Night Owl Cards

  I like to think of myself as judicious, shrewd, prudent, and all those other synonyms for smart and rational collecting behavior. But I have my moments. Sometimes I can't help myself when someone is offering cards for 10 cents apiece. I mentioned my most recent baseballcardstore.ca purchase a few posts ago and showed off some 1986 Fleer. '86 Fleer is right on the cusp of the era when every card should be a penny ... or less. I have no problem spending 10 cents or a quarter for cards from '86. But cards from '87 all the way through '92? You're going to have to convince me. So how do I explain this? That's a stack of 1987 Fleer from the dime box store. There are 120 cards there for a dime each. That's really overpaying. I can go online right now and buy a complete '87 Fleer set for 10 bucks. So what is wrong with me? Why would I blow extra money on '87 Fleer? Well, I don't really have any good reasons. I do admit I'm not that thrifty wit

  A lot of collectors are into really old cards. The older the better. There are pre-war collectors and tobacco card enthusiasts. I see several of them on Twitter almost every day, showing off their latest, all very impressive. But outside of marveling at how ancient they are, those cards don't do much for me. I'm not into collecting 120-year-old cards. I just can't relate to it. I won't kick cards like that out of the house, obviously, but over the years it's been one consistent theme in my collecting habits. I don't have many really old cards or think about obtaining others. There are so many cards, more recent stuff, that I want more. For example, my favorite thing to do is pick up cards that were around when I was a kid. I've been doing that for the last 20 years or so, probably longer. People say there weren't that many cards in the 1970s, what with the Topps monopoly. I beg to differ. Because I'm still trying to get cards from that time and I d

    I never intended for any of my blogs to be inspirational. I've never started a post thinking, "maybe this will spur someone to do what I'm saying." I'm merely just giving my viewpoint on a topic, not attempting to convert the masses. But time and time again, I've received emails or comments from collectors who have said "you inspired me to (fill in the blank)." It's happened so often, sometimes I think maybe I should be writing about something bigger than cards. Maybe I'd be more useful. But I like cards the best and it's all I want to write about really (I'm actually finishing up on another article for Beckett magazine today and tomorrow). And when I get comments like I got on my 1971 Topps card blog the other day, I know that I'm doing the right thing: Right on, Mark. I can appreciate what you're feeling right now. Because there's nothing like completing a set. (This makes me feel like I should do another set blog, a

    A couple of weeks ago I posted about my appreciation for Saturdays gone by and in particular Saturday card bloggers -- those bloggers who post only on Saturdays. Today, I'm addressing Sundays and Sunday-only card bloggers. For me, Sundays are my Saturdays. It's a recuperation day from the week that's passed. I usually don't do a lot that day unless the Monday-thru-Fridayers insist on doing something. It's mostly a day for baseball watching (or football watching) and music listening. I usually blog that day, too. As a youngster, Sundays were for church and shopping, of course. That was the day when a trip to the ice cream shop was most likely. It was a day for cookouts and fun food and riding bikes and walking to the drug store to find cards. As I got older, I worked in a department store and Sundays were a day the sales started -- and the day most likely for a customer to insist something was on sale that wasn't on sale -- and the first time I experienced w

  Today is the release date for 2021 Stadium Club. The cool kids are already showing their loot, procured through means unavailable to me. Or maybe I just won't jump through the hoops required. I'll get my hands on some of it -- probably just the Dodgers team set -- next month or three months from now, whatever. It's always a favorite and has been since the beginning. One of my favorite parts of Stadium Club during the '90s is all the chaos on cardboard. SC was an expert on showing dirt on cards and often bodies were flying through it or above it. Here's a few examples: Great stuff. Dust flying. Equipment flying. People flying. That pattern held firm through the initial era of Stadium Club, from 1991-2003.   There are a few basepaths photos in Stadium Club's return in 2008. But the name banner kind of gets in the way of the action on some of the cards. SC took another sabbatical after the semi-disaster of '08 and when it returned in 2014, and each of the yea