Night Owl Cards

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...

I'm trying to wrap up any last thoughts on 2014 Topps here and then drop it until Series 2 comes around. I'll probably fail miserably on this and start babbling about something I saw on the back of Cody Asche's 2014 card on the next post, but that is the plan. Let's face it. People have moved on. Heritage is coming out and some folks are actually buying Panini Donruss. So 2014 Topps is history. But first a few things: 1. A number of collectors, including myself, have mentioned how closely cropped the photo images are this year. It's been a general trend the last few years, but it seems especially noticeable this year. After going through the 2014 cards I have -- I have accumulated 164, I have no idea how -- I noticed that there is an absence of advertising in the background of this year's cards. Out of the 164 cards, I couldn't make out a full advertising image that was not blurred in 163 of the cards. That's the only one that advertised ...

(I just read a lighthearted column in the paper about how this week is "the week that nothing happens." Speak for yourself, missy. The show goes on where I am, only with less people because of vacations, and more basketball scores to take over the phone. It should be the week that nothing happens. But it's not. ... Anyway, let's appreciate some cardboard. This is the 130th in a series): Not a lot of time again today, so let's see if I can squeeze in some half-brained thoughts before I get interrupted. This is the card to which I was referring in the previous post. It is about as obvious an advertisement for a product that I have ever seen on a baseball card. Advertisements on cards are a lot more common than they were 10, 20, 30 years ago. That's mostly because advertisements at ballparks are much, much, much more common than they once were. And, I think it's also because Topps now has little problem with showing ads on its cards. Although it's ...

I completed my 2009 Topps base set today, thanks to a card from Jim and two cards from Chris . They also sent several other fine cards that I'll show some other time. I'm also going to delay showing those final three '09 cards until the end of the post, so that I can focus on one notable aspect of this year's Topps cards. The large space for photos and the plentiful action shots means there are a number of cards with advertisements noticeable in the background. The Waldimir Balentien card here is an obvious example. Once upon a time, this would only happen occasionally with spring training photos. Spring training and minor league facilities have been filled with billboard advertising for ages. And if a Coke ad found its way into the card photo, you were amused, because you never saw that in major league parks. In the big leagues, the outfield walls were barren. All of the walls in the stadium were barren. Well, except for that "no pepper allowed" sign. Of c...