Night Owl Cards

  I've been tired of the emphasis on the rookie card in Topps products for years. I don't know how many posts I've devoted to rookie-overkill, but it's certainly a running theme and I'm sure it's boring some readers to tears.   I do know that Topps, and the hobby, has been about rookies, and young players in general, for a long, long time. I'm thinking of the Sporting News Rookie Stars subset in 1959 Topps and similar themes that came after, followed by the multi-player rookie card themes throughout the 1960s, '70s and early '80s.   Then there are the rookie trophies and rookie cups, the All-Topps teams. Those have been around for quite awhile, since 1960!   But obviously the focus is on those youngsters even more these days and you could point to various moments all the way to the present in which Topps (or other card companies) ramped up that focus, through special subsets, inserts, autograph cards, short-prints, etc.   Today I'm pointing at 19...

    The biggest of the blog projects I have been working on has involved several sheets of paper, a long period of malaise and staring at way too many Dee Brown mug shots. Almost six months ago, Gummy Arts, that well-known Twitter card artist, posted his interpretation of the 1981 Topps Pirates Future Stars card. Here's that tweet: It was a reference to just Tony Pena, but, of course, we diehard card collectors know this card means much more than Pena. The following conversation: Ah, yes, I smelled a project. It was something I had wondered for quite some time. Which of those multi-player prospects cards, those two- and three- and four- and sometimes-even-five rookie stars/future stars displayed the greatest firepower? Which displayed the starriest stars, when all of the players featured had finished their careers? And how did all of them stack up with each other? So I went a hunting. For months. I had no idea there were so many multi-player prospects cards. I should have know...