Night Owl Cards

    I don't have a lot of mini collections. I can't focus on that many hobby things these days anyway, but I've never been the mini-collection type. If I did venture outside of my set/team/player-sphere, one of the collections I would set up is cards of players who later became broadcasters when I was starting to learn baseball. They were my first baseball teachers. Yeah, sure there were youth league coaches and my dad and all that, but I wanted to know about Major Leaguers, not that "keep your eye on the ball" stuff. Fortunately there were guys on TV who told me all about major leaguers. Sure, there were people like Vin Scully and Keith Jackson and Lindsey Nelson and Frank Messer. But the ones who knew all the inside stuff were usually called "the color commentators" and they were usually former ballplayers. Ex-ballplayers like Joe Garagiola, Tony Kubek, Ralph Kiner and Don Drysdale were invaluable to me learning about professional ballplayers and what ...

  A couple of months ago, I posted this thought on the occasion of getting down to the final 10 cards needed to complete the 1956 Topps set.   As you can see, I still didn't really think finishing this set was a certainty. It's been my line of thinking ever since I first knew that the '56 Topps set existed and realized how beautiful it was.   But something about that Harmon Killebrew card, now in my possession, flipped a switch. There was something about that card, about this moment, that seemed like the right time. This was the time. If I'm ever going to complete the 1956 Topps set I better get moving right now!   Actually that momentum began with the card I obtained before I acquired the Killebrew.   I added the '56 Yankees team card earlier in January. This was my chance to own something with Mickey Mantle on it in the set. Mantle is standing there in the middle of the back row, seventh from the left, quietly chortling over how much money people are still pay...

Last month, Chris from View From the Skybox put on a charity group break to benefit children affected by the massive typhoon that hit the Philippines last year. I've pretty much cut myself off from all group breaks in the last couple of years, but this one drew my interest. Collecting cards is a hobby and is mostly about myself. This was a chance to make my hobby about someone else, something bigger. I missed out on grabbing the Dodgers in the break, which after viewing the acquisitions by the person who did get the Dodgers, is probably a good thing. Most of them would've been dupes. Normally not getting the Dodgers would eliminate my interest in a group break. But this was different. The money was going to people in need and I had to join regardless. So why not join in the spirit of charity and get some cards for someone else? So that's what I did. I got some good cards, too. Unfortunately, this is where the post falls apart. I can't show you the cards...

One of the "perks" of getting older is the constant reminder of how quickly the days pass the more you age. This was something my older relatives would talk about all the time when I was younger, and I would kind of dismiss it. But, they were oh, so correct. There isn't a week that goes by where I don't think about how easily time slips away. Take the 1983 Topps set, for example, which I'm trying to complete. It stuns me that this set is 25 years old. It stuns me that there are grown adults, holding down jobs, getting married, blogging , who were not alive when this set was first issued. I find that staggering. This set is a symbol of my progression from adolescence to adulthood, a set that came out the year I graduated from high school. It doesn't seem that long ago at all. Meanwhile, younger collectors consider it "vintage." That blows my mind. I received a few more "vintage" 1983s from Joe of MLB Collector last week. He sent me eight ca...