Night Owl Cards

(If I was still on Twitter I would have witnessed approximately 78 pack rips of 2026 Topps by now. HAVE YOU RIPPED ANY 2026 TOPPS YET?!?!?!?!? Ignorance is bliss. I don't even feel like checking out the local big-boxes. Time for Cardboard Appreciation, this is the 364th in a series):   I was reminded of this card recently by The Writer's Journey as he displayed it over on Bluesky. It's a fascinating card for anyone who collected the 1983 Topps set as I did in the year of Michael Jackson.   I completed the set way back in the first year of this blog. But I wasn't actually finished because I didn't have this card. which arrived today.   In 1982, the Angels' Reggie Jackson and the Brewers' Gorman Thomas tied for the American League in home runs with 39 each. That led to the following uncomfortable card in 1983 Topps:   I really don't like three-person league leaders cards (see all of the Topps league leader cards for the last couple of decades), unless the...

  Fifty years ago today, Major League Baseball played the All-Star Game in Milwaukee. The National League won, 6-3 (yay!). Bill Madlock and Jon Matlack shared the MVP award. (Reggie Jackson went 1-for-3).   At the break, the Dodgers had played 92 games or 56.8% of their schedule. This season -- 50 years later -- the Dodgers reached the All-Star break having played 97 games or 59.9%. Yet I read a social media complaint just a week or two ago about how the All-Star Game -- the supposed "midsummer classic" -- takes place too late because more than half of the season has passed.   The All-Star Game hasn't shown up at the halfway point of the season in a very long time. (And we're not even close to halfway through summer).   The ASG regularly pops up on either the second or third Tuesday of July. It's been that way for decades. It doesn't matter when the season starts, or how many games have been played, the second or third Tuesday of July is when the ASG exists.  ...

  On Saturday I got up knowing that the monthly card show was taking place on the other side of town. I looked out the window. It had snowed steadily the day before, very lightly but with the wind the inch or two stuck to everything and it had grown colder, too. It was maybe 10 degrees out and the cars were coated. It was my day off. Ugh, I don't know if I want to go across town. This is a terrible attitude for someone who was once willing to drive through less-than-ideal weather for more than an hour to get to one of two shows a year. So I showered, got dressed and had a bite to eat while the car warmed up. The plows had been through a few times, most of the roads should be fairly clear. I stopped at the ATM for some cash and wondered when all dealers would take nothing but cards or a cash app and then drove the rest of the way to the show. The parking lot was pretty full. I walked down the hallway and to the check-in table and paid my five bucks (still too much). I knew what I wa...

  A month into this blog, I featured my copy of the 1979 Sport Americana Baseball Card Price Guide, which is the first of the James Beckett/Dennis Eckes annual price guides that I purchased all through the mid-1980s. I don't remember when I bought the '79 copy. I'm guessing 1980. It's shown up a time or two on the blog since. It's a cool peek into the past, starting with the cover, which looks nothing like the price guides to come -- no photos, just drawings. (The book is the rarer white-cover version). As you can probably tell, I've handled this book a lot -- pages have been falling out for years. Probably most of the damage happened in the first year because, let me tell you, there was nothing cooler than someone assigning prices to cards. What a concept -- which ones were ones that I had? Answer: In 1979, almost none.   I brought up this book a couple days ago over on the House of Cardboard Discord site because the topic came up on "when did the concept ...

  I don't have a lot of time today. I've been squeezing in the last few day trips before vacation ends. Also, we added a new roommate yesterday.   That's Francesca, a.k.a. Fran, a.k.a., she'd be adorable if she'd sit still for a second. So after swearing off pets a couple years ago, there's another one to rule the roost. These things are never my idea but I do like my pets. Anyway, here's a quick thing I noticed a week or so ago that may not interest anyone but I thought it was interesting. When I completed the 1977 Hostess set, I noticed something about the back of the set. (This is why you sort your cards by number): These are the final pages of the 1977 Hostess set, cards 118-150 (sorry about the reflections, I was rushing).  If you review all the cards after the Ray Fosse card, card No. 122, you will note that they all feature airbrushed hats and uniform tops. The final 28 cards in the set are airbrushed. I'm not sure what this means, but I think Top...

  I always feel a bit sheepish writing about upgrading cards in my collection. Most of my card upgrading happens "underground," meaning I usually don't write about it. It feels very much like a first-world problem. But I shouldn't feel that way. First of all, just about any card collecting "issue" is a first-world problem because the hobby is a first-world hobby. Anything that I write on here that I consider "a problem" is not really a problem. Secondly, I'm not encasing my cards in plastic and assigning them a random number based on condition. Since there are plenty of people doing that -- and I still have almost no idea why -- I shouldn't feel weird about upgrading. All I'm doing is finding a different copy that doesn't have wrinkles or worn corners.  A portion of my recent sportlots order was upgrades -- a few of them quite overdue. I'm going to show off each of them and explain why they were upgraded.     1978 Topps Reggie J...

  My collection storage system is built around binders. Boxes are secondary. In a perfect world, all my cards would be in binders and there would be no boxes. But boxes are easier to store than binders. Binders take up more space. That's a trade-off I've been willing to make, for having a much more pleasing card-room display (shelves of just boxes just doesn't cut it for me). But it means I'm always in space conservation mode. For example, a couple of weeks ago, Kenny/ZippyZappy asked me if I could use any binders, he had received some regulation-size ones from his father. Always mindful of space issues -- I am almost all out of rows on my two sizable shelving units -- I said maybe one or two. That's not "one or two." That's six. Actually, he sent seven -- one is out of the box for some mid-1980s Fleer repurposing. So, yeah, I don't know where the heck those are going. Right now the box is in the attic, waiting for when I need them, or I carve out...

  I've written many times about how I adore Kellogg's 3-D sets from the '70s and early '80s. They are my favorite oddball and food issue of all-time, born out of childhood and breakfast mornings staring at the back of cereal boxes. I love them. And they're breaking my heart. Not only have I been struggling to acquire new ones the last year-and-a-half due to the rise in prices on those cards that previously no one wanted, but their brittle nature is causing me to question whether it's worth it to pursue them anymore. An example: I discovered this cracked 1976 Kellogg's Reggie Jackson in my box of Kellogg's cards a few months ago. I was crushed. The '76 set is complete and just about every one is pristine, there's only one that I can think of that has some wear and yellowing. Nothing has cracks. I just love the beautiful white borders contrasting with the red-and-blue stripes on this set. But cracks -- oh, no -- that's all I see. The other rea...