Night Owl Cards

(It's halfway through December and I've managed to add only 16 cards to my collection this month according to TCDB. I haven't added less than 300 cards in any month out of the year. Christmas better come through! Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 346th in a series): This is an error card that doesn't seem to get much attention in the history of error cards. Although I have a feeling if this card came out in the 1980s, everyone would be all about it. 1970s fans know right away what the error is. That is NOT Milt May. Milt May, for the uninitiated, was a fairly good-hitting catcher. He was also a white ball player. The photo is of Lee May, a black slugging first baseman. It's fairly obvious once you examine all the details that this particular card was intended for Milt May and not Lee May. The other tip-offs: The back of the same card, No. 35, contains nothing but Milt May information, all his correct vitals and statistics and, oh yeah, his full name. The ...

(Hello, after a couple days away, which usually means I've been out of town, but in this case it's because my city ran out of water due to a massive water main break and, yes, I do live in Watertown, and I've heard all of your "No Water Town" jokes. The lack of water wasn't nearly as taxing and time-consuming as the reaction to the lack of water. So, anyway, I'm back, a little scruffy, but ready to post again. It's time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 327th in a series).   Some time ago, probably more recently than I'm willing to admit because recent discoveries fall out of my head more and more quickly these days, I came across this card and found out for the first time that the photo is not Dave Collins.   I don't know why it took me so long to know that. I usually have every factoid about 1970s baseball cards on file in the noggin, ready to dispense at any moment. But the consensus is that the photo is actually of someone named Bob ...

(I am posting this during the time of the NFL Draft, which probably isn't a wise programming move. Even though we will play up this event in the newspaper, I still can't figure out why people get so excited about the draft. It is bizarre that fans set aside time to watch people sit around and make picks. But then second-guessing has become a full-time online industry so I suppose it makes sense. This is Cardboard Appreciation and this is the 281st in a series): I'm sure many of you have seen the Yahoo series "Old Baseball Cards," hosted by Mike Oz, on youtube or maybe on the Yahoo Sports site. It's an interesting few minutes of Oz and a notable baseball player or manager opening packs of baseball cards from the '80s or '90s and then they trade some cards. You aren't going to learn a lot about cards -- I sometimes get annoyed by how little the player and Oz know about the packs and the cards they're opening, but then they don't run a ...

The percentage of times that the wrong player has appeared on a baseball card is remarkably small. It's actually admirable -- when you look into it -- that baseball card manufacturers have avoided the gaffe of featuring a card of a player with a photo of someone else as easily as they have. Speaking as someone who is forever coming across (or being notified of) misidentified players in photo captions in his line of work, I don't know how the card companies, particularly Topps, do it. It can't be easy. It happens so seldom that when the goof is made, it becomes so famous that most collectors are very familiar with it. The card above is a rarity: I had no idea it was an error until I started researching this post. I have had this 1982 Donruss card of "Shane Rawley" in my collection since 1982. I didn't suspect a thing. Who can tell 1980s Mariners apart anyway? But I probably should have had my doubts. Rawley's uniform is dirty, like he had been sl...

I finally made it through all 36 packs of the 1989 Fleer box that I received from Johnny's Trading Spot . At 540 cards in the box, obviously I didn't complete the set from those packs since it's 660 cards in total. I'll have to see if it's complete once I add the many '89 Fleer cards already in my collection. The collation was quite good -- this is pre-1990s after all -- absolutely no doubles and just about all the big names of the day. But I don't know why I'm telling you all that boring set-builder stuff because all you want to know is: what errors did I pull??? I'm right on the same page with you. I found myself immediately searching for errors as I was opening the packs. With no real attachment to the set this was what was getting me through 36 packs. I went to Trading Card Database for a list of 1989 Fleer errors and took note: That's a bunch of them. The vast majority of these contain errors on the back. The most famous ...