Night Owl Cards

After basically taking the year off from collecting in 1990, I was back in 1991. I collected a lot of stuff in 1991 -- because there was a lot to collect. They blew the barn doors off in 1991. Cards and collecting and hobby people in general would never be the same because of '91. There was no going back. The genie was out of the bottle. Everyone had an accountant. We were all going to be stinkin' rich. And the quickest way to retirement -- in 1991 -- was to buy even more cards. The card companies were there for you. There were no less than nine major card sets in 1991, the most ever. I'm not even counting things like Classic and O-Pee-Chee Premiere. Nine sets to collect. NINE! For the first six years of my collecting existence I was collecting one solitary set and sticking my fist in a cereal box for another. That was it. NINE! The '91 card season is probably most notable for the growth in "premium" sets. Leaf in 1990 spawned Stadium Club and Ult...

I just finished producing the annual high school football special section for the newspaper. It's always a month-long project capped by a day-long finale that's sure to drain from you any will to be productive for the next 48 hours. I have the energy left to show just two cards. Fortunately, when I came home, there was a plain, white envelope sitting on the dining room table that contained -- unbelievable -- just two cards. The cards arrived from Joe , who has sent me many nice cards in the past. It's been awhile since I've heard from him, but I'm glad to learn that he's still collecting. It's some very fancy stuff, by the way. And speaking of fancy, if you're going to send two cards, then this is the way to do it. Here is the first one: This is my first "book" card. It's two mini cards, so that makes it a mini book. But I'm not complaining. What I will complain about is how card companies never see the problem with p...

I have this sudden, overwhelming desire to categorize, compartmentalize and marginalize a whole mess of baseball card sets. So I pulled a small stack of cards from various years, and I'm going to try to give them a name on the spot. I can tell you already that I'm going to be successful with some and a failure with others. So I'll need your assistance as always. If you think you have a good name for these sets, yell out your answers. Even if I've come up with a name, there's always the chance that there's something better. However, the 2012 Topps set has been named already and there's no going back. By consensus, it's The Surfboard Set. I'm not taking credit for that name. I believe steelehere was the first to come up with it as far as I know. So I'm giving him his due. Address your complaints appropriately. But really, it's a perfect name. So, let's move on to some sets that are more difficult to name: 1959 Topps deserves ...

So what the hell is wrong with me? I start a post about the worst year of the junk wax era by displaying perhaps the era's finest moment in 1991 Stadium Club? That was kind of the same thought process I went through when Chris Olds, of Beckett fame, tweeted today that 1991 ranked among the worst baseball card years of all-time. To his credit, he did mention the exception of Stadium Club debuting that year. But I thought that SC would be enough to push 1991 ahead of other ungodly baseball card years, like, say, 1990. Olds dismissed my suggestion of 1990 being worse than 1991 by mentioning the number of star rookies to come out of 1990. Ah, rookies. Rookies never crossed my mind when I compared the two years. I've found that this rookie deal is a generational thing. When many collectors under the age of about 35 grade the quality of certain baseball card years, one of the main criteria is "who were the rookies that year?" But I'm over 40. I don't give...

I'm an idea guy. It's not that I come up with great ones all the time, I just like there to be some thought behind whatever someone is trying to get you to read/view/buy. In the sportswriting business, you are constantly watching a game you've seen a 100 times before or writing a feature you've done a 100 times before. It's your job to find something different in that game or person and write about that. That's what I tell the people on my staff. If you mail it in, you're going to be bored, the readers are going to be bored, and nobody's going to be happy. And that brings me to the 2008 "Infield Power" Upper Deck insert here, which, by the way, was part of nice, unexpected card package sent by Ed of Roll Out the Barrel . The card looks nice, but the thought process? Meh . I guess they were going for a subset of infielders who could hit for power. Thrilling. That was a big deal when Cal Ripken was playing, but does anyone care anymore? ...