Night Owl Cards

  On Saturday I got up knowing that the monthly card show was taking place on the other side of town. I looked out the window. It had snowed steadily the day before, very lightly but with the wind the inch or two stuck to everything and it had grown colder, too. It was maybe 10 degrees out and the cars were coated. It was my day off. Ugh, I don't know if I want to go across town. This is a terrible attitude for someone who was once willing to drive through less-than-ideal weather for more than an hour to get to one of two shows a year. So I showered, got dressed and had a bite to eat while the car warmed up. The plows had been through a few times, most of the roads should be fairly clear. I stopped at the ATM for some cash and wondered when all dealers would take nothing but cards or a cash app and then drove the rest of the way to the show. The parking lot was pretty full. I walked down the hallway and to the check-in table and paid my five bucks (still too much). I knew what I wa...

  You are going to see, or you have already read, many tributes to Rickey Henderson today.  A lot will discuss his mind-blowing skill on the base paths and how he changed the game in the 1980s. Many will discuss his entertaining personality and how he referred to himself in the third person. Some, like us card bloggers, will talk about his cards -- his rookie card in particular -- and how he became their favorite player. All of those tributes will seem to lack something in attempting to sum up the man. This one also will fall short. That's because Rickey Henderson, who passed at age 65, was the greatest I ever saw play. I am always uncertain when people ask me to come up with the best of whatever, musician, artist, designer, inventor, etc. How can you settle on just one? But with Henderson there is no doubt. He was it. I saw it and instantly knew. He's the best damn player I've ever seen. And how do you explain why he was so great and why he captivated collectors without mi...

  My Black Friday COMC order came in yesterday. I'm pleased to say that it showed up more than two weeks earlier than was originally forecast. This order was not as grand as I wanted it to be. When it got time to request shipment, money was a little tighter than I expected, I had to let some cards go. But I didn't let go of the oddball cards, which actually was a good portion of the order. I gravitate toward oddballs -- I think readers know this about me -- and since I've completed so many of the main sets from the '70s and '80s, oddballs are almost all that's left. That's fine with me, because the more I think of it, I like hanging out with the oddballs. When I think of what's the opposite of those kinds of cards, high-end grade specimens of superstars and hot rookies, I know that those cards can bring out my least favorite kind of behavior in collectors, just about the rudest people I've seen in the hobby. But I rarely see that among collectors who...

  My favorite parallel cards have always been the border color parallels. In the first few years of the blog, I'd gush over the Topps Chrome parallels, particularly the blue ones. There actually weren't a ton of border parallels around at the time -- the gold parallels were ... uh ... the gold standard, of course -- and you mostly had to go to Chrome or some high-end set to find something other than that.   That eventually changed about 12 years ago and now there are so many color border parallels in your basic flagship set that it's impossible to focus on them all. It's overkill and some of them I don't care about at all. As an example, that gold foil thing that started a couple years ago is really pointless.   But give Topps credit for still trying because sometimes it stumbles across something I love, like this year's aqua parallels.   I love these things -- not the Chrome ones -- just the flagship ones. I didn't realize that these were Fanatics exclusive...

  I went to a work Christmas party over the weekend. It was my wife's work, so I didn't know a lot of people there. That's always difficult for an introvert but at least there was good food! Often you're forced into small talk (eww) about mindless things. My wife knew almost everyone and was introducing a lot of them to me (really not necessary). Across the table sat a young man, maybe 23-25. My wife said he looked like actor Sean Penn. I'm not good at making famous people comparisons but this jumped right out at me, he definitely did look like Sean Penn. The young man, who I'm sure lives in one of the many rural towns in this area, said he didn't know who Sean Penn was. To help things along, I said Penn was once married to Madonna -- a pretty famous thing that happened in 1985. Almost no flicker of recognition. Certainly no response. OK. First, good for him for not caring. But second, HOW CAN YOU NOT KNOW WHO THESE PEOPLE ARE? Was 1985 that long ago?   Mayb...

(It's halfway through December and I've managed to add only 16 cards to my collection this month according to TCDB. I haven't added less than 300 cards in any month out of the year. Christmas better come through! Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 346th in a series): This is an error card that doesn't seem to get much attention in the history of error cards. Although I have a feeling if this card came out in the 1980s, everyone would be all about it. 1970s fans know right away what the error is. That is NOT Milt May. Milt May, for the uninitiated, was a fairly good-hitting catcher. He was also a white ball player. The photo is of Lee May, a black slugging first baseman. It's fairly obvious once you examine all the details that this particular card was intended for Milt May and not Lee May. The other tip-offs: The back of the same card, No. 35, contains nothing but Milt May information, all his correct vitals and statistics and, oh yeah, his full name. The ...

This is the kind of post that's best reserved for a much more succinct manner of social media. In fact, that's where I saw this little nugget of information that I never knew before. I never knew it despite collecting the 1974 Topps set and completing it, despite doing so years and years ago, and despite viewing this Tom Walker card a couple dozen times at least. Willie Mays is on the card, too, you guys. You can spot his "24" as he waits his turn in the cage, as a member of the New York Mets there at Shea Stadium. Fantastic. I learned this from none other than the SplitSeason1981 account over on Blue Sky. He's the former mayor of Cooperstown, and a card collector. I traded with him several years ago. He mentioned the neat Mays fact today and I was dumbfounded. It's amazing what you can learn even after 50 years of hoarding trading cards. That's all I have for you today. It's been a hectic week but I'm glad I picked up at least some cardboard know...

  For those of us who went to grade school in the 1970s, we grew up with a certain idea of the future. Yeah, flying cars and personal robots, sure, but we also knew when that would happen.   In the year 2000, we'd have all that stuff and walk around in space suits. The year 2000 seemed exceedingly far away, unimaginable really (I would be 35!). What would that be like? I used to try to wrap my head around it and then give up, happy that I didn't have to address what was to come for eons. As a 12 year old, 22 years into the future is eons.   Likewise, 1999 seemed just as futuristic. The very sound of the year seemed otherworldly. Prince put that feeling to music with the song "1999". He didn't come up with the idea of the world ending in 2000, we were all thinking it, for a long time. Or at least "our world" would be ending anyway.   Then 1999 arrived and what did I have? There were panicked Y2K people (thanks a lot media), but besides that, it was a craz...