Night Owl Cards

(Welcome to what's annually my favorite week of the year, a week where all the things I like converge within seven glorious days. Maybe we'll get into more of why that is -- and why it's not as great as it once was -- as the week goes on. But for now it's Vacation Time! Oh, and Cardboard Appreciation time, too. This is the 372nd in a series):   One of the benefits of playing the Topps card game over on Bluesky that I mentioned earlier is that I come across cards I never noticed all the time.   Most of these cards are either from the 1960s, 1990s or some part of the early 2000s, i.e., times when I wasn't collecting. In 1994, in particular, I was pulling away from the hobby and bought a handful of Topps packs before deciding I wasn't into it anymore.   I never saw this Kevin Wickander card. But when I saw it in an online image a few weeks ago, I immediately purchased a real one for my collection.   What is it that makes cards like this so appealing?   Well, for st...

  The theme to this week apparently is completing sets because here comes another one.   Yesterday I wrapped up 1985 Donruss. I wrote a couple of weeks ago that all I needed to acquire was the Kirby Puckett and Roger Clemens rookie cards. The Puckett showed up like the next day and the Clemens arrived yesterday as the final card.   A bit off-center but I didn't pay double figures for it and it's still a sharp card. 1985 Donruss really looks good in some situations with the black borders and mid-1980s Donruss' fondness for shadows.   I would have rather had someone else to chase down as the final card than Clemens but at least it didn't take me months of searching for someone I find unpleasant. It occurred to me as I was tracking Clemens, Puckett and Gooden at the end that some of the biggest stars of the mid-to-late '80s were also some of the most flawed. That doesn't make me feel good as this is my generation. If I was good enough to play major league baseball,...

  On one hand I think it's a decent accomplishment to finish the 1980s Topps Traded sets. That's nine years of sets. I feel pretty good about that.   On the other hand, the only one of those sets I truly "collected" was the 1984 set and some of the 1986 set. Traded sets from that time arrived more conveniently -- send a check in the mail and all 132 cards showed up at your door in a tidy box. It wasn't exactly difficult to assemble.   My only regret in finishing this entire run of sets is I don't have all the colorful boxes from each year. What you see in the picture is all I own. I'm most distressed that I no longer have the blue 1982 Traded box as that's the first one I ordered and the set I have the most nostalgia for -- those red backs! I suppose I could buy the empty boxes.   But to celebrate completion I've pulled 20 of my favorite cards from these sets to count down. Many of these are familiar cards and you'll expect certain ones to show...

  I have been quietly accumulated cards from the 1984 Topps Traded set the last couple of months, all the while on the lookout for a complete set for sale online that I could purchase and just be done with the whole thing.   But I lost my shot at a complete set a couple of weeks ago when I missed the ebay "due date," and figured I'd have to resume getting cards piece by piece as I had been doing.    So that had been the pattern, a here-and-there approach that may not be efficient but wasn't making me impatient.   Bo from Baseball Cards Come to Life! had been my main supplier and most recently sent these pair of Red Sox. Gale's time with Boston was very brief.     I received all of these Yankees in a sportlots order. Yes, just the Yankees in that order. Why just them?   Well, around the same time that I was building a sportlots order, I settled on a TCDB trade that included 1984 Topps Traded. For some reason, none of the many '84 Traded in that tr...