Following up (again)

I need to tie off some loose ends about a few different topics, so I'll do that here and then I'll show you some cards from Fuji later. The cards he has been sending out have been all over the blogs lately so what I'll be offering isn't anything new.

So, some housekeeping:

1.  Thanks for your comments on the expansion post from last night. I do appreciate them and I know how fortunate I am to receive the amount of comments I do.

Sometimes, particularly after a very research-driven post that takes hours and hours over several days, if I receive a comment that says nothing but "you forgot this," it rubs the wrong way. That's what happened yesterday, a few times. I should have a thicker skin but I think I wore it off pulling all those cards out of binders and looking up web sites, and typing, typing, typing. I don't expect praise in every comment, but, you know, "yes and ..." is a little more helpful than "yes but ...".

So anyway, I'll try to be less snippy. I can use the excuse that I was having a bad day, because I was. But I should treat my commenters with respect. Many blogs wish they had this problem. Also, there are a number of people -- fellow bloggers even -- who don't comment at all (and what's their deal?). I should remember all of that.

One helpful commenter mentioned that there were actually cases of expansion team players being featured a year before the expansion team played a game in 1992. I had made the statement that the 1992 Donruss' Rockies and Marlins logos were the only on-card indications of the pending expansion in '92 and players weren't involved.

I never intended the post to be the be-all and end-all of expansion-teams-on-cards research (but that's why you shouldn't use words like "only," night owl!). But I think I do have an excuse. The above card claims to be an expansion team card from 1992. But we all know that is merely a horrible baseball card of some kid on a park bench.

He is listed with the Marlins though. So I guess it classifies. There are a couple examples of these in the Olin Mills Photo Shoot portion of 1992 Bowman.

Here is Nunez again in the 1992 Upper Deck set on something that says "Florida Marlins" a little more than the Bowman card.

Upper Deck wedged one Marlin (Nunez) and one Rockie (Ryan Turner) into its 1992 set in the 700-plus numbers (neither made the majors). There are also a couple of expansion players in Upper Deck's Minor Leagues set from that year, so those are your pre-1993 examples of Marlins and Rockies.

Trying to do card research that involves 1990s cards is just asking for trouble. Whenever my research wanders into the '90s my brain starts screaming "what are you DOING?!?! You can not win this battle!" I should listen to my brain.

2.  I believe I have sent all but one of my Bert Campaneris prize contest envelopes off in the mail.

Three of them went out today, including both envelopes headed for Canada. You'll be pleased to know that the guy waiting on me, after asking me to step aside to fill out the customs form, vanished while I was filling the form. He had forgotten about me. So I'm standing there while all the other customers in the post office were waited on and had left. Then the other two workers started checking out their registers and counting the cash and leaving. Finally, one of them found the guy who was waiting on me and told him, "you know that customer is still waiting for you." There were many apologies.

That leaves one last envelope, which is for Nine Pockets. Since I've procured his address, I will be filling that out and sending it sometime this weekend.

Thanks for playing along with me. And, as always, thanks for commenting. Sorry, again, that I forgot that yesterday.

3.  I'm done talking about and fiddling with the look of my blog.

One of the elements I was still questioning (this has been going on for as long as the blog has existed) is changing the blog look so it's black-on-white type instead of white-on-black. Then I looked at the Blogger app on my phone. Did you know that the app converts your blog to black-on-white type automatically no matter what configuration you have on your actual blog?

When I saw that, it signaled to me, I need to stop obsessing. I think I like what I've got enough to keep it for awhile so don't expect any big changes.

But do expect those Night Owl Cards logo business cards! I will be ordering those in the next few days.

No, they won't be purple.

4.  Many of you know that Topps Big League is out.

I haven't looked to see if my local stores have it. It takes every ounce of energy I have to enter a Target these days (and forget Walmart, maybe I'll go back in 2021). I actually have to make a day of it. And the way the card aisles are cleared out -- apparently some people don't have to make a day of it -- it would be very disappointing to get all gussied up and then encounter a ramshackled card wall.

Also, I'm trying to ignore current cards as much as possible this year. But I do like the look of Big League this year. I like it very, very much. This set reminds me so much of collecting cards in the '70s and '80s and that's why I will always appreciate Big League.

The 2020 Big League design also reminds me of something, too.

A couple of people have brought up that it looks like 2009 O-Pee-Chee and it does. It's one of the first sets I thought of when I saw the Big League design.

But then I thought of another set that I think looks even more like 2020 Big League.

1998 Upper Deck Retro is a pretty spot-on match for Big League.

I went ahead and ordered the Dodgers team set for Big League. This is my strategy for 2020 sets that I traditionally like. If I get all the Dodgers it will keep me from buying packs of the stuff. And that way I can concentrate on vintage and other card stuff I've been buying the last three months.

5. If you have been on Twitter for the last 48 hours, you've seen this card a time or two.

It is a variation short-print of Andrew McCutchen's Topps Series 2 card. It is tremendous and I'm sure Collecting Cutch already has 14 different variations of this variation in his clutches.

The card is so good that the official Twitter account of baseball legend Dick Allen called it "the coolest baseball card ever."

This is high praise. But I couldn't help but think it would be much cooler if this was a card you could reasonably expect to pull out of a pack, like any of the other non-short-printed cards. Wouldn't that be cool if, you know, all the base cards were as cool as this?

I would think that would cause a whole bunch of people to start collecting cards if the photos were this awesome, rather than all the repetitious batter batting, pitcher pitching, runner running, athlete-making- grunting-face-grunting cards we've seen so many times for so many years in Topps flagship sets.

Variation short-prints have been around a long time and chase cards have been around even longer, but I think the hobby did itself a disservice when the chase card/insert card/variation card/super short-print card became king. Topps and the other card companies -- most now gone -- when they did this, officially admitted, "hey everyone, most of the cards we're producing are boring. Our base set is boring. You don't want that. What you really want is this card that you'll have to open 12 boxes to get. That's what you want."

That is not the hobby I grew up in. I know many people did and have no idea what I'm saying, but not being able to pull this fantastic McCutchen card out of a pack and instead hunting for it online and hoping the price will go down and battling 53 other unseen McCutchen fans for that particular card is not progress.

All right, I'm getting crabby again ...

Let's wash that all away with Fuji's cards!

He managed to squeeze 15 Dodgers cards into a PWE. And, marvel of marvels, I actually needed one-third of the cards!

I know the Inland Empire 89ers card is technically not a Dodger card, but I do count those Pro Debut cards as Dodger cards in my collection and you can't convince me otherwise.

The Adrian Beltre Bazooka card, weirdly, I owned the mini version and the gold parallel version but not the base card.

Two other cards Fuji sent I have but I can reapportion elsewhere. The Beltre may find a spot in my night card binder (but it would have to boot out a Darin Erstad card I like a lot). The Jerry Reuss card will go toward my Someday 1982 Donruss Completion Bid. Date: Unannounced.

OK, so that's plenty for what is basically a housekeeping post. I will be taking Saturday off for a breather.

Obviously, I could use it.

(P.S.: I added the "again" to the blog title because I realized I've used "Following Up" as a housekeeping post not even two years ago!)