Night Owl Cards

This is not the right card. This card is not elusive. I think I acquired it in a random repack. It's Frank Thomas' rookie card, sure, but you all know the version that everyone sought. This is an image of the card that everyone wanted. No, I don't own it. It's almost impossible to own. This is the no-name variation of Thomas' rookie card. It's also known as one of the "blackless" variation cards in the 1990 set as several cards are missing black ink and all of them were located on a card sheet near Thomas. This thread explains it in more detail. The interesting thing to me about this card is how relevant it is even today. While a number of rookie cards from the junk wax era are still highly respected and coveted, they are readily available, some for mere dimes and nickels. But this Thomas variation rookie card will cost you hundreds of dollars -- if you can find it. That's staying power. Long after the insanity of collectors searchi...

I don't know why the folks at Fleer were so panicky in 1989. OK, so you can't exactly leave the mother of all curse words sitting there on a bat knob for everyone to see. But a Marlboro ad? Who cares about a Marlboro ad? Didn't Fleer know that kids growing up in the '70s and '80s had absorbed at least five cigarette advertisements per week since child birth? This is also when sports fans read magazines and every sports magazine featured at least one full glossy back cover displaying a flannel-shirt wearing mustache man chopping wood, or whatever manly men did in the '70s and '80s, while vigorously inhaling a glorious concoction of nicotine, tar, carbon monoxide and who knows what else. Meanwhile, a beautiful woman has plastered herself against him, fully insinuating that she was about to have sex with him, or the cigarette, or YOU if you smoked this cigarette . Nobody was blacking out any of those back cover ads. Besides, had Fleer ever been to a ba...

All right all you people who look at card blogs only to find out how much your rookie cards are worth -- BOOM! -- it's one of them rookies that actually retained at least a little of its value! You can sell this and not even have enough money to buy a case for your iphone! Yay, inflation! Yay, gadgets! Yay, nobody cares about cardboard anymore! Anyway, this is the best rookie card of Mike Piazza. It's beautiful. The Fleer Update rookie Piazza may cost more, but it's ugly sherbet green, the photo's scrunched, and Piazza is running out of the box in a painfully awkward way like he's a 10-year-old geeked up on Sprinkle Spangles . Also Update came in a limited box set and we all know real cards are issued in packs, during the season, out in the wild, in the midst of rabid, drooling collectors. There's also the Donruss Rookie Phenoms Piazza, which is both black bordered and shiny, but again you can hear the desperation on this late-breaking card if you hold it ...

It's a new year and -- LQQK! -- I'm following through on a new series! Let's pause while I pat myself on the back. OK. This is the second edition of "The Card After," which is my attempt to shed light on a player's card that came after one that made him a card icon. For example, the first card I featured was the 1989 Fleer Billy Ripken "fuck face" card (I don't understand why people call it "rick face"). And then I showed the 1990 Fleer Billy Ripken card -- "the card after" -- because even 1990 Fleer deserves love sometimes. That's basically the whole exercise. A little love for the overlooked. And to make you forget nuclear war (you'll have to read the Ripken post if you're confused). Tonight we have an iconic card that you all know and love. Let's begin. THE ICONIC CARD: Please meet: 1976 Topps Traded Oscar Gamble Why it's iconic: It's one of the most comical cards of all-time. The ...

During my teenage years, there were a lot of movies about the devastation of nuclear war. I saw "China Syndrome" in a movie theater. It kind of freaked me out. I saw "Special Bulletin" on TV. It kind of freaked me out. I saw "The Day After" on TV. It absolutely freaked me out. That's a lot to put on a kid who is just trying to become an adult and wondering if he'll ever make it there. But I made it there, and the only collateral damage is I watch a lot more sitcoms and funny movies than I did back then. I can take my seriousness only in small quantities, and I probably have nuclear disaster movies to blame. Also, in my continuing effort to spin something negative into something positive, I've come up with yet another blasted series on this blog (let's see how quickly I forget this one). It's called "The Card After." This is a series that celebrates the forgotten cards in our collection. There are a lot of cards th...