Night Owl Cards

  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...

Even though I have been collecting the 1956 Topps set for more than a decade now, the pursuit has never felt real to me. I wouldn't even be collecting this set if I didn't receive a jump-start back in the early 1980s when my dad brought home a grocery bag filled with mid-1950s baseball cards, mostly 1956, that he received from a co-worker. I ended up with around 110 cards from the set without doing a thing. Although I didn't add a single card to that stash for years, I held on to them and always thought "someday." Then, over the past dozen years, as I added a card here and there and fellow collectors sent me a card here and there, I became acquainted with exactly what I needed to do to truly commit to collecting the set. I would need to buy cards of legends who I had only read about in books and magazines. Mantle, Mays, Koufax, Williams, Clemente, Berra. Just ridiculous cards. So the set was always "up there" and "out there," and I cou...