Night Owl Cards

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Counting down my favorites of '80s Topps Traded

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...

It all came together

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...

Arbitrary team binder rules

I hope people had a good 4th of July yesterday. I have aged out of the water park/fireworks spectaculars that were part of my life 15-20 years ago. All there is to do these days -- if I don't want to drive out to whatever crowded area is hosting fireworks -- is hunker down at home and calm the pet. And play with baseball cards, of course -- always a perk when you don't have to go anywhere. I've wrapped up another team binders update but there are always team-binder determinations happening in my collection. My recent sportlots order included this 1993 Upper Deck Then & Now Darryl Strawberry insert. I've liked this particular insert for a long time and pick one up every once in awhile, with showing them off on my 1993 Upper Deck blog when the time comes now part of the plan (That won't be until 500-plus more cards have been posted, and with the way nobody pays attention to set blogs anymore, who knows if I'll ever get there). When you update these c...

Finally at the quality over quantity phase

Ever since I was a kid I've been about the "more" of cards. I have always liked "more cards" over "less cards." This probably has to do with not having a lot when I was a kid. I had old-school parents who thought kids should earn things through something called an allowance. I didn't have much money, and there was nobody around to just give me stuff unless my grandma made a visit or it was my birthday. Even then nobody was gifting me a complete set. So when I finally started working and receiving a paycheck, well, adding as many cards as I could seemed like a great idea. Add the fact that I come from the set-building generation -- what's the point of getting cards if they're not going toward a set? -- and more is the way to go. Those sets are at least 660 cards strong and filled with commons. So through decades of following the "more mantra," I have added binders upon binders of cards and boxes upon boxes. You've se...

Canada Day research 2

Happy Canada Day to my Canadian readers. I haven't written a Canada Day post in four years when once it was a semi-regular occurrence. This is no oversight, just someone writing a blog for two decades and running out of ideas. For inspiration I went back to a post I wrote 10 years ago in which I researched a few MLBers who I didn't know were from Canada. I wondered if I could find some others. And I did. This surprised me. I've lived near Canada for two-thirds of my life -- in three different places. I've attended baseball games in both Toronto and Montreal (and Welland, Ontario). And I've interviewed MLBers in one of them (Montreal). Maybe I should know more Canadians than Larry Walker, Joey Votto, Terry Puhl and Vlad Jr. So here are a handful more of Canadian players I didn't know were Canadian. Although it's possible I did know at one time that they were. Facts are falling out of my brain all of the time these days. JOHN AXFORD (Simco...