Night Owl Cards

A number of collectors long for the days of full-bleed card sets. Mid-1990s Upper Deck. Fleer Ultra. Stadium Club. I submit to you that the glory days of full-bleed are gone. At least for non-high-end cards. The reason is simple. Borders. You can't make a pretty parallel without a border. For the last 10-15 years, Topps has supplied collectors with gold parallels and there are no signs of that practice ending. Then, it started using different border colors with its Chrome products. Then, colored border parallels started appearing in retail sets. I see this latest practice lasting a long time because there are suckers like me that love them. Each of Topps' flagship designs since 2003 have come with borders readily available for colorizing. And Bowman has done the same for even longer. Although there are other ways to make a parallel, even on a full-bleed card (ridiculous Upper Deck foil stamping anyone?), borders are the most effective way for me. You can chan...

I don't know if this comes across in my blog writing -- probably not -- but I am a pretty reserved person in real life. My wife says it is one of the first things that she noticed about me. She says I would never get too excited or too down about anything. "Low-key," I think is what she said. I had never noticed this about me before, but when she said that, I began to become more aware of it. And then others started to say the same thing. So, I figured, well, I guess that's who I am -- low-key, regular guy Night Owl. That doesn't mean I don't get excited about things or don't have opinions. Anyone who reads this blog knows that. But in real life, you will rarely see me respond in an over-the-top way, and you certainly won't hear anyone tell me to "calm down." And, by no means, will you ever, ever hear me say the word, "awesome." I don't think I have said the word "awesome" since I was in high school. "Awesome...