Night Owl Cards

It's the season for nice gestures. Here is one: These are three 1975 Topps buybacks off my want list that came in a PWE from Dennis of Too Many Verlanders . He said he saw them at a card show, thought of me, and shipped them out in time for Christmas. Outstanding. These three cards get me to 259 cards from the set in my completion task, or 39 percent of the 660 cards in the set (although who knows how many are represented with buyback stamps). They are also three titans of 1970s baseball, the kinds of players that I don't think deserve to be marked up with a stamp, let alone be available so easily. Willie Davis was a center field star of the 1960s and '70s for the Dodgers, Beltin' Bill Melton slammed 33 home runs in both 1970 and 1971 for the White Sox, and Pete LaCock is a baseball card legend who is the son of Peter Marshall, the longtime host of the Hollywood Squares game show. Think of all the great pulls you've made over the years -- the trip

As a kid, I was aware of the perfection of a baseball card out of a pack. I rarely intentionally defaced a card. Rarely drew on one, rarely wrote on one. No pen marks at all, unless I was checking boxes that were meant to be checked . Why would I alter something that looked so fantastic already? But I was not all that aware of the vulnerability of a baseball card. So even though pen rarely met card, wall met card, floor met card, rubber band after rubber band met card. I flipped them, stuffed them, scooted them, stacked them, without the slightest idea that corners were disappearing and creases were appearing. There was really only one enemy of my baseball cards back then. Liquid. I avoided all water when holding or storing my baseball cards. I thought nothing of taking cards to school, and sitting down on the sidewalk on the way to school to look at them. But there would be none of that if there were puddles. And definitely not if it was raining. Baseball cards never appe

I have already mentioned that I am a set collector above all. Player collecting is not something I think I'll ever understand. Team collecting is something that grows more and more interesting by the day, and it may one day supersede set collecting for me. But for now, like it's always been, I am a set-builder. That said, I've never figured out exactly what my five favorite sets are of all-time. I've always known my absolute favorite -- 1975 Topps . But the rest just kind of hovered around in my brain under the general heading of "I LOVE these cards!" It took a card package from reader Randall to pin down my absolute top 5. He sent me card wants from two great sets -- 1993 Upper Deck and 1971 Topps . That caused me to stop and figure out which sets ruled above all. And this is what I came up with -- in no particular order, except that 1975 Topps is the undisputed king: 1956 Topps 1971 Topps 1975 Topps 1983 Topps 1993 Upper Deck That's the