Night Owl Cards

  While flipping through my 2010 Topps binder for yesterday's post I realized again that I have got to replace many of the pages in it. I don't know what happened to the pages in that thing. Somehow they are super brittle and they've come apart so easily it's as if they have a disease. None of my other pages are like this. And these are Ultra Pro pages, which I've always known as the sturdiest and the best quality. I'd expect it from cheaper pages that I often have to buy, or are gifted to me, but not these guys. The first few pages are in decent shape until we get to the page with numbers 127-135. You can see what I've called "stripping" or "shredding" above the Reid Gorecki card. That type of thing continues for a few pages as if the disease has spread from the pages closest to each other. The next page: After a few pages like that, the symptoms clear up for several clean pages. But it's not over yet. There is another grouping of cr

  This is a continuation from my Stadium Club blaster break post in which I noted how many rookie cards appeared in it.   I know I bash rookie cards a lot and I probably should just be quiet about it because they certainly divert a lot of collectors who would otherwise be competition for the good stuff. But it's an obsession in the industry and it's getting worse.   Didn't the hobby always care about rookie cards, night owl? Well, no. I didn't anyway. I spent five blissful years collecting without a clue that there was such a thing as a rookie card. Rookie cup? I knew those. But the first card of a particular player probably didn't make me take notice until Bob Welch's 1979 Topps card. After that, I remember the 1980 Rickey Henderson card being a little bit coveted. Then there was the 1982 Traded Cal Ripken Jr. card. I knew I had something when I ordered that complete Traded set. Then rookie cards began to pick up more momentum with the Boggs-Gwynn-Sandberg tri

  I'm in a writing stage that often happens around this time of year where ideas don't come easily and time is short.   I am fortunate to have a lengthy backlog of posts and several post themes. But even with those aids, it takes time to find the right one, expand on an idea, track down the cards, scan/upload the cards, and write, write, write.   Sometimes, like yesterday, I am down to the final 40 minutes before work or some other obligation calls, when I strike upon the right thing. But NO TIME!   So, that's why there wasn't a post last night but there is one now.   Several years ago, it's been nine to be exact, I wrote a post featuring all the Topps cards in which the card number on the back matched with the year of the card. For example, card No. 52 in the 1952 Topps set is Don Mueller. I showed each of the cards all the way up to the most recent year, which at the time was 2014 Topps.   I resolved to update that post yearly. Then I forgot. The next time I revi