Night Owl Cards

Every so often -- more often than my card-collecting ego would like -- I receive some cards in the mail from a fellow blogger and out spills a card that baffles me. It's usually a card from the 1990s. Because I still don't have a grasp on that decade. But I have an answer for my confusion. I haul out the 2009 Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards (or sometimes pop in the CD, but I admit I remain attached to actual books) and find my answer 99 times out of a 100. Thank goodness the late, great Bob Lemke helped create this invaluable research publication beginning in 1988 (and my late, great mother-in-law purchased the 18th edition for me back in 2010). I would be much less knowledgeable about cards if I didn't own this publication. I'm sure the series will continue without Lemke -- he had stepped down as editor after 2006 anyway -- but you know how things get when the passion behind a project disappears. You wonder how long that enthusiasm will continue with ot...

These are the eight Baseball Cards magazines that I either purchased from the CVS downtown where I lived or came to my folks' mailbox via subscription between 1982-85. I have saved every one and have documented every one on this blog. Baseball Cards magazine was never finer than during this fledgling period as a Krause Publication. It continued in good form -- long after I had lost interest -- through most of the '80s. Then Beckett took over and that era of good feeling fell apart in a hailstorm of rookie obsession, what's-it-worth and card-grading. And now here we are, blogging because the magazines don't give us what we want. Anyway, the person behind those exciting early days, that period when I would stalk the magazine rack at the CVS in hopes that a new edition had arrived, was Bob Lemke. Lemke, a fixture in the hobby since the 1970s, was already a force in collecting publications as an employee at Krause when he started Baseball Cards magazine as a twic...

I am about to let my card-collecting geek flag fly here. Not that I don't fly it proudly every other day on this blog. It just will be especially apparent this time. Both sides of my family know that I collect cards. They can't help but notice. If they visit the house, cards are out in plain view. If I go to visit them, I often bring some sort of card-collecting identifier with me, part of my collection or a book or stray packs or something. Cards are almost my security blanket. But even though both halves know that I love cards, only one half really does anything about it. And it's not the half that I lived with for the first 18 years of my life. That's a killer because my parents enjoy the auction scene. They're there to bid on something besides cards, but every once in awhile they'll see cards at the auction. And they'll wonder if it's something I'm interested in. But that's as far as it goes. There are no bids, no phone calls to me or ...