Night Owl Cards

(Today, according to most traditions, is the 12th day of Christmas. Yes, I am one of those people who plays Christmas music until the bitter end. The longer I can hold back the boredom of January, the better. But at least it's one month closer to baseball season! Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 219th in a series): While sorting through relics the other day, deciding which ones to keep and which ones to send out to folks, I came across another card item that had lost its meaning to me. This is the 2007 Sweet Spot Signatures Chad Billingsley card that I displayed a couple of years ago after receiving it in the mail from a fellow blogger. In that post I discussed the fatal flaw of these cards, which is that the signature fades over time. In fact, this card's signature has faded even more than from the time I posted it. Here is what it looked like then: It might be difficult to see, but there was more of a hint of a signature in 2012 than there is now. ...

Recently, I've received some collectible tins from a couple fellow bloggers. These come directly from the period when I wasn't collecting, and so, like anything from that period, I look at it quizzically as if I'm a dog and someone has just placed a piece of lettuce in front of me ("What is this? I can't eat this and I can't play with it!"). The first tin was a Sweet Spot version that came from Max at Starting Nine . I apologize for the horrible stolen images, but the World Series game is almost on, I've got a story to write for work and there is no time to fool around with a camera. Trust me, this is what the tin I received looks like. Without the muddled blurriness. This is from 2007 and I was collecting a little in '07, but mostly just base Topps and I had no clue that there was a thing called Sweet Spot. Now let's go to an era in which I had no knowledge of 99 percent of the cards that were produced then: More ganked...

Once upon a time this was a "WHOA, DUDE, THAT IS SICK! " autograph card. But thanks to the disappearing ink pens that Upper Deck supplied to unsuspecting ballplayers like Chad Billingsley, it is a poor, pathetic version of its former self. This card in its present form is just plain sick. In the traditional sense. Get it a medic. Stat. I don't like calling out this card, because it was sent to me unsolicited by the Brooklyn Met at Clear Cut Cards . He knows I like the Dodgers and Billingsley, so he sent it along. Plus he added some appreciated Triple Play stickers. But the fading signatures on these Sweet Spot cards are common knowledge, and an example of what happens when companies don't put enough advance planning into their project. I think that should be publicized. In fact, I have this Sweet Spot Signatures card of Chad Billingsley already. Here is the version I already had: Only slightly better, eh? The worst part about the fade on these ...