Night Owl Cards

I don't have a lot of use for the buybacks that Topps has been putting in its products the last few years. To me, stamping an old card is completely unnecessary. If you want to wow a collector with a 30-year-old card then just put the damn card in the pack. You don't need to deface it. But, somehow, by stamping cards, and stamping them in different colors, Topps has convinced some collectors that they have something special. I don't get it. I'll never get it. Don't bother explaining it to me. The reason why I collect the 1975 Topps buyback cards is because I want these buybacks to have some meaning. This is the only way I can think of where they have meaning, by trying to complete a set of them -- or at least as many of them that exist from a particular set. I've formed this thought process all without pulling a single buyback card. Buybacks, for the most part, are inserted in hobby boxes. I don't know why, maybe so shop owners and dealers can tout t...

I like to think of myself as a simple man. I look around me and everyone everywhere is making things complicated. Complicated lives. Complicated policies. Complicated world. I like things simple. But sometimes I look at my blog posts and they aren't simple at all. A lot of them are long and over-the-top. The opposite of simple. That disturbs me sometimes. So I thought I'd do something about that and write a simple post. Here it is: Today was rather complicated. There were computer problems. There was an accident in the city that knocked out power during rush hour. There was my daughter's homework in which I had to teach myself a math concept that I hadn't thought about in 30 years. And this was all on a day off for me. The day was frustrating. Infuriating even. But it was a good day. You know why? Because I crossed off the last card I needed to complete my 1995 Score Dodgers team set. There is Tom Candiotti now. The card arrived to me from Ma...

So I've been babbling about a card package from Greg at Nearly Mint for two posts now, heading into a third. But so far all I've shown from it are a bunch of cards of ballplaying hippies from the '70s. Who cares about that ratty, old cardboard with the dated designs and the pitiful haircuts, right? Can't I modern it up a bit? Why, yes. Yes, I can "modern it up" a bit. Because I love cards of all kinds. As it happens, Greg sent me some cards direct from the '90s, a decade that some of you love so well. The cards included some Dodger parallels of the time period -- which, of course, means they are dressed in silver and gold. Up there is a silver signature Tom Candiotti from '96 Collector's Choice. And down here are gold-lettered items of Brett Butler and Todd Worrell. These looked so much better when Greg was showing off his 1994 Topps box busting skills on Twitter. Maybe it was because I was staring at them while I was at work (s...

("Don't bother me. It's Thursday." I think I'll make that my outgoing message on my voice mail. So. Much. Crap. But I figured out a way to squeeze in a Cardboard Appreciation! This is the 166th in a series): I have heard some collectors complain about Topps' Cyberstats series from 1995. One even said it was "awful." That threw me because I always thought they were cool. Sure, all the stats are fake. Not real at all. And I'm someone that likes reality. But mathematically projecting someone's stats is good, clean fun. We all like to see what "might have happened." I think it was particularly important during this time. A lot of people were mad at baseball in 1995. The strike had just wiped out the last third of the season and the World Series. Frank Thomas, Matt Williams and the Montreal Expos got screwed. (Often forgotten is that the Dodgers could've made the playoffs for the first time in six seasons that year). Ever...

The recent news that Chad Billingsley is finished for the season because of sore elbow is not going to help the Dodgers' playoff chances any. It's very disappointing because I've always been a fan of Billingsley, through all of his infuriating struggles and his endless habit of playing head games with himself. The fact that he was struck down in the middle of one of the greatest success streaks of his career -- possibly the "ah ha!" moment of his career -- is even more heartbreaking. But I'm not ready to write him off, even though it's possible that he may need Tommy John surgery. If you're someone from my generation, TJ surgery is the "Uh Oh" announcement of baseball medical procedures. The sign that a player may never be right again. This goes back to the fact that I remember the news of John recuperating from the surgery and all of the "experts" who said how dicey it was. Even though John recovered in spectacular fashion t...