Night Owl Cards

I did indeed get my butt back to the card aisle. I went out this afternoon for the sole purpose of buying a few current cards for the first time in weeks. Target was my choice, and honestly, the selection hasn't improved much since I was there last. Outside of the 2017 flagship, which will be there at this time next year (witness: 2016 flagship still rotting on the shelves), my 2017 baseball choices were: Bunt, Allen & Ginter, Stadium Club and Heritage High Numbers. Hardly enthused by any of them, and distracted by the people in line next to the card aisle -- I hate it when they open the register next to the card aisle -- my hands instinctively grabbed the newest item and the most attractive one to my eyes: the Heritage High Numbers rack pack. I have purchased cards based on what was listed on the wrapper countless times. I've purchased cards based on who appeared on the wrapper at least a few times. But I think this was the first time that I have bought cards base...

I have a handful of different collection-related thoughts and scans sitting around that need to be posted before they go bad. You might dismiss this as warmed-over leftovers. But I happen to love leftovers, so this kind of housekeeping post appeals to me a great deal. Here are some random items that separately couldn't make up their own blog post. A little over a week ago, I mentioned receiving a Topps Ron Cey Collecting Box. Through some research I discovered that they were first advertised on Topps' 1981 wrappers. The above wrapper is from 1981 and you can see the advertisement on the right. This wrapper was sent to me by GCA of The Collective Mind . What I didn't mention in that earlier post is that I also discovered that the Cey Collecting Box continued to be advertised on Topps wrappers in 1982, 1983 and 1984. GCA also found one of those examples from 1983 and sent it to me. A Ron Cey Collecting Box AND a chance to win a Colecovision???? 1983 really ...

Someone brought up the other day about how baseball card wrappers used to feature the ingredients for your stick of bubble gum. I dug out an example from my favorite set of all-time, 1975 Topps. Here is that nutritional information: That's good eatin'. For all I know some of the things listed there have been banned because of multiple lawsuits. I do know that BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene) is bad news. Wrappers don't include gum ingredients anymore because gum isn't included in packs anymore. Instead it gives you this: Odds! In teeny tiny type! These are your chances of "gitting something good" in a pack of this year's Chrome. We probably would have appreciated odds on the back of 1975 packs, but what would the odds be? "Chances of getting Johnny Bench, 1:660". "Chances of getting anything , 1:660". Besides, nobody thought of "odds" when opening cards then. We weren't at the race track playing ...

I'm suspending Cardboard Appreciation for a week because I'm working on a couple of things for CA and I don't have them ready yet. Also, I'm a little annoyed at Blogger stats' tendency to be manipulated by web bots and the skewing of my blog stats (anything with "cardboard" or "sick" in the title automatically becomes one of my most "popular" posts ever). So tune in for something Cardboard Appreciation-y next week. In the meantime enjoy some ... WRAPPERS!!!!!!! I've mentioned before that I never collected wrappers until I started this blog. But a few months into beginning Night Owl Cards in Sept. 2008, I decided to keep a wrapper for every product I opened. I don't do anything special with them. I just stuff them into a box in the basement (oooh, that sounded creepy). But every once in awhile I get them out and go through them. They're like a story of my collecting history over the last three-plus years. If yo...