Night Owl Cards

We are living in that no-man's land between last year's cards and the first Topps release of the 2017 season. There are two full weeks left in new cardboard purgatory. I'm eager to put 2016 and its cards behind, but when you can't get your hands on 2017 cards yet, there is nothing more new than cards from 2016. Plus I need to clear out some cards from the scanned folder. So here is one last look back on cards I scanned in 2016 but didn't feel like showing you when it would have been more appropriate. I believe this card came from Cards On Cards . It's a numbered item from 2016 Chrome. I think I didn't show this because I was so devastated by the fact that blue chrome cards used to be my all-time favorite "fancy" cards back when THERE WERE BORDERS. This card makes me sad. But it's too rare not to show, so here you go, after the fact. I pulled this card out of the only Bowman pack purchase I made last year. I admit I was st...

Today, when we talk about Topps and it not being up-front with its customers, we talk about "the gimmick," in all of its various forms of sneakery. But Topps isn't new to the deception game. Back in the day, sneakery came in the form of the photo on the front of the baseball card. I'm not talking about mere airbrushing. I'm talking about Topps creating photographs for cards of events that never happened . Take two examples from a year in Topps history that features countless examples of bizarre photography, 1973. Many of you know some of these beautiful disasters by heart. There's the Frank Robinson card ... ... In which the only finger Topps lifted in order to celebrate Robinson's arrival with the California Angels was to white-out the word Dodgers across his jersey. "They'll never be able to tell!" the graphics people chortled, forgetting that the Dodgers wear one of the most recognizable uniforms in baseball and that their stadium ...