Night Owl Cards

  The theme to this week apparently is completing sets because here comes another one.   Yesterday I wrapped up 1985 Donruss. I wrote a couple of weeks ago that all I needed to acquire was the Kirby Puckett and Roger Clemens rookie cards. The Puckett showed up like the next day and the Clemens arrived yesterday as the final card.   A bit off-center but I didn't pay double figures for it and it's still a sharp card. 1985 Donruss really looks good in some situations with the black borders and mid-1980s Donruss' fondness for shadows.   I would have rather had someone else to chase down as the final card than Clemens but at least it didn't take me months of searching for someone I find unpleasant. It occurred to me as I was tracking Clemens, Puckett and Gooden at the end that some of the biggest stars of the mid-to-late '80s were also some of the most flawed. That doesn't make me feel good as this is my generation. If I was good enough to play major league baseball,...

  I am in the final stretch in my 1985 Donruss completion quest. Just as I figured several months ago, I am getting this done during the summer when I have time to attack little projects like this.   Dwight Gooden has been placed in his proper page spot in the upper left, next to Barry Bonnell and above Dave Stieb. I am now down to two cards. The Kirby Puckett rookie card is on its way to me. That leaves the Roger Clemens rookie as the final card needed.   Set-collecting veterans know that one of the last stages of finishing off a set is determining what you missed -- what gremlins have slipped past the inventory clerks I have hired to make sure every card has been obtained and documented (check that, I am the only inventory clerk, and I am unpaid).   This time I found four gremlins and I have snagged them all before getting the final two cards -- it's embarrassing when you have the final card documented and then some gremlin ends up being last.   I shall now ex...

  One of the many running sub-themes of this blog is how unobservant I am, and how concerned I am about it.   I scold myself over and over for not noticing things on cards, whether it was painted hats when I was a kid collecting in the 1970s or widely broadcast errors on current cards over the last 20 years. When I do notice a small detail I'm almost triumphant because finally my brain wasn't on auto-pilot.   I get concerned about this "flaw" because my real-life, salaried job is about noticing things. I'm supposed to be an expert on this. I am scouring whatever I can to get sports stories in the newspaper, whether it's locally or nationally. I've become pretty good at it -- well, actually I've been pretty good at it for a few decades now.    So my theory is that I spend so much time on "noticing" in my work life that maybe subconsciously my brain doesn't want to notice so much when it comes to my hobby. That's what I tell myself anyw...

(I admit I've never been a major Rush fan, though "Moving Pictures" was the theme music -- thanks to a boom box in the back -- to my bus rides home from school. But I've been kind of obsessed with news of the reunion tour. I heard last night's show was pretty cool. Anyway, time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 370th in a series):   I received this Tom Seaver variation card from 1985 Donruss in a TCDB trade the other day. I usually don't chase error cards for '80s sets that I'm building. It depends -- it's kind of a case-by-case basis. But picturing a completely different player is a pretty big error. I couldn't say no. That is Floyd Bannister on Tom Seaver's card.   I already owned the corrected version of the card:    That's a major flub actually. Tom Seaver is a huge name and had been in the limelight for nearly 20 years at this point. I can hear Topps chortling over four-year-old Donruss making such a goof. Or maybe it grumble...

  My first sportlots order of the year has been sitting on my rolltop desk waiting for me to brag about it.   It's not bragging material, really. There were a lot of upgrades that I don't need to show, but I sure did enjoy getting that 1977 Topps Joel Youngblood to replace the creased one in the set binder that I didn't even know was creased until a rare day of sunshine came through the card room (who knows how many creased cards are hiding in the Northeastern darkness of my home).   Some stuff has been put away already and others have been sitting in a stack waiting until the one last pokey sportlots seller finally snapped out his stupor and shipped the last card (this always happens).    I've determined what my 10 favorite arrivals are -- but there are more than 10 cards. Per usual, these are interesting mostly to me and could very well bore you to tears.      10. Gavin Lux, 2020 Topps Chrome   The last card needed for the team set. Can you...

Right now the baseball buzz on social media is the World Baseball Classic. While I'm happy to see people talking about more baseball, I can't get into the WBC more than periodic glances. A few reasons just to make sense of how I feel:   1. We just had two weeks of an international sports event. I'm tapped out. 2. March has enough chaos and energy -- March Madness, right? I don't need more. 3. The WBC seems to run on star power, which really isn't my focus in baseball (Yes, I know the Dodgers have a ton of stars, I do feel conflicted about that).   For baseball all I need is the Dodgers and the other MLB teams that play the Dodgers. I have a difficult time getting invested in any other kind of baseball, whether that's Olympic, collegiate, Banana Ball or any of the many, many non-MLB leagues through history. I've found where my heart will reside forever -- as corporate as MLB may be now.   My collection reflects that -- in the pursuit of MLB-themed sets and, o...

(I am preparing to have my dinner at the office again tonight after yet another prediction of a late afternoon/early evening snowstorm. This is convenient for 9-5 workers, who can close up shop early, but definitely not for me. Let's see if I can get out of the work parking lot late tonight. Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 363rd in a series):   My collecting during the junk wax era was sporadic. I've written many times that I didn't collect between 1986-88 (save for one pack of Topps I bought in '88). I collected Topps like crazy in 1989, then went cold turkey again in 1990. I came back somewhere in 1991 collecting casually and then bought a bunch in '92 and '93.   I can see good and bad points to this. The good: I have no fond memories for mediocre sets like 1990 Donruss or overvalue 1989 Upper Deck. The bad: I missed several players commonly known by junk wax devotees, who were kids at the time and memorized the front and back of every card.   For...