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...

Last week I pulled from the mailbox my third or fourth package in the last couple of months from Cards on Cards  (sorry about the spill, dude). The pace he's on is crazy. Here I am trying to keep from slipping more than a month behind, and madding's firing off cards and -- just as amazingly -- finding cards that I NEED at about the same rate that I go grocery shopping. I'm baffled at how he does it, but happy that he does. The cards this time, as they always are, were directly from my want list. I think madding's been finding '90s goodies at some card shows lately, so he's been passing those never-before-seen items on to me. So, of course, there were ... Piazzas ... and Nomos ... ... and other assorted '90s items (not all shown here). But what really caught my eye ... or, shall I say, caught my nose , were some 1979 Topps needs. Here's the very first card in the set. And here's the rookie card of a player we ...

I cannot possibly begin a post about 1976 Topps cards without opening with the debut of the famed Astros rainbow uniforms on cardboard. This was the first year that these unis appeared on cards. What a glorious mess, eh? All I can think of is "A Christmas Story" when Ralphie comes down in the bunny outfit and his father looks at him and says, "Are you happy in that?" That's what I want to ask the Astros of that era, "were you happy in that?" Hey, I was around in the '70s, but you can't blame that on me. I was just a kid. I've already scolded my mom for some of the get-ups she put me in during the '70s. Anyway, those 'Stros are part of a monster box of cards I received Thursday from Eric of the 1987 Donruss blog . It's a new blog with thoughtful posts on his favorite card set (personally, I prefer '84 or '85 Donruss). Eric's also a Dodger fan (that's right, we're multiplying ). Eric recently bought some '...