One of the many running sub-themes of this blog is how unobservant I am, and how concerned I am about it.
I scold myself over and over for not noticing things on cards, whether it was painted hats when I was a kid collecting in the 1970s or widely broadcast errors on current cards over the last 20 years. When I do notice a small detail I'm almost triumphant because finally my brain wasn't on auto-pilot.
I get concerned about this "flaw" because my real-life, salaried job is about noticing things. I'm supposed to be an expert on this. I am scouring whatever I can to get sports stories in the newspaper, whether it's locally or nationally. I've become pretty good at it -- well, actually I've been pretty good at it for a few decades now.
So my theory is that I spend so much time on "noticing" in my work life that maybe subconsciously my brain doesn't want to notice so much when it comes to my hobby. That's what I tell myself anyway.
But yet, I get bugged. Three times in the past week in fact.
Example #1
This has to do with misplacing cards -- which is a constant issue -- but I found this one particularly puzzling.
I discovered this 1990 Donruss Eric Davis card lying on the third shelf of one of my two binder shelves in the card room. When I went to put the 1977 Topps binder back into its spot after my "School's Out" post, I discovered this dinged Davis lying there.
How in the world did it get there? 1990 Donruss has nothing to do with the third shelf of my binder shelf. It is where 1970s Topps binders go. My 1990 Donruss cards are in a box in a drawer in a rolltop desk across the way. It seems like I would notice this Eric Davis card somehow traveling across the room and stuck under a 1977 binder. But I didn't. Who knows how long it was there?
Obviously it took a hit and I've already looked to see if I have a dupe. I don't (I have remarkably few 1990 Donruss cards -- as it should be).
Example #2
Here's something that the vast majority of my readers likely knew in 1987.
I'm still deeply involved in the Open Binders collecting project on BlueSky. Still a lot of fun. The other day I "pulled" this 1987 Topps Darryl Motley card. I had never processed it before even though it's in my complete 1987 Topps set binder.
I saw the "Now With Braves" type and automatically thought it was an O-Pee-Chee card. Nope, it's a Topps card. (Motley played 11 games for the Braves).
I had no idea Topps was doing "Now With ..." in 1987. I'm most familiar with the 1988 examples (and Davey Lopes in 1985). How I missed this rather bold statement when I added this card to my collection I don't know.
I'm going to say it's probably because I got a huge chunk of this set all at once and you just can't absorb every card when that happens. It's not like I'm 10 and have all summer to sit on the floor and stare at my collection card-by-card.
Example #3
Nine years ago I wrote a post about this 1980 Topps Garry Templeton card and how baseball-reference and other sites don't recognize Templeton as getting 100 hits from each side of the plate in 1979.
This amazed me at the time, which was in the spring of 2017. Back then I found a thread from 2014 stating that Templeton was short four hits from the left side, and it blew my mind because this feat of Templeton's was mentioned on the back of his cards for like the next 10 years. Now they were all incorrect.
Well, unbeknownst to me, a fan was amazed by Templeton's feat and he and his friend in 2017 went looking around for whether anybody other than Templeton and Willie Wilson (who was also touted as accomplishing it a year later) had reached 100 hits from each side. They found out that not only had no one else done it but Templeton and Wilson hadn't done it either.
(I find it interesting that their discovery happened in 2017, the same year of my blog post. Perhaps they came across it).
Anyway, this fan decided to do his own research by combing old newspaper articles of baseball game accounts and he was able come up with 100 hits for both sides. He made a video about it. Two years ago. I just found out about it today -- I'm very observant.
This is cool and it means that maybe we weren't all fools doing our record-keeping 45-plus years ago and isn't it great that newspapers can still come in handy (baseball-reference, by the way, hasn't updated Templeton's splits). But also isn't it concerning that newspapers are going away and everyone thinks it's not a big deal but what happens when the internet suddenly goes away, too, and nothing from the last 20 years was documented in a physical way and the few newspapers around can't be consulted because they stopped writing accounts of the game in order to spend all their words on what the new foods are at the ballpark this year and whether Taylor Swift has tried them?
Sorry, I tangented.
So, in brief (yeah, I know, too late), I miss a lot of stuff about cards, even though this blog is kind of known for noticing stuff about cards.
Moral: I shouldn't beat myself up over it because that's just human nature. And sometimes I do notice that I notice things in the hobby.
Today this key card for my 1985 Donruss complete set arrived for my collection. I was fully prepared to pay double-digits for the Dwight Gooden rookie card.
While filling my latest sportlots order, I tried to add a Gooden but all of them were at least 10 bucks. I didn't feel like paying that. But then I went on ebay -- and spotted a sample in single digits. Looked nice, too.
Sold.
h/t to me for noticing.
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