Night Owl Cards

  I mentioned when I completed the 1988 Donruss set that it marked the first time I had completed four major sets from a given year.   I don't see that happening for me ever again. After the '80s, it's difficult for me to find multiple sets I was interested in enough to try to complete them. For example, I've completed 1993 Upper Deck, I wouldn't bother throwing money at any other '93 set outside of a token Topps complete-set buy. (I'd take a gift of a complete '93 Stadium Club or Pinnacle set but I'm not buying them).   So '88 is a milestone, a one-of-a-kind collecting feat. I like that it's '88. That's the year the Dodgers won the World Series; it's the year I graduated from college; it's the first full year of my wife and I going out. It's basically the last great year before adulthood stomped everything to hell.   To mark the feat, I thought I'd take 10 notable players from this time and compare their cards from th...

  It's fairly apparent that the world now thinks of the 1980s as "ye olden times." I spent much of the past weekend watching baseball and anyone who grew up in that decade can't help but recognize the 1980s pop songs now passing for commercial jingles. Fleetwood Mac's "Everywhere" is selling Kohl's products, REO Speedwagon's "Can't Fight This Feeling" hawks Tums antacid. This isn't a new phenomenon, it's been going on for years, but it seems rampant now. Businesses are trying to capitalize on the nostalgia factor used so successfully in "Stranger Things," and even people who didn't grow up in the '80s admit that there may have been no other decade with more catchy pop songs than the '80s. How do you explain the retro-appreciation for songs like "Take On Me," "Africa" and "Here I Go Again"? I am proud to have lived through the '80s -- not merely as a kid -- but as a teen...

Sometimes I feel a little sorry for the players whose careers spanned the so-called Junk Wax Era. I don't hold any particular allegiance to that period. Unlike what seems like 75 percent of collectors writing blogs and on Twitter, I did not grow up with cards during this period. The late '80s/early '90s was actually my first return to the hobby. I had collected for 10 whole years before the JWE hit the big-time around '86, '87. But still, my heart goes out to those players whose cards are deemed a mere pittance because card companies couldn't control themselves and issued obscene quantities of cardboard. How would you like it if you put a decade of sweat and toil into a career and decades later your cards are still worth 10 cents apiece? That never happened to dudes from the '50s and '60s. Heck, not even the '70s! People still want their cards and they're willing to put down real live dollars! Simply through bad-timing, these Junk Wax Er...

Everyone knows this card, I presume. It's a famous card from a period when everyone collected cards. It's probably one of the best cards from the 1993 Topps set, and Topps thought enough of it that it made this card No. 200. But I have looked at Kirby and his oversized bat repeatedly over the years, and the first thing I think of is not "get a load of that bat" or "what a great card" or anything like that. The thing I think of is the thing I thought of the first time I pulled this card: "I know I've seen this picture before." It's actually a picture from a Sports Illustrated shoot -- the 1992 baseball preview edition, to be specific, and the cover photo, to be exact. My first thought when I noticed the similarity was "how could Topps do that?" I knew the power of Sports Illustrated and how their photos were the most familiar and interesting sports photos in the world. How could Topps just swipe a photo -- a cover pho...

Every five years or so, Topps comes out with a new Stadium Club product and we are forced to address something that a few of us are loathe to admit: Yep, Topps has still got it. Stadium Club is that rare product in which most collectors can agree: it is one of the best-looking sets available. When Topps focuses on providing the best photographs of the best players, it cannot be beat, at least not while Upper Deck isn't around. I think that when Stadium Club appeared every year, eventually collectors grew immune to its charms. There were so many other companies and sets that were doing the full-bleed thing, Stadium Club didn't stand out anymore. And I think the Stadium Club brand also grew weak. The early aughts was not a good time for SC. I think that's why this format -- Stadium Club popping up every half-decade or so -- works best. We fall for Stadium Club all over again. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. It also helps that Panini is the only thing considere...