Night Owl Cards

(Happy Halloween! The work schedule dictates whether I'll be dealing with this holiday or not. This year I am not. So the day really is happy! ... Well, except for the work part. It's time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 314th in a series): On the years I post on Halloween, I try to have a theme. There have been several over the life of this blog . Tonight, all I have is an orange card. Real original, I know. But at least it's an unusual orange card. This is what's called a "logofractor." I know some of you don't know what that is. But when they were released about a month ago -- boxes contained five packs of regular 2022 Chrome cards and two packs of logofractors -- it seemed like everyone knew. The hype machine was in full spew. Collectors -- you know the ones -- couldn't get enough of them. My timeline was filled with gushing. Some of the cards were selling in four figures. All because of the MLB logo plastered across the image. Topps has...

  Topps released its Update set last week and in my customary fashion of the last few years, I absolutely did not rush to Target to see if I could find some.   This time of the year is for putting away the year's cards, not for adding more of them. Boxing up the current year's cards that have been on display in my card room since last winter has been the late October/early November tradition around here for quite awhile.   I usually put away the brands I know I won't buy the rest of the year first and then Topps flagship is the last to be filed (what to do with this year's very late arrivals, Allen & Ginter and Stadium Club? Well, if I get any, they'll probably go straight to the box).    I ended up with 253 cards in the 2022 flagship set, which is around 38 percent. Thirty-eight percent is the definition of Casually Collecting A Set. I've been so casual about it that as I was boxing them up, I realized I hadn't looked for night cards from the set. I...

  I probably don't need to tell anyone that "World Series" is a ridiculous name, and has been since people started playing baseball in other lands. The Series is starting tonight, but meanwhile another championship baseball series to declare the best in the land is going on right now across the ocean, under the much more reasonable name of the "Japan Series". I don't suppose anyone's going to rush to rename the World Series the "North America Series," we're too far into this now, but for those who read my blog and nothing else, whoever wins Game 5 of the Japan Series tomorrow -- the Orix Buffaloes or the Tokyo Yakult Swallows -- takes a 3-2 lead in the seven-game series.   As if to recognize that there are other championships currently, I recently received some Japanese cards from Dave, aka, the NPB Card Guy from the Japanese Baseball Cards blog .   He nicely sent some cards that have connections to the Dodgers -- either they were Dodgers a...

  The World Series is about to start -- way later than it should -- and it's another odd matchup with the Phillies playing the Astros. Everyone of a certain age knows that can't happen -- the Phillies and Astros are in the same league! But ever since the Astros were transplanted into the American League and started cheating ... er, winning, there have been odd Series matchups all over the place. Last year's matchup, the Astros and Braves, was something I knew for years as a midseason get-together for two National League West teams going nowhere. The Astros-Dodgers World Series of 2017 began as, hey, this is a showdown for the 1980 NL West pennant, before turning into something more sinister. And the Astros-Nationals Series from three years ago was just plain odd, unless you turn the Nationals into the Expos and then that's a National League game I saw in Olympic Stadium in 1990. This season's World Series can be summed up in the card above. The Astros and the Philli...

  Just a quick post tonight, because work is playing its evil tricks. I received an email a few weeks ago from a reader who sometimes comments on this blog as "Pennsylvania Tiger". He said he had some cards for me as a thank you for writing. The cards he mentioned are actually stickers -- the 1981 Fleer Star Stickers set. But they might as well be cards because I will never stick those ever. This set is huge -- it took me a long time to figure that out -- but thanks to some recent work on it, and this particular mailing, I'm down to under 30 needed. Still seems like a lot, but hey, I have some new arrivals to distract me! That's some good fun right there. Not only are all those guys players I grew up following but as I've probably said before, lots of the photos I've never seen -- they're not necessarily the same as the ones in the 1981 Fleer set and I probably should do a comparison post one of these days, maybe when I finish the whole thing. Some of the ...

  I snagged a couple of needed 1975 Topps buybacks off ebay several weeks back and I never mentioned it here. Right after grabbing the Dave McNally and Gary Thomasson buybacks, I sank into a little funk about the buyback project. It looked like there weren't any that I didn't already have, or at least none that were in my price range. One of the reasons for the funk is the '75 Steve Yeager card in buyback form had been selling for something like $13 on COMC for months and months, way over what was rational for an obviously damaged card. The Yeager is the first Dodger from that set I ever saw, a card I carried in my pocket to the school playground that year.   Then, just a couple of days ago, I saw on  COMC that the Yeager was available for $2.75. You should have seen the happy dance. I had already been preparing to request a COMC shipment, so I threw that card into the cart as fast as if it was the hottest new rookie and ordered up! That got me excited about the buybacks...

I won another one of Johnny's almost-daily giveaways and received the goods a few days ago. The majority of the cards that I needed (4 of the 9 were needs) are from what I'm thinking is my candidate for best set of the year. The only problem is the set is from 2021. I like the 2021 Chrome Platinum set more than I should. I've already detailed the reasons why I like and also the reasons why a product like this shouldn't be for me. I know a few bloggers have wondered what the big deal is about this set, and I see their point. But that doesn't keep my brain from marveling over these cards. There is just something about them that makes me happy. It's the shininess combined with a classic design combined with the photos chosen. Those close-ups, that '52 feel, with very modern gloss, appeals to me. Nothing about this is new. The '52 set has been beaten senseless by Topps and that goes for chromed-up versions of the '52 design, too. But something about i...