Night Owl Cards

I have a lot of items to tie together today. And it's a holiday weekend, so I'll try to make this brief. First, gaze your eyes upon this beauty (like you can turn away, I scanned this mega size so you wouldn't miss it). I received this from Matthew , who found it at the National. It's a Nu-Card Baseball Hi-Lites card from 1960, meaning it's not your average size. It's 3 1/4-by-5 3/8 large. (The 1961 cards are standard size). It's also the "black-letter" variation as most of the cards feature headlines with red type. The first 18 cards are printed with red type or entirely in black, like this one. You can read the write-up on the bottom if you like. Only a sports editor like me would cringe over the way it's written. As you know, I love newspaper-themed cards and any new version that I get makes me want to set up a display of newspaper-style cards. But don't start sending me more. I'd have to clear any grand display with other ...

I love this card so much that I bumped it up in the received card package rotation -- setting off all of my OCD bells and alarms in the process -- to feature it here. It arrived from the Junior Junkie , get a good look because I probably won't feature the rest of his cards until your favorite NFL team's season is left for dead (sorry, it's the ROTATION, man). As you can see, it is a rookie card of Eric Karros -- presented by a sausage company. I have plenty of food issue cards. Hell, I have food issue cards from sausage companies. I adore them all. But this one struck a chord in a way that it has never been struck before. Sure, I've often wondered why I give these particular non-licensed cards a pass while I practically spit on Panini's non-licensed offerings. But this time I thought "what the hell is wrong with me? Why do I love these so much and hate Panini's so much? Am I THAT particular? Am I THAT fickle?" And I determined rather quickly...

I used to love Chrome. Really, really love it. And if you've read this blog for more than a couple of years, you've seen my drooling posts. Chrome is very difficult to resist. How else is Topps getting people to buy the same cards that are in the base set for the 19TH YEAR IN A ROW???? Chrome is the intoxicating woman spotted at the night club. You know you shouldn't. You know it will end horribly. But, yet ... you're in . Hopelessly. In. Fortunately, the last couple of years I've managed to keep my distance. I've limited my pack purchases of Chrome to just a rack pack or two. And after two years, I thought I had become immune to Chrome's siren song. Until today. In Walmart, hiding behind the discarded shopping carts (why is the card aisle the place where Walmart employees feel they can dispose of carts full of random goods? There are collectors walkin' here!!!) I heard Chrome speak to me and I instantly grew knock-kneed. I hadn't purcha...

I have just one 1/1 card in my collection. I don't think you can even call it a card. It's this printing plate of Wilson Betemit here. Although 1/1s are mildly interesting to me, I've never made it a priority to try to find any. I couldn't even tell you what the lowest serial-numbered cards are in my collection without looking them up. I'd like to find one or two someday, but I don't think I'll ever get to it on my long list of card priorities. And I think that's because I've experienced plenty of a 1/1s in my card collecting history, although they're only 1/1s by my definition. This is my kind of 1/1. This is the only 1978 Topps card of Tim Hosley that you can find. That you will ever find. There is no gold parallel Tim Hosley There is no tiffany Tim Hosley There is no no-numbered Tim Hosley There is no cracked-ice Tim Hosley There is no chrome Tim Hosley There is no black-bordered Tim Hosley There is no superfractor Tim ...

All right all you people who look at card blogs only to find out how much your rookie cards are worth -- BOOM! -- it's one of them rookies that actually retained at least a little of its value! You can sell this and not even have enough money to buy a case for your iphone! Yay, inflation! Yay, gadgets! Yay, nobody cares about cardboard anymore! Anyway, this is the best rookie card of Mike Piazza. It's beautiful. The Fleer Update rookie Piazza may cost more, but it's ugly sherbet green, the photo's scrunched, and Piazza is running out of the box in a painfully awkward way like he's a 10-year-old geeked up on Sprinkle Spangles . Also Update came in a limited box set and we all know real cards are issued in packs, during the season, out in the wild, in the midst of rabid, drooling collectors. There's also the Donruss Rookie Phenoms Piazza, which is both black bordered and shiny, but again you can hear the desperation on this late-breaking card if you hold it ...

The National has come and gone for another year and it still doesn't know me. I've never been and, realistically, I don't see myself attending for a long time. It doesn't have to do with location. Sure, if the National came to Syracuse or Buffalo, I wouldn't hesitate to zip over there for a day. But even Cleveland, Baltimore or Atlantic City are not far enough to be a deterrent. It doesn't have to do with cash. Even though I never have money in August, I could save up if I knew I was attending a year in advance. It doesn't have to do with work. Yeah, I have a limited amount of vacation time, but it's not so limited that I couldn't take off for a couple of days during the slowest part of the year. No, it has everything to do with family. I am married. With children. If you are married -- with children -- then you know where I'm going with this. When the summer comes, each member of the family wants to do certain things. There ar...

I knew that when I compiled a list of the pitchers who had owned the Dodgers during their careers that I wouldn't be able to resist putting together a list of the pitchers who were tormented by the Dodgers. It was easy to do. Just turn the result that I found through baseball-reference on its head. Voila! Pitchers whose career was one big #fail when it came to throwing against the Dodgers. A lot of these pitchers that struggled against the Dodgers were a surprise. Unlike the last list, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about pitchers who bombed against L.A. I suppose it's just a natural part of my make-up -- or any fan's make-up -- to focus on the negative and not the positive. Again, I based this list on career earned-run average against L.A. And I limited it to pitchers with at least 100 innings pitched against the Dodgers. Unlike the last list, I expanded it from 30 pitchers to 40 pitchers. That's because I lot of the pitchers on this list are no-nam...