection.   What is it that makes cards like this so appealing?   Well, for st...

The 1981 Topps set is known for a lot of things. The set with the tiny caps in the left-hand corner. The set with the first real traded set. The set with the first significant competition for Topps in decades. It has personal interest for me, too. The first appearance of Fernando Valenzuela. The most colorful borders since the 1975 set. The avatar for my Twitter page . But there is one defining aspect of this set that I don't think I've seen mentioned on the blogs. The set is filled with photos of players hanging out in and around the dugout. I just went through my 1981 set and counted 47 separate cards in which a player was either sitting in the dugout, standing in the dugout or, like Al Williams here, just outside of the dugout. It's probable that there are more than 47 dugout photos in the set. I went only with the ones where I could be fairly certain that a dugout was involved. I don't know if that's a record for a set. I seem to remember some of ...

(Welcome to Cardboard Appreciation Week. What does that mean? Well, it means a few things. But all you need to know is you can come to Night Owl Cards every day this week for your fix of Cardboard Appreciation. Every 24 hours, a new card to analyze, dissect and ponder until you wonder if there is anything else more important in life. And, now, time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 147th in a series): The dugout is as distinctly baseball as a bat and ball. It is one of the first things that appealed to me about the sport. It is the only sporting structure that I can think of -- aside from an enclosed stadium or gymnasium  -- that has a roof. It's a little house on the field! God, I loved that as a kid. Other sports have such depressing areas for their non-participating players. Football players stand on a sideline. There are a few benches hidden behind all the mammoth standing players. But mostly you stand, and hope no one runs into you. Basketball has folding ch...