Night Owl Cards

  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 who

  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&#

  I haven't written hardly anything about the passing of Willie Mays, except for a single tweet . Like everyone else, I marvel at his career, as best as I can for someone who saw none of it. He was on the wrong side of the Dodgers-Giants rivalry, too, so the best I can do is some version of "wow, look at those stats." But there were plenty of other people willing to pay tribute on social media. One of the off-shoot discussions that comes from such a significant player dying is "who is now the greatest living ballplayer?" Unlike many fans, I am not interested in talking about that. It's impossible to come to a conclusion. So maybe start another topic when we're sitting on the bar stool. Like who has the best pizza. The other topic was Mays being the last star of the '50s to leave the earth, the passing of an era. I don't know if I'm totally in agreement with that thinking. There are still plenty of big names who touched the 1950s still around.

  Well, that upgrade post from a couple of weeks ago gained some traction! Thanks to that post and the generosity of reader Paul, I've been able to make some progress on an upgrade project that's been in the back of my head ever since I returned to collecting. I've mentioned before that my collecting return was sparked by a couple of instances: 1) Finding Topps' All-Time Fan Favorites cards from 2004 in the toy department of a K-Mart in Buffalo; and 2) Building the 1975 Topps set from a pawn shop downtown. I'd go to the pawn shop (it's long gone, by the way) on my lunch break or in the afternoon on a day off and leaf through the one dealer's card offerings. He had almost the entire set of '75s in boxes on one glass display counter, and behind me was another couple of boxes of vintage cards, mostly stuff from the '60s or early '70s, on another counter. And in the glass display were all kinds of cards I couldn't afford then (but probably coul