Night Owl Cards

This is the continuation of a series I started in February , about how that even for the 1980s, there are elusive cards for team collector types.   I went through what I still need from sets issued between 1980-83 in the first post. Today I'm going through what I need for Dodgers from 1984-85. Yeah, just two years this time. The amount I need increases as the '80s progress. Who would've figured that, huh?   Like I said before, this probably has limited interest, but the first one was so successful to my collection I have no choice to continue it. A look at what I added from the last post:   The top two cards wrapped up the 1980 Laughlin Famous Feats set as far as the Dodgers. The Walter Alston finished the 1981 TCMA The 1960s II team set. The 1982 Fleer Ron Cey stamp didn't finish any team set -- because they're stamps, come on -- but at least I righted a horrible wrong of not owning a rather common Cey Dodger item.   So, to me, that's well worth investigating f...

  There are some cards that can only be appreciated -- truly appreciated -- by collectors who grew up in a specific period of time, maybe within only half a decade.   For instance, consider the 1979 Topps George Foster card, which many collectors my age have. If you are one of the legions of collectors who started with the 1987 Topps set or maybe the late '90s, or on the other end, in the 1960s or early 1970s, you can't appreciate the sizeable impact this card had on us.   In 1979, I didn't know a card without a logo on the helmet or hat. Logos were always there -- even if they were drawn on by Topps -- they were there. This was the period of Necessary Team Logos. I didn't know the time in the late '60s/early '70s when Topps would cover the offending hat logo with some black ink. I didn't know the 1970 Milton Bradley set. Conversely, I didn't grow up in the mid-to-late '80s, when unlicensed sets and empty hats re-emerged with oddballs from Burger Kin...

  It's another "long weekend" with just two days off for me. But it was enough time for my hobby to travel north for a brief visit.   Yesterday I finally paged the 1983 O-Pee-Chee set that I received from Angus of Dawg Day Cards months ago and put them in a binder. It kind of violated my new rule of "no incomplete sets in a binder" as I still need 67 cards to finish it. But I consider it a priority set -- anything from 1983 is -- even if I don't spend much time on it for awhile. It's just a relief to stop staring at that stack.   Then today I was sitting in a hospital lab waiting room -- I'm telling you, it's just another Monday around here -- and thought enough to bring some reading material. It was the latest copy of Beckett Vintage Collector with David Clyde on the cover.   I've read that story already, and the one after it. But the one up next, that I read fully during my 45-minute wait, was also related to O-Pee-Chee.   This was written...

I am focusing on several card pursuits at once, per usual, and I hate how I drop one after a single purchase or two because my head turns for some hot "young" card thing (it's usually not "young," it's usually vintage). This is why I go so long between completing card sets.   So, I tried to focus on the 1969 Topps chase for a little while and did well enough to get through about three purchases, but then I got distracted by 1975 Hostess, which I felt like I was neglecting, so -- wham -- I placed some cash down on that the other day. But that was after vowing to get back into finishing the 1971 Laughlin World Series set, which I promptly dropped to get this:   Say hello to Harold Reese in all of his weathered glory. This is from 1950 Bowman, and I guess I can forgive myself for going off on a collecting tangent here.   I want to try to get some of the other 1950s Bowman Brooklyn Dodgers sets complete, or as complete as I can. But the only way for me to do th...

  It's pretty apparent to me that the number of parallels in every card product has vaulted into another level of ridiculousness in the last year or two.   Counting parallels has been crazy for at least the last 10 years but somewhere around when Panini started Chronicles and then now with what Topps is doing in its main sets, it's almost impossible to keep tabs on all of them, and I don't know what to think of any collector who is trying to collect them all for one player. Pity? Admiration? Concern for Their Financial and Mental Health?  As I've said many times, despite the over-the-top number, I still like a good parallel. Colorful ones are the best. But I almost never chase them anymore. They've jumped the shark and I've stopped watching.   But also they're still a good way to find cards that are new to my collection and if they are Dodgers, I'm going to welcome most of them even while wishing we could go back to the days when there were just gold par...