Night Owl Cards

  I've been juggling a lot of hobby-related projects lately and, honestly, I don't know why this isn't my full-time job, between packaging 5,000-card giveaway sends, hopping back into ebay selling (I see it's gotten more complex), and finishing off another Beckett Vintage magazine article that's actually a two-for, a main story and sidebar.   The full-time job still pays more though, so the one thing that doesn't pay anything at all is taking the hit -- namely this blog.   But I've got a little something for you today, focusing on one of my absolutely favorite kinds of cards.   It's what I call the Reese's of cards.   Some explaining:   Those of you old enough remember the Reese's candy commercials with the slogan "two great tastes that taste great together." You know, the commercials featuring clumsy dopes waving their candy about on the street and bumping into each other. You got chocolate in my peanut butter, blah, blah, blah, and a ...

It didn't take me long, after writing this post and getting all lathered up and determined, to stake out what I could of the remaining 1977 Kellogg's cards on my want list. "Well if they're going to make it difficult with 'the pop culture tax,' I am not going to give up! I'm going to go right at them!" I immediately hopped on ebay to see what I could snag. The first card off my want list that I found was Al Oliver. Purchased. Shipped. The second card was Greg Luzinski. Purchased. Shipped. The third card was Rick Manning. Purchased. Shipped. The fourth card was Bill North. Purchased. Shipped. This all happened on a Wednesday night. None of the cards cost me more than 3 or 4 bucks. That left six more cards on my want list. One was George Brett, which was/is available but I'm going to have to pay 10 or 15 bucks for it, so I set that aside. Another is George Foster, which is the first card in the set and apparently that...

This particular magazine issue evokes one particular memory. I am 12. I am seated in the back seat of the family station wagon. Right side. In my lap is an issue of Baseball Quarterly magazine, a new publication dedicated to baseball only and absolutely the coolest thing to read at that point in time. We are going to my grandmother's house, about 15 miles away. We did that a lot on the weekend. But because I was now 12, going to grandma's wasn't as interesting as it had been. My grandpa had recently passed and he was the one who watched all the Mets games . My grandmother had tried to keep her back room stocked with items three boys would want to read. But we had been there so much that we had read most of them. But Baseball Quarterly was new. It would keep me interested and, most importantly, keep me away from whatever Adult Conversation was going on in the living room. (I don't remember which issue I was reading in the back seat, but it was probably the one w...

I finally requested shipment of this card today. It had sat in my COMC cart forever and there is no reason that it should have escaped me for so long, too many card interests or not. This card, to me, is confirmation -- proof, if you will -- that Mark Fidrych did, indeed, smooth the mound from his knees in the middle of pitching a game. My brain, even without this act appearing on a card, knows that Fidrych did this. I read about it in the newspapers and The Sporting News when I was a kid in 1976. I saw it on television. I can go back and watch his mound maintenance on youtube. There might be even be a picture of him doing it in an old Baseball Digest I have stashed somewhere. But you know the media. Fake news. They lie. Cards is where you can find the truth. OK, I'm being facetious. But, really, as a kid growing up in the '70s, visual evidence was limited. There were pictures in the newspaper -- and let me tell you, photos of Detroit Tigers in upstate New York wer...

I will be starting this book tomorrow. The timing is perfect because the 1976 All-Star Game was played exactly 40 years ago tomorrow. It was the first All-Star Game I ever watched. I don't remember a single moment from that game (before the advent of youtube anyway), which likely means I may have watched maybe the first inning or maybe just the opening introductions before I was shooed off to bed. My mother was coping with two of her sons' sudden insistence on watching every baseball game available (and there weren't many available then) and probably didn't understand it at all. By the following year, we had her somewhat in line and I recall staying up to watch virtually all of the 1977 All-Star Game in Yankee Stadium. Those late '70s All-Star Games are my favorite All-Star memories. The players who played in those games I consider to be "my All-Stars." I was watching a little bit of MLB Network's replay of the 1992 All-Star Game last night (you...

(I suppose you've heard that today is National Junk Food Day. Why this day isn't scheduled for a Sunday in October is beyond me. But mostly I want to know, where is National Junk Wax Day? We could schedule it for every August 27 -- August always needs a holiday -- and celebrate by dumping our surplus 1991 Donruss in the river. Think about it. In the meantime, here is Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 209th in a series): Let's start with the name, since that's what draws everyone's attention first. To be honest, I didn't make the connection when I first saw this card in 1978. Mark Lemongello? Lemon Jello? It sailed directly over my head. This was probably because I was in seventh grade at the time and completely smitten with a devastatingly pretty girl named Lisa Maringelli. "Lemongello" and "Maringelli" are much too similar when you're 12 years old and in love. So, to me, at that time, this Lemongello was a cool dude, because h...

Before I get to the top all-star cards from the greatest era of all-star cards, I would like to acknowledge fans of the 1980 Topps all-star cards. I kind of gave the '80 Topps all-stars the shrug-off in this countdown. Only the Nolan Ryan card made the top 20. In my view, the 1980s all-star cards just can't stack up with the earlier all-star cards. I don't dislike the 1980s all-stars. In fact this Ted Simmons card is unbelievably fantastic. It's just that by 1980, I was a teen and a six-year veteran of collecting cards. The all-star players were no longer mythical gods to bow down before as you gave thanks that you were deemed worthy to obtain their card. Instead, they were cool finds that got me a step closer to completing the set. "YES! #450! The George Brett card! I NEEDED that number." Functionality had replaced mythic wonder. This countdown is more about mythic wonder than functionality. But really you could put the Simmons card at No. 1 and yo...

Less than a week ago, I figured I'd be heading into the card show with half the cash that I usually carry around the New York State fairgrounds horticulture building. Times have been hard these last three months with rationing of just about everything -- shampoo, napkins, mustard, you name it. So even though I tried to save in advance, there wasn't a lot I could put away. But strange things happen when you're both scraping by and working your butt off. You lose track of what you're doing. It turns out that I had saved more than I thought I did -- a day before the show, I discovered 20 bucks in a drawer put away months ago for likely this very purpose (at least that's what I'm telling myself). So I hit the card show with the usual amount of money and I did very well by my standards. From an objective perspective, the show was nothing great. No signing guest. A relatively slim crowd. But from my perspective it was fantastic. No signing guest means...