Night Owl Cards

 (Hey, fellow Northeasterners, are you enjoying the special edition two-month long March this year? I hear things are going to turn around in a matter of days. I'll believe it when I feel it, but right now there's a freeze warning. Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 369th in a series):   There is no end to the cards that I've read about and promptly forgotten due to my brain's attempt to keep the real important stuff in -- and there's only so much room!   Topps Cards That Never Were mentioned this particular card a couple of weeks ago and I was immediately intrigued. It is one of nine 1992 Topps Pre-Production gold cards, cut off a sample sheet that Topps issued ahead of the 1992 set.   Jeremy wrote that this card leaves out the word "manager" on the front of the card and that was enough for me to think: "I need that card."     Here is the regular 1992 Topps gold Lasorda (such a great card) with "manager" mentioned.     It...

Every so often -- more often than my card-collecting ego would like -- I receive some cards in the mail from a fellow blogger and out spills a card that baffles me. It's usually a card from the 1990s. Because I still don't have a grasp on that decade. But I have an answer for my confusion. I haul out the 2009 Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards (or sometimes pop in the CD, but I admit I remain attached to actual books) and find my answer 99 times out of a 100. Thank goodness the late, great Bob Lemke helped create this invaluable research publication beginning in 1988 (and my late, great mother-in-law purchased the 18th edition for me back in 2010). I would be much less knowledgeable about cards if I didn't own this publication. I'm sure the series will continue without Lemke -- he had stepped down as editor after 2006 anyway -- but you know how things get when the passion behind a project disappears. You wonder how long that enthusiasm will continue with ot...

Since I was so focused on one thing at the card show, I felt like I missed a bunch of stuff that could have fit into my collection. But even though it's a pretty large show and there are plenty of items, from the very old to the very mojo, there are just some things that one doesn't bother to look for at the show -- you're probably not going to find them. That's where trading through blogs comes in handy. There are all kinds of items that I receive through the mail that I wouldn't find at a show. For example, I received a package from Lifetime Topps a week or two ago with plenty of cards that I never would have found at that 150-table show. Chrome cards from a dozen years ago. There's no way you'll find those at the show, unless it's a superstar player or randomly inserted into a discount box. A gold parallel from seven years ago? It might be in a 10- or 25-cent discount box. But since I almost never find those, I wouldn't find t...

It's difficult to explain Twitter to those who are not on it. Sure, it can be a time waster. Sure, it's filled with spastic people. Sure, it's not for everyone. But as someone in the media business and someone with a blog, it's a necessity. In my job, Twitter is how we get the word out. We're in the information business, people come to us for it, and more and more people are on Twitter. Ergo, get the information on Twitter! You want to make the daily newspaper relevant to teenagers? Just start tweeting high school scores at them. They'll never forget you. But in my blog, Twitter is where I go for ideas, man. Twitter is an idea factory, there are thousands of conversations producing millions of ideas at any time. A few weeks ago, when a couple of Twitter accounts started discussing "face percentage" on baseball cards, I thought, "hey, that's an idea I had!" Like so: "Face percentage" refers to the amount of territ...

Just a quick bit of curiosity today. I got a package from Lifetime Topps not too long ago. It came with a few nice items, but when it came down to the cards that I was most interested in, those could be broken down into pairs. A pair of reds. A pair of greens. (Suddenly I'm aware of all the Christmas shopping yet to be done). And a pair of these Baseball Talk cards. These have intrigued me for a long time. I already have the Orel Hershiser Baseball Talk card, but I have never played the reverse side, which resembles a record, because I don't have the player. These came out in 1989, a year in which I was very active in buying cards. But I was pretty much focused on the Topps base set and I never knew these existed until a few years ago. I'm not really dying to own the record-player that goes with these. But I am dying to know what each of these cards says when it's played. Does anybody have these cards and has played them in the past? C...

Back when I first started this blog, the card blogging atmosphere was a little bit different. There were a lot more "how-to-collect" card blogs, or what I would call "card advice" blogs. They actually came in pretty handy because I was really only a couple of years back into the collecting game and didn't have a full grasp on what the hobby had become. I came away with a lot of great pointers and am now in the position myself to give advice. If you're nuts enough to ask me for some. One of the things that I heard back then related to shipping cards through the mail. Here is the gist of what that advice was: "If you send cards in a plain, white envelope, you get everything you deserve." I took it to heart. And when I actually dared to send out a plain white envelope, or PWE, I accepted the consequences with humility . But then this year I joined Listia. I started shipping out more three-, two- and single-card packages than I ever had be...