Night Owl Cards

We are officially stuck in the '70s here at Cardboard Appreciation. Not that I'm complaining. Ringo Starr is singing "Photograph" as I write this. But there have been three cards voted to the next round of Cardboard Appreciation, the Review 3 so far, and all three have been cards from the '70s. Vida Blue's classic first solo card from 1971 is the latest card to get the '70s royalty treatment. In what I knew would be nothing but a rout, Blue dominated the competition to join the '73 Frank Robinson and '77 Gary Carter in round 2. Here are the voting totals: 1. Vida Blue, 1971 Topps: 34 votes 2. Pedro Borbon, 1975 Topps: 9 votes 3. Roy Smalley, 1980 Topps: 4 votes 4. Don Newcombe, 1977 TCMA Galasso Greats, 3 votes 5. Rudy Seanez, 1993 Donruss, 1 vote 6. Shawn Green, 2002 Upper Deck Authentics reverse parallel, 1 vote 7. Oddibe McDowell, 1989 Topps, 0 votes 8. Josh Hamilton, 2008 Topps Hertiage Chrome, 0 votes (52 total votes) As B...

I have sold cards at garage sales several times. I don't give cards up easily, especially to random people who may not enjoy them as much as I do. So, the vast majority of cards that I have sold on the front lawn are items that I never wish to see in my home again. Dupes galore. Non-baseball cards. Non-sports cards. Items of that nature. I've experienced regret with what I've sold in a garage sale only once. It was the time I sold the oversized glossy cards from the early '80s. Collectors of this time remember these "cards" with glee. They were 5-by-7-ish (or more accurately, 4 7/8-by-6 7/8). The photos were featured on thick cardboard stock and contained glossy fronts, much as you would see with movie star oversized photos. The first time Topps issued these was in 1980. It was a set of 60 and they were sold in one-card packs. The photos came with gray backs or white backs. From what I've read in the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards, the whi...

I keep hearing about some "PWE Appreciation Week" thing happening next week -- send someone some cards in a PWE and let the joy unfold, or some such pleasantry. I'm not going to be able to participate. There's a lot going on around here and even more next week. Package-sending will take a dive. It's ugly, I know. But that's the way it's got to be. Our summers don't last long around here, you know. Got to hit that while you can ... or whatever the kids are saying these days. Fortunately, it's pretty much PWE Appreciation Week every week lately. I've received them and have been sending them out like never before. I already detailed that in an earlier post . Why I just received four PWEs in rapid succession a couple of days ago. I don't have a lot of time today, so I'm going to show them quickly together with less-than-usual commentary. First there is this shiny Duke Snider cards from 2011 Lineage. Remember Lineage? I actua...

This card solves a binder crisis. A few weeks ago, I found a night card to fill the No. 65 spot of my night card frankenset binder. Unfortunately, the card was filled with terrible people and terrible memories. I take my night card binder seriously, so even though I didn't like it -- at all -- I designated that card for inclusion in the binder and wrote myself a little note to turn the page very quickly whenever I reached the fourth page of the binder (yes, I fill both sides of each  page, I'm not made of coinage). But there was still hope. Backstop Cards alerted me to the fact that there was a night card in this year's Opening Day that was No. 65 in the set (Marcus has been helping me out quite a bit lately, I've really got to get that package off to him). It would serve as a suitable replacement. As luck would have it, I finally pulled that card the other day. It's the Will Venable card you see here. What a relief to replace that card with this car...

Jerry Seinfeld used to recite a very famous bit about rooting for sports teams. With the way players jump from team to team, fans of specific clubs, he said, are cheering for laundry. Uniforms, after all, are the only thing about a sports team that remains the same (and if you're a Diamondbacks fan, not even that). That's oversimplifying things, of course. Seinfeld forgets history and community and the quirks and nuances of individual franchises. But there is a point there. For instance, unless I'm building a set, I do not collect players who do not wear Dodger blue. I have no desire to own cards of a player who isn't with the Dodgers unless it plugs a hole in Allen & Ginter or Heritage or whatever I'm trying to complete. Why else would I care about a Rockie? Sometimes, I see a player get traded to another team and then I'll read about a collector of that team who all of a sudden wants cards of that player with his old team. For instance, "Bra...

Not much stood out from the Series 2 cards that I bought last week, other than the individual things I mentioned on the earlier post . But while leafing through those cards that I bought in what will be my only flurry of Series 2 purchasing, I did notice one thing that reminded me that I have noticed it before. It has something to do with this: A lot of sameness on the pitcher's mound. This has been going on for a few years now. After the mid-2000s, in which there were a lot of Topps base cards featuring teeny tiny images of players, the sets suddenly adopted a "get you close to the action" philosophy. Super tight shots of pitchers -- and batters -- in action. Lots of grimacing and gaping. I can appreciate that to a degree. It's just that it gets a little repetitive after seeing it year after year. Or, in the case of the hanger box that I opened, card after card. The first row of cards I pulled consecutively. Milone, Carpenter and Chen all at vari...