Night Owl Cards

What a strange card. I've been going back and forth over whether this card is a night card. I don't think it is. And when I see it scanned, I really don't think it is. The photo is lighter in the scan than in person. But Shane from Off the Wall sent it to me as a purported night card, and I can't blame him. There's still a part of me that thinks it's possible. It sure is dark where they're sitting. But my instincts say it was more likely taken indoors, using shoddy late '80s minor league camera equipment, and the picture-taker was positioned somewhere around the pitcher's mound. But what minor league team in the '80s had an indoor facility with grass? Maybe it is a night card. Oh, I don't know. I go around and around about this stuff. These are the arguments I have with myself when mulling night card possibilities. It's really self-created busy work that I absolutely don't need. What I should do, when I don't know whet...

Last week I did some seriously overdue reorganizing of the Night Card Binder. I may seem like I have it all together when it comes to night cards, but it's probably my most scattered collection. So, I started from the beginning, which is the actual binder itself. As I mentioned briefly last week, for the longest time, the color of the Night Card Binder has been ... white. Yes, white. What is wrong with me? So I took care of that. The Night Card Binder is now black as it should be: It's rather plain. I'll have to do something about adding some graphics or a drawing or the like to the front. But this is appropriate for now. Here is a look at the first page, which I have shown before: It is going to take a lot for anything to bust through those nine. With reorganizing I had to make a few hard choices. Cards that I thought were definite Night Card Binder additions, even Night Card Binder mainstays, got the boot. For example, these cards, which I bel...

A significant part of the charm of night cards from the mid-1980s and earlier is that there simply aren't many of them. Every night card from back then was and is a discovery. It's why I gravitated to them in the first place. While collecting them as a youngster, they stood out as a novelty. And through my love for everything dark and neon, a collection was born. For instance, this 1984 Topps Traded card of Tim Stoddard is one of the few night cards in all of '84 Topps. There are just a handful. Andre Robertson and Rick Cerone from the flagship set spring to mind. There can't be many more than that. But today? You can't turn around without falling over a night card in a current set. Whatever your collecting desire, there is a night card for that occasion: Home plate celebrations? Check. Return to home plate celebrations? Check. Return to the dugout celebrations? Check. Pitchers bunting? Check. Pitchers blasting off? Check. ...

As the apparent sole arbiter of "night cards," I am particular about what I declare to be a night card. My scan folder is filled with cards that may never see the light of this blog because I can't say for sure that they are in fact night cards. Even some of the cards that have already been declared Awesome Night Cards may not actually be night cards. I know that is a shattering revelation. I ask that you please try to get ahold of yourselves. I admit that sometimes I find my blog minions asleep on the job (what? you don't have blog minions?) and inferior product sneaks through. But after a lecture on the importance of time-wasting regular blog features and the occasional sound beating, we are all back on course, generating premium night cards on a weekly basis under a strict deadline. Really determining a night card comes down to a few of simple rules. They're posted on the walls of the NOC factory: a) Is it dark in the photo? (you'd be surprised b...

I am still recovering from my daughter's big birthday bash from yesterday -- it's shocking when you get older how anything slightly out of the ordinary can exhaust you. So I've got just one card for you tonight, but it's a really, really good one. This item arrived from my buddy Dave along with the more modern day cards that I showed earlier. This card is definitely not modern, which is perfectly OK with me. In fact, Dave listed all of the categories where this card fits into my collection. It's: -- Vintage -- Oddball -- Foreign -- Designed like the '59 Topps set -- A night card Sweet! As the PSA label says up top, this card is from the 1967 Kabaya Leaf set. According to Japanese Baseball Cards , this was the first attempt by a Japanese card manufacturer to make an American-style card set. Apparently, these cards were imported to the U.S. and sold through the mail until the early 1970s, and the cards are hard to find in Japan now. Thanks to so...

As you know, I have been somewhat obsessed with determining the oldest night card ever made. I have a feeling that someone is going to spring some wacky tobaccy night card from 1904 on me that I have no chance of getting. But while I'm still having fun with this, I'll press on. The above card arrived in the mail today. It's a 1953 Bowman Color card of the St. Louis Browns' Don Lenhardt. The much-traveled Lenhardt was an outfielder and corner infielder for the Browns, Orioles, Red Sox and Tigers between 1950-54. This card is from his second tour with the Brownies, and he just may have the honor of being on the oldest night card ever made ... for now. I'm not 100 percent sure that it's a full-fledged night card. It could be dusk, and I'm usually hesitant to add "dusk cards" to my collection. But that blazing bank of lights in the upper left automatically makes me place it under the "night card" category without reservation. So ther...

Every year at this time I take a quick glance through my Topps flagship cards and see what new night cards I can discover. It's very easy these days to find a night card, but that also leads to a whole bunch of boring night cards. With many modern-day night cards, there's very little visual sign that the game is at night. There is usually a dark glow in the background around the player and that's all that tells you that it's a night card. I don't like having those types of night cards in my night card binder. I'd rather my night cards be loud and proud. Show off your nightness! I want to see LIGHTS! But in 2018, in these close-cropping times, I'll take what I can get. My favorite night card from 2018, at the moment (I'm still waiting to get a Kershaw one ), is the David Dahl flagship card. Sure, there is no overt nighttime signal, but Dahl is definitely booking through the night air. The best part of the card is the glowing scoreboard. I haven...

OK, with this card, I have now officially displayed 100 night cards in the Awesome Night Card format on this blog. That is quite the occasion for a night card addict like me. To mark the occasion, I have purchased a binder to house my night cards. Yes, I know what you're thinking: "you mean, you don't have your night cards in their own binder already?" No, I don't. Although I collect them, I've never separated them. They are merely included in my 1991 Topps binder, or my 1984 Topps binder, or my many Dodger binders, or wherever they land in my arbitrary filing system. There has never been an O-fish-ee-al Night Card Binder, until now. This is a big step, because not only have I recognized another subset of my card collecting hobby in binder-and-page form, but I now must start collecting duplicates of a lot of these cards. In fact, that has been the one thing that has kept me from getting a night card binder (that and the fact that I hate shopping for...

Me and my projects. Billy Koch is celebrating here because I have finally figured out a way to collect awesome night cards that will actually make me excited about my binder of night cards instead of saying, "eh, here's my binder of favorite night cards. There's no real reason for why these particular cards are here in this order." Yes, I know we had an Awesome Night Card tournament, and I put the cards that were voted the best in the front of the binder. But I need a reason for the positioning of all the cards in the binder. Because I'm fickle and impatient and scatter-brained and we've gotta do somethin' different. So I'm doing this: I'm sure everyone has heard of the Frankenset before. I'm not going to explain it because I tried to do so and confused myself and had to erase it from the post. If you want an explanation go to The Cardboard Junkie, and he'll mention the Frankenset every once in awhile because it's Allen ...