Night Owl Cards

   Like several other bloggers I received a nice care package from Bob of the best bubble a couple of weeks ago.   I'm just getting to it because -- yes, life has reared its ugly head again. But also it took me a number of days to figure out exactly what I had once I spilled the contents. Lots of oddball stuff and other items I don't come across every day.   I'll separate these into "STUFF I KNOW," "STUFF I FIGURED OUT" and "STUFF I STILL DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS".     * STUFF I KNOW*   Yes, I know this is a 1996 Finest card. I have it already. But I've suckered myself into collecting both the cards with the coating intact and the ones with it removed. I need help.     A 2013 Gypsy Queen mini of former Dodgers reliever Paco Rodriguez. 2013 was the year for Paco Rodriguez cards. Rodriguez last pitched in the majors 11 years ago and he's now 35. We're all old.       Another Dover reprint card for the collection of one of my pre-war...

The ultimate reward for a miscut card is that I treat it as its own distinct card. This doesn't always happen. I'm not a collector of miscuts, so often the card will end up in the dupes pile or (*gasp* *how could you?*) in the trash. For a miscut card to avoid that fate, it needs to provide something interesting outside of it being a mere cutting mistake. Enter this 1982 Topps card of Fernando Valenzuela sent to me by Bru .    It looks nice and normal on the front, a familiar shot of the first solo base card of Valenzuela that Topps had produced. Perhaps that alone would disqualify the card from being a distinct miscut. There is nothing about the front that tells you that there's something different. Oh, but the back: That is two separate players on the back of that card, and neither one of them is Valenzuela! In fact, there's more about Hal McRae and Reggie Jackson on the back of this card than Fernando. Even better (or worse) is that Valenzuela is carting around on th...

  I'm not sure how coherent this post will be. I'm writing it while also trying to write a story for work on my day off, while on virtually no sleep, while being informed my car is dead for good, while it's 86 degrees inside . But I must show off the greatest miscut card I've ever seen in person before life finally finishes me off.   Here: This is a Dodgers card, no? This piece of cultural significance arrived from Corey, that well-known Tim Wallach collecto r . I don't know where he found it. It is such a perfect miscut card in every way -- notable '70s cult figure, Dodgers team name firmly intact, Mr. Gamble's photo entirely intact. You know this is going in my Dodgers binders, right? It's proof that Gamble played for the Dodgers. The back harbors goodness as well. You get all of Gamble's statistical history along with the beginnings of a second cartoon at the bottom. That's the comic for the Dodger who shares the card with Gamble. And I'd ...