Night Owl Cards

  Take a look at this 1977 Topps Bobby Murcer card. Notice anything different?   Sure you do. The card face is cloth, not cardboard.   This fascinated me as a young collector. I was around 12 or 13 when I saw 1977 Topps cloth stickers advertised, probably in our subscription to Baseball Digest magazine. I couldn't conceive of how they could make a card sticker out of cloth. The fact that they were the same size as a regular Topps card and showed the same photos (in most cases) as the regular set made me want them even more.   But I never ordered them, didn't have the money at the time and then later when I got back into chasing cards from my youth, the set was just a little bit cost prohibitive for me. Still, I put them on the "someday" list where they waited for years upon years.   Fast forward to Christmas week 2025. For someone who didn't receive any cards as presents this year, it's been a productive holiday as far as the hobby. The day after Christmas I p...

  I would be remiss if I didn't mention on a post devoted completely to cards issued in 1975 that we recently lost two key members of the 1975 baseball postseason. Both Pete Rose and Luis Tiant were critical parts of the two teams that reached the 1975 World Series. Both wily veterans by the '75 series, their abilities were trumpeted all over the playoff telecasts that year. At least that's what I have learned. I've mentioned several times that the 1975 postseason is my first memory of baseball on TV. But I only remember glimpses of the ALCS and the World Series, specifically Game 6. There's nothing I could cite specifically except I do remember Luis Tiant on the mound doing his thing.     In the first few years of my baseball viewing, Tiant was a popular topic in our discussions as kids, with Red Sox fanhood dominating my family. When Tiant, his skills declining by this point, ended up on the Yankees in 1979, it was truly the end of an era. Except for his Yankee Fr...

  Set collectors know that it takes a long time to get to the completion finish line. For example, I'm very close to finishing off a set (probably in the next couple days) that has taken seven years to finish -- and it took even longer if you count those random cards from the set I had as a youth. But, yeah, seven years is nothing in the set-collecting world. I admit, I don't think about the length of time much. I probably wouldn't collect sets as avidly if I focused on the duration all the time. I do, however, note mini-milestones along the way to completion. I need those little celebrations and it provides a boost to keep going. For example, the card above is the final card I needed from the non-SP portion of the 2024 Topps Heritage set. Yay, mini-milestone! It arrived from the Shlabotnik Report . (I think that may be the first time I've received cards from him, which is wild). The same card also arrived again today, which I'll get to. Isn't that always the wa...

  I became aware of this card probably several months ago, filed it away as a future conquest, promptly forgot about it, then came across it again a couple of weeks ago.   It's now in my possession and it couldn't be more fantastic. I grew up with Luis Tiant as a key member of the Red Sox and then wrapping up his career with the Yankees and Angels (I was not old enough for the Indians and Twins version of Tiant). He is firmly entrenched with the AL East in my mind, one of my childhood favorites, and that's why it's so bizarre and so wonderful to see him in a Dodgers uniform.   Sure, El Tiante is part of a low-level team in the Dodgers' chain, but it doesn't make the card any less intriguing.   It's part of a litany of cards of players and other baseball figures in unfamiliar uniforms.   We've all seen the short-term stops cards for players, there's been plenty of blog posts about those. But what about coaches and managers? There's some weirdness ...