Night Owl Cards

  Who am I kidding here? I can't evaluate the card year in 1995! There were 33 major releases in 1995. There were two sets with rounded corners! Two! Apparently card companies didn't hear that the World Series was canceled the year prior. But I did. I bought three packs of Topps in 1995. And then I exited, closed the door and didn't return to the hobby for a decade. My enthusiasm for this year in card collecting is very low. But it's not as low as for 1996 (foreshadowing). I'm incapable of an exhaustive breakdown of most of the sets from '95. I refuse to cover all 33. There were some suggestions to break it down in various ways, maybe cover the basic sets, and then a separate post for the premium sets and super premium ones. Yuck. I don't even like referring to sets as "premium" and "super premium." So this is the problem. I want to evaluate a year by old-collecting means that doesn't fit into those standards. In 1994, I tried to take...

(It's been another weekend of traveling. This time I met up with good college friends I haven't seen in 25 years. Sometimes you actually find people you connect with and it has nothing to do with cards ... yeah, I'm as surprised about this as you are. Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 307th in a series): I have long been fascinated with what you see above, and I've been posting about it for just about as long as I've been blogging. The practice of featuring the same player on more than one card in a set interests me. I'm not referring to a player who shows up on his own card and then on some subset (think All-Star or record-breaker or league leader), or the intentional things that Topps does these days such as making four different cards of Cody Bellinger, just because he's a rookie, all in the same set. I am more interested in the "mistakes" (Elizardo Ramirez having TWO of his own cards in the 2007 Topps set despite not switching teams...

It's difficult to explain Twitter to those who are not on it. Sure, it can be a time waster. Sure, it's filled with spastic people. Sure, it's not for everyone. But as someone in the media business and someone with a blog, it's a necessity. In my job, Twitter is how we get the word out. We're in the information business, people come to us for it, and more and more people are on Twitter. Ergo, get the information on Twitter! You want to make the daily newspaper relevant to teenagers? Just start tweeting high school scores at them. They'll never forget you. But in my blog, Twitter is where I go for ideas, man. Twitter is an idea factory, there are thousands of conversations producing millions of ideas at any time. A few weeks ago, when a couple of Twitter accounts started discussing "face percentage" on baseball cards, I thought, "hey, that's an idea I had!" Like so: "Face percentage" refers to the amount of territ...

As I write this, Clayton Kershaw has struck out eight Giants through five innings. That would make me most pleased, except for the fact that the Dodgers are continuing the tradition that they have been known for over the last decade -- leaving abundant runners on base. So, I've decided to write a post during the game that will remind me of why I'm happy to be a Dodger fan, no matter what happens tonight. The following cards come from Mike at Sports Syzygy . I thank him for validating my appreciation for the greatest team on earth. Kirk Gibson. Author of the greatest baseball moment since ESPN hit the airwaves. Really. There were polls to figure this out and everything. We all know that if it's not on ESPN, it didn't happen. Sandy Koufax. Author of the greatest abbreviated pitching career of all-time. I think he has many more fans today than he ever did when he was playing. Roy Campanella. Perhaps the most inspirational baseball player of all-time f...

Telling you this story means that I have to confess to violating the rules of my own post . But I'm running low on material right now. And confession is good for the blog. Or something like that. So here I go. First, I'm going to jump ahead and say, what the holy hell was Stadium Club thinking when they issued this card? Were they trying to kill me? Because they almost did. I should never have to see that much man hair up close, and especially , man hair with product in it. I don't care if it's only an image -- I almost drove into oncoming traffic! And there's the confession: yes, I was looking at cards while driving. I really, really, really try NOT to do this. You kids out there -- take a lesson from Uncle Night Owl. If you open card packages while driving, you're going to end up finding something freakishly frightening like this and have to explain to Nice Mr. Policeman why the front of your car is resting inside the Crispy Creme doughnut shop. I have no ex...