Night Owl Cards

  Take a look at this 1977 Topps Bobby Murcer card. Notice anything different?   Sure you do. The card face is cloth, not cardboard.   This fascinated me as a young collector. I was around 12 or 13 when I saw 1977 Topps cloth stickers advertised, probably in our subscription to Baseball Digest magazine. I couldn't conceive of how they could make a card sticker out of cloth. The fact that they were the same size as a regular Topps card and showed the same photos (in most cases) as the regular set made me want them even more.   But I never ordered them, didn't have the money at the time and then later when I got back into chasing cards from my youth, the set was just a little bit cost prohibitive for me. Still, I put them on the "someday" list where they waited for years upon years.   Fast forward to Christmas week 2025. For someone who didn't receive any cards as presents this year, it's been a productive holiday as far as the hobby. The day after Christmas I p...

When you get to a card show twice a year there is a certain amount of pressure when the next one comes around. I feel the need to find something memorable at the show, because who knows when I'll get that opportunity again? Here it is the beginnings of spring and, chances are, summer will be dying or dead the next time I'm show-bound. So I was in that frame of mind this past weekend when I walked into the building and handed over my admission fee. For starters, I wasn't all that excited by what was on the want list I brought. If I look a little deeper into that, it's probably not a good sign, but on the surface, I knew some of the stuff I really wanted -- 1960s Dodgers high-numbers, 1970s Kellogg's/Hostess cards -- probably wouldn't be at the show. But I could hear those non-deep-thinkers shouting in my ear: YOU'RE AT A SHOW! YOU LIKE CARDS! FIND SOMETHING AND BUY IT! Suitably kicked in the pants, I got down to work. The show is at the state...

Before I get to the festivities, I want to mention something: I voted. OK? Now ... ... SHUT UP!!!!!!!!! The only thing worse than political election garbage is how we become a nation of nagging mothers on this day. Commence cards. My tremendous 2012 Bowman Chrome Clayton Kershaw gold refractor arrived in the mail today. Although I prefer pretty colors like blue and red, I won't turn down gold, especially when it's numbered to /50. Oooh. I sure do love this card so. The best thing about it, of course, is that I obtained it for free. It's a card from the Listia website and probably the most exclusive card I've obtained from the site yet. It "cost" me the most credits that I've ever laid down so far on the site. I got it for 2,479 credits. Like ebay, bidding on Listia is a little time-consuming, and I was engaged in a battle for this card on Halloween night, as the trick-or-treaters were coming to the door in waves. They had no ide...