Night Owl Cards

  The theme to this week apparently is completing sets because here comes another one.   Yesterday I wrapped up 1985 Donruss. I wrote a couple of weeks ago that all I needed to acquire was the Kirby Puckett and Roger Clemens rookie cards. The Puckett showed up like the next day and the Clemens arrived yesterday as the final card.   A bit off-center but I didn't pay double figures for it and it's still a sharp card. 1985 Donruss really looks good in some situations with the black borders and mid-1980s Donruss' fondness for shadows.   I would have rather had someone else to chase down as the final card than Clemens but at least it didn't take me months of searching for someone I find unpleasant. It occurred to me as I was tracking Clemens, Puckett and Gooden at the end that some of the biggest stars of the mid-to-late '80s were also some of the most flawed. That doesn't make me feel good as this is my generation. If I was good enough to play major league baseball,...

  I finally received a sportlots order today. It's my second order of the year from the site and this time I went with the box shipment to save myself some money.   I was questioning myself for doing it while waiting because gosh does it take awhile. It was only a month, it turns out, but it certainly seemed longer. I know I've been through this before (and written about it) but the saving sometimes don't seem worth it during the wait.   I usually reserve sportlots orders for plugging a few team set needs or set needs in general, but not for super-vintage cards in most cases. Sportlots isn't great for knowing what the cards look like when you buy them (it seems to have cut back even more on the pictures in fact). So stuff like Kellogg's cards is out.   I don't know how much these arrivals will interest people but who cares? This blog thing is here for showing my cards, nobody else needs to like them but me.   Here we go, I mean, why all the 2021 Stadium Club Ch...

  I mentioned when I completed the 1988 Donruss set that it marked the first time I had completed four major sets from a given year.   I don't see that happening for me ever again. After the '80s, it's difficult for me to find multiple sets I was interested in enough to try to complete them. For example, I've completed 1993 Upper Deck, I wouldn't bother throwing money at any other '93 set outside of a token Topps complete-set buy. (I'd take a gift of a complete '93 Stadium Club or Pinnacle set but I'm not buying them).   So '88 is a milestone, a one-of-a-kind collecting feat. I like that it's '88. That's the year the Dodgers won the World Series; it's the year I graduated from college; it's the first full year of my wife and I going out. It's basically the last great year before adulthood stomped everything to hell.   To mark the feat, I thought I'd take 10 notable players from this time and compare their cards from th...

  Yesterday, Robert from $30 a Week Habit showed off the 1986 Topps Jerry Rice card he just landed for 25 bucks.   The card had some minor corner scrapes but he said it was preferable to paying the $75 for the card that he had been seeing prior to then.   I have very little knowledge of mid-1980s football sets, but $75 for any card from 1986, superstar or not, rookie or not, seems outrageous to me.   I'll say that for any mid-1980s sports card that wasn't issued in rare quantities. I don't think anyone should have to spend exorbitant amounts to land an '85 McGwire or Gooden, an '84 Dan Marino or even a 1986-87 Michael Jordan. Were any of those cards issued in limited quantities? All mid-1980s cards should be cheap. None of this "I wish I had a Jordan rookie," which I see collectors lament all the time. Every man, woman and child should have one by now! When I was collecting as a kid, teenager and into my 20s, you paid high prices for cards only if the car...

Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers and friends. Tonight, I have for you a quick look at a quirky little oddball set from Mr. Turkey. Mr. Turkey, for those of you who may not know, was/is a division of Sara Lee Foods and a trademark for the company's production of turkey and other meat products. I've never seen its food products for sale and don't know if it's still around. Most of what I turned up online was about a scary listeria outbreak in the late 1990s. Sorry to bring that up on this holiday. The Mr. Turkey Superstar set was issued in 1992 and featured a star player from each of the 26 major league teams at the time. Cards were printed on the meat carton and also sold individually by mailing into the company. (That seems a little more sanitary). As you can see, the cards are gloriously unlicensed with a pinstripe design. But the best part is it brands some well-known unpleasant players as certifiable turkeys! Darryl Strawberry is the Dodgers' ...

As you might know, the Baseball Writers Association of America will be releasing their selections for the Baseball Hall of Fame this week. The news has kind of been on the internet a few times. In the past I've gotten a little irritated at the critics of the Hall and the BBWAA and gone on a few rants. While I agree that there are chiefly flaws in the voting rules that prevent deserving players from entering, I am now far more irritated by the nonstop bitching from both sides about the who, what, when, why and how of everything Hallish. It's too much talk, it's too much emotion, it's too much angst and it's gone on too long. So, this year, there won't be a rant. Because it's just a Hall of Fame. That's all it is. A building with some fancy plaques. Some people say certain players get in it and that's all. But whether the players get in or they don't, they're still talented players. They wouldn't be considered if they didn't ha...

Today is the one day out of the year that I feel like a hen in the fox house. No, I do not have a vote in the Baseball Hall of Fame balloting. But, yes, I am a sportswriter and editor, and I don't enjoy seeing my profession bashed as often as it is on this day. I don't enjoy listening to critics accuse writers of being elitist and sanctimonious and passing judgment, while they also judge. Last night on Twitter, someone who supposedly knows a lot insinuated that people who choose to write for newspapers for a living are stupid. And I thought, "How come there's never relentless insults of plumbers or accountants or hotel maids in my timeline? How come it's always sportswriters?" The fact is, the arguments that arise from the Hall of Fame vote are too divisive and too personal. It's so over-the-top. All of the critics' efforts, biases and prejudices are being invested into a museum in a southeast corner of New York state. That's all it is. It...

I cannot look at this Luis Tiant card -- or any Luis Tiant card -- and not think about his Yankee Franks commercial. It's a much loved, much awkward commercial of Tiant hawking propaganda hot dogs for his new team, the New York Yankees. Plenty of people remember it, yet finding it online is impossible. But just to give you an idea what it was like, here's another Tiant commercial pitch man atrocity: And you think commercials are bad on TV now? Anyway, the point is I'm looking at a Red Sox card and thinking about the Yankees. It was very strange back in 1979 to see Tiant, who was known and loved as a quirky, yet effective Red Sox pitcher, spinning and pivoting on the mound for the Yankees. In a house full of Red Sox fans and Yankee haters, we were disgusted with Looooie. But the scene would play out again and again with other players going from the Red Sox to the Yankees ... or the Yankees to the Red Sox. And each time, it would be a shock to the system. Se...