Night Owl Cards

I am not as obsessive about variation and error cards as some collectors, particularly when it comes to the minute "errors" that people chase with cards from the '80s. Even with some of the larger differences, I can't be bothered. It's kind of like: if it wasn't common knowledge when I was collecting then it doesn't matter. I knew about "blackless" 1982 Topps cards before I started reading card blogs, but it wasn't much earlier than that. I barely gave it a thought. In fact, to show you how much I paid attention, I thought people were referring to cards that were "backless" . OK, hold on ... There we go. But I must admit the first image is what popped into my head first. I thought "backless" because what the heck is "blackless"? That's not even a word! I don't know who first started referring to those 1982 Topps variations in that way, but the nickname stuck. And now it is common knowledge and there are a...

There is something about this card that a lot of collectors don't like. When I first heard about what they didn't like about it, I was baffled. I never gave something like that a thought. I was a bit offended, too, because I always liked what they didn't like. And so we're at a variation of that fun quarantine game of "Things You Like But I Don't" with "Things I Like But You Don't". I thought of doing the "things you like but I don't" list but, quite frankly, it's too easy. And I've covered much of it in past blog posts. I'm quite the contrarian and I don't mind pointing out that I don't care for what the masses like, and so I've done so many, many times. Trying to find 10 things I like that you don't is a bit more challenging. That's mostly because in the collecting world you can always find someone who likes something, no matter how wildly unpopular. So, even though I came up with...

The facsimile signature -- the replicated autograph of a major league player on a baseball card -- was a fact of life for me as a young collector. Facsimile autographs appeared on just about every card in the first set I ever collected, 1975 Topps. I didn't give it much thought. But I think somewhere in my collecting subconscious I liked them, because those signings -- even if they weren't real signings -- seemed to symbolize the stamp of approval from the player pictured. "Yeah, this is me. I'm signing off on it." Those facsimile signings didn't appear on every Topps set I collected as a kid, but they appeared on them often enough that it was a constant in collecting for someone my age, just like vibrant designs and cartoons on the back. They were an ever present aspect of card collecting. Those facsimile days are gone. Looong gone. They were so long ago that I never hear the term "facsimile signature" used by anyone but me. For a long time...