Night Owl Cards

  I don't know if you remember "The Break Up of the Phone Company" in the mid-1980s, but it was a huge deal at the time. Until that point, you made a call, wherever you were, and the Bell System took care of it. After the break-up, we became familiar with AT&T and Sprint and MCI. It was weird. I was in college when all this was happening and was happy I didn't have to make any decisions on my "long-distance provider." This all seems like ancient history in the world of a computer in your pocket, but it was my first encounter with the fracturing of a key element of society (Well, actually maybe that was cable TV). Since then, there's been fracturing all over the place. No one gets all their information from one newspaper or one evening news program each day anymore. In the music world, the shared experience of everyone listening to the same new songs on the radio has been fractured beyond repair. It seems like more work to find what you're looking...

  Last week I thought I had a post idea for this week about how I wanted to collect. I thought it was time to give up on modern cards. I had done my best to ignore a lot of the extras and gimmicks that come with modern cards, sticking primarily with base cards and perfectly happy to do that, sometimes even completing the set. But even the base cards aren't like they once were -- and I'm not talking about card stock. It's all stuff I've complained about before. The images are samey-same, pitchers pitching, hitters hitting, runners running, celebrating ballplayers celebrating. The photos are cropped so tight that you know Topps or MLB is trying to hide something. When there are backgrounds, sometimes they aren't actual backgrounds, they're stock photos. The sheer amount of City Connect uniforms in sets the last couple of years has to be a concerted marketing effort to get fans to buy them and they also take away from true representation of the team on cards. And, ...

  I have a competitive personality. That conflicts with my low-key demeanor and probably explains why nobody expected anything out of me in gym class and then out of the blue I'd make some diving catch in the outfield and everyone was like "where'd that come from?"   I'd get competitive at work. When we actually had a sizeable sports department, I'd want to be the best writer on the staff. And that motivated me to get better. In grade school I'd want the best report card grades (but there was always someone better). My want to compete has played out in a variety of circumstances, including here on this blog. It's part of the reason I have the collection I do as well. I'd like to have the biggest and coolest -- without going into debt or jail or being obnoxious. During the first few years of this blog, blogs were where you'd find out what the first cards of the year looked like. Anytime there was a new set, you'd check the blogs. So there wa...

  I haven't done much with my 1987 Fleer set build. It's the only '80s Fleer set that I haven't completed, yet I've been stuck on 68% finished for awhile.   I haven't bothered to make a want list, either here or on TCDB. I sure don't feel like trading for it, and buying the whole set online would give me 450-plus doubles and there's just no time in my life for a 1987 Fleer art project.   So what I do have of the set is just kind of sitting there waiting. I thought I'd throw it a bone and point out one of the plus-aspects of the set, other than its cool look and wonderfully descriptive "blue freeze pop" Define the Design set name.   This means we're going to have to turn the cards over to the back, so I hope you can handle that.   1987 Fleer was the beginning of Fleer's comic era. I know it's just a little cartoon batter or pitcher squeezed at the bottom of the card and repeated over and over on card after card, but as someone wh...

  I've been debating publishing this post to recognize Canada Day, which is a week from now. But I don't like waiting too long on showing packages sent by readers -- it seems disrespectful. So here it is now. I've had the honor of several Canadian readers over the years. I was particularly blessed recently when a collector from Toronto emailed me and said he'd been a reader for several years. One post that I made last month caused him to head to his basement and go through his childhood collection of O-Pee-Chee cards. I'm now the owner of several of those childhood OPC cards. Everything that arrived is from the '70s and I think it's so cool that I've got cards that were in someone's basement in Toronto. This truly is an international hobby! Jeff said 1972 OPC was the first set he collected and he was certain there were a few Dodgers in that group. That's what I expected to get and I sure did! That's a bunch of the team set right there. Don...