Night Owl Cards

I received these 1992 gold parallel Dodgers from Johngy of Johngy's Beat the other day. Every time I get one these early '90s gold cards, it strikes me how elite they were back then ... and how cheesy they look now. Personally, I never liked them. Not even in 1992. But I certainly did appreciate how coveted they were at the time, and when I pulled one, it was about as close as I had come to being Charlie when he pulled the golden ticket. It's for that reason that I'm still trying to complete the gold parallel Dodger sets from this time period -- in homage to the folks who thought these were the most fantastic cards ever, and ... oh, hell, that's not really the reason. It's because I'm an irrational completist. Gold foil is the No. 2 thing that I wish Topps would scrap, behind whatever card stock it has been using for cards the last 20 years. I will never give these '92 and '93 foil-stamped cards a pass for what they spawned all these yea...

The design for 2013 Topps is a very obvious one. It's a stylized baseball diamond, accented with the swooshes that the Topps design team has enjoyed rolling out the last several years. It's simple, it's effective, it's one of the best-looking designs on a Topps card in a long time. But now it's time to name it. Do we just call it "The Baseball Diamond Set" and be done with it? Or should we refine it more and distinguish it from some other set that incorporated a baseball diamond in its design? Or we could go in a completely different direction and vote for my recent obsession that the design looks like a sea turtle (and in the case of horizontal cards, it has one really, really, really loooong flipper). So mull that over for a little bit and get back to me in the comments, if you wish. While you're doing that, let's go back 20 years and look at the sets from 1993. Yes, the sets from 1993 are now 20 years old. Come join me in old ag...

(Happy birthday to The Simpsons. On this date in 1987, the Simpsons debuted on the Tracey Ullman Show as short lead-ins to commercial. Twenty-five years later, Homer, Marge and Bart are still cracking wise, although I stopped watching around 1993. Speaking of '93, it's Cardboard Appreciation time. This is the 139th in a series): No one wants to admit that they need 1993 Donruss. It's a sign of weakness. A desperate plea that could lead to derision. It's like this: You've started a new job. The manager shows you around and fills you in on the procedures and rituals of the position. You learn the computer system. You meet your co-workers. You figure out where the bathrooms are, the cafeteria, the snack machine. You know where to park, how to answer the phone, who to go to for a problem. Months go by. Years go by. You're now a veteran of the company. You're showing other people how to do their jobs. People come to you with their problems and you ...

Ah, the perils of gold foil. There's no use in making the letters all fancy and shiny if nobody can READ them! Isn't that right, 2008 Upper Deck? Actually, this is 1993 Donruss, but you can see by UD's base set offering this past year that someone hasn't learned much in 15 years. In defense of the '93 card, gold-foil technology (which is a smidge behind micro-laser brain surgery technology on the world-wide criticalness factor scale) was in its infancy. That gold pixie dust, or whatever they used back then, was bound to fade. But I guess no one thought of that. In case you've never seen this card, it's a Spirit of the Game subset card from the Donruss base set. "Spirit of the Game" is written in script at the top (if you look at Kevin Gross' glove you can see it). And "Donruss" is in the bottom right corner. This card commemorates the no-hitter that Kevin Gross threw against the Giants while with the Dodgers on Aug. 18, 1992. Gross w...