Night Owl Cards

  A month into this blog, I featured my copy of the 1979 Sport Americana Baseball Card Price Guide, which is the first of the James Beckett/Dennis Eckes annual price guides that I purchased all through the mid-1980s. I don't remember when I bought the '79 copy. I'm guessing 1980. It's shown up a time or two on the blog since. It's a cool peek into the past, starting with the cover, which looks nothing like the price guides to come -- no photos, just drawings. (The book is the rarer white-cover version). As you can probably tell, I've handled this book a lot -- pages have been falling out for years. Probably most of the damage happened in the first year because, let me tell you, there was nothing cooler than someone assigning prices to cards. What a concept -- which ones were ones that I had? Answer: In 1979, almost none.   I brought up this book a couple days ago over on the House of Cardboard Discord site because the topic came up on "when did the concept ...

Imagine close to your ugliest day at work. I'm having it today. Throw in a sleep-robbing cough and there is no time for nothing today. So here is a simple showing of cards from Baseball Dad at All Tribe Baseball : Baseball Dad sent the stamps, too. He and I both used to collect stamps during our younger days. Both of us also remember when stamps were 15 cents apiece. Here's another thing we both remember: The prices of baseball cards in 1979. Yeah, I think I'll pick up a mint-condition 1966 Mantle for $5, please. Baseball Dad's a little older than me. Maybe he was able to jump on some of those card prices back then. He also might remember collecting cards in '66. I don't. Anyway ... ... (*sigh*) Is this day over yet? ...