Night Owl Cards

Ah, 1998, an epic year in the night owl timeline. But baseball cards didn't have anything to do with it. I was five years into my collecting hiatus. The year is legend because I became a dad. I am sure I watched some of the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa home run race with a baby in my arms.   Somewhere in the summer of 1998, my wife and I were wheeling that baby in her stroller while walking through a mall, I don't remember which one. We walked into a chain book store -- I don't remember which one -- and I spotted Topps cards on one of those islands near the front of the store. They were packs of 1998 Topps. OK, sure, I'll grab a couple of packs and see what cards look like in the year 1998.   I recall thinking they were OK, nothing special. They certainly didn't break my hiatus, which lasted for another eight years, give or take a pack or two. I had no idea how active the hobby was at that time -- the number of sets and companies and "innovation." It was a year...

  It's been more than a year since I did one of these. There are reasons for that: These posts are brutally time-consuming and I should do posts like this in shifts, but I haven't learned to do that. Also, I'm covering a time period in which I didn't collect and also a time period in which set-collecting was going out of style.   But I'm plowing through, at least for another year.   It's 1997 and that sound you hear is me opening a single pack of Topps and thinking "well, that's enough of that."  That's all I did in collecting in 1997. But it was more than I did in 1996, which was absolutely nothing! For me, 1997 is about taking a job that I still have and preparing for the arrival of our first kid. All to the theme of "I get knocked down, but I get up again, you're never gonna keep me down." (Yeah, I know, you hate that song). Like in 1996, far too many sets were issued in 1997 and a whole bunch of them couldn't even muster 4...

  Here we are: One of the years of my past that is lost in the black hole of time and continuing memory loss. 1996 will be known to me for two things: the year I bought a house and the year the most hated boss of my life left town. Aside from a few assorted song favorites (Oasis, Garbage, Smashing Pumpkins, you know the ones), that's all I can recall. But what about the baseball cards? Yeah, about that. 1996 was also the first year I did not buy a single card since the time I knew what a baseball card was more than 20 years prior. So, how am I supposed to evaluate the cards from this year? I sure don't feel qualified. I've said this for the last couple of editions for this series. The enthusiasm is low. And in typical '90s fashion, the cards make it difficult. How do I trim it down into something manageable and coherent? For 1995, I limited the sets I was reviewing to only those that could muster 500 cards in their set. But in 1996, Topps pulled a fast one and issued a ...