Night Owl Cards

(Today I bought some cards in the card aisle for the first time in 3 weeks. It was just a 3-pack of Chrome -- with the 5 pink parallels -- and the guy at the checkout asked if they put gum with cards anymore. I said, no, not really. He said his brother used to buy "old 40-year-old packs" with gum in them and eat the gum. I didn't ask him if his brother was still alive. It's time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 273rd in a series): In 1992, Pinnacle arrived onto the baseball card scene with a sleek, slick first set that framed its players in midnight black. I didn't like much about cards in 1992, but I did like Pinnacle. Pinnacle also featured an interesting subset that year called "Idols". This set -- similar in look to Topps' sets of the mid-1950s -- displayed a pair of photos, a smaller color action photo of the current player and a larger, sepia-toned image of the player's idol. (There was also an "Idols" insert set tha...

A little while ago, The Dutch Card Guy held a contest with the top prize being a super fancy tricked-out Clayton Kershaw card. To boost your chances of winning you could comment on as many posts on the blog as you wanted. I'm kind of known for being a collector of Kershaws and I once commented on Play At The Plate's blog for a similar such contest around 140 times in one weekend (I was a little bored). So I thought it was the perfect marriage -- obtaining a card of my favorite player through something that had won me cards one other time. I signed up. And started commenting ... only to realize: A) I was too busy to do this. B) Other people were commenting a lot more than I was There are so many more Kershaw collectors out there than there were when I first started collecting him five years ago. So, I gave up and assumed that was a lost cause. But I was only partly right. Sure, getting the Kershaw card didn't happen. But I finished second or third (I don...

First a note about the latest "Define the Design" post. I said it was going to be a toughy, didn't I? No one really came up with an ideal description for the 1990 Upper Deck set -- probably because it is "the most boringest boring bore of boredom set," to partially quote dayf. So, for now, I'm going with my "green-and-gold racing stripe set" definition on the sidebar. If anyone comes up with something better, let me know. But you won't win cards for it now. As for the 1991 Upper Deck set, a few people came up with a similar definition that works pretty well. The design seems to suggest the path from second base to home plate. The person who came up with that first is David from Topps Tribe . I'll be using his "Score From Second" description in the "Define the Design" sidebar, and he wins a stack of '91 Upper Deck cards! David, email me your address, and I'll send you some 2009 Upper Deck as well. OK, speakin...

"The Final Unveiling," is a little grandiose, but I'm sure it was good enough for the subtitle of some horror movie sequel at some point. This is where I open the 15 packs of 1993 Upper Deck, Series Two that I kept from the hobby box bought at the card show last month (the spent cluster of wrappers up top are all that remains from that box). You might remember I gave 15 other packs away to Andy of the '88 and ' 78 card blogs for being the winner in my contest. The remaining six went to Chris Harris. Chris opened his on A Pack a Day TV, which you can see here . Not a bad six pack but a few too many doubles. I haven't heard what Andy found in his packs, but I know he received them. So now that everyone has their packs, it's safe to open mine. A warning: opening 15 packs with 15 cards each makes for a looooooooong post, so I'll keep the comments to a minimum. If Andy has a short attention span, he might want to fast forward to Pack 12. There's some...