Night Owl Cards

  As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I have an article in the newest Beckett Vintage Collector magazine, which is the October-November issue. It should be on store magazine stands soon if not already.   I also mentioned that the article is about those famous "missing players" from Topps sets, those players active at the time when Topps issued a set without them. Virtually all of those cases came about because Topps and the player did not have an agreement.     I tried to find as many examples of these as I could. I've heard many of them before. The Bowman-Topps feuds that left players like Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella out of one set or the other. The famed Maury Wills absence from Topps sets until 1967. Rusty Staub and Mike Marshall in the '70s and more recent cases like Barry Bonds and Ichiro.   There were a lot more players who had licensing conflicts with Topps than I thought. Some of the lesser-known players...

  There is, without a doubt, a cartoon gene that runs through my family.   I'm not sure how far back it goes or who had artistic talent even a couple of generations ago. My mom liked to create art, greeting cards and pottery and stuff like that. But that's about all I know.   But my brother and I loved drawing and especially cartoons. We both drew our own cartoons when the mood struck us. My brother, in particular, caught the cartooning bug, even attending an early evening cartooning class for a few months. Both of us can still draw, although I don't think either of us does that much anymore.   This also explains my daughter's love for art as it pertains to drawing and graphics and it's now her profession.   There is something very old-school about appreciating the art of cartoons and drawing. (A few weeks ago, a co-worker who is not even in his mid-20s, when a few older fellow employees were mourning the disappearance of few too-expensive comics in the newspape...