Night Owl Cards

  The theme for this post might be a bit out of date considering the crazy prices some previously commonly available cards are going for in the year 2022. But before the last year or two, I separated hard-to-find, too-expensive cards into two categories: the ones where I understood the reasons for their elusiveness and the ones where I didn't. I get why '50s and '60s rookie cards of future stars and Hall of Famers are elusive and expensive. I get why high-number cards from the '60s and '70s are, too. Same with short-prints from the last couple of decades. They just aren't that plentiful and the card is usually a star player. But there are a few famous examples of expensive, high-demand cards that I've never fully grasped the reasons for the prices charged. The 2011 Update Mike Trout is one of them. I've repeated myself on this numerous times. The best argument for me questioning the price and exclusivity of this card is that someone like little ol' m...

Recently, I hopped online and purchased a few key items with some of my magazine-writing money and they're starting to arrive at my home now. I'll probably lump the other purchases in together, but I wanted to reserve this one for a post of its own because of how much it means to me. The 1977 Renata Galasso 45-card set -- what would become a full 270-card set and issued all the way into the mid-1980s -- may not look like much on its face. The cards aren't valuable. The design takes its inspiration from 1960 Leaf, a rather unpopular set. All of the photos are black and white. And it wasn't issued by Topps or any other major card company. None of this mattered to me when I first saw them advertised in the pages of Baseball Digest in 1978 (a subscription to Baseball Digest first started coming to our home in 1977 but I don't believe the ads started appearing until 1978 Topps hit the streets). My only thought was "my goodness, these are cool. I NEED TH...