Night Owl Cards

  I hope people had a good 4th of July yesterday. I have aged out of the water park/fireworks spectaculars that were part of my life 15-20 years ago. All there is to do these days -- if I don't want to drive out to whatever crowded area is hosting fireworks -- is hunker down at home and calm the pet.   And play with baseball cards, of course -- always a perk when you don't have to go anywhere.   I've wrapped up another team binders update but there are always team-binder determinations happening in my collection.   My recent sportlots order included this 1993 Upper Deck Then & Now Darryl Strawberry insert. I've liked this particular insert for a long time and pick one up every once in awhile, with showing them off on my 1993 Upper Deck blog when the time comes now part of the plan (That won't be until 500-plus more cards have been posted, and with the way nobody pays attention to set blogs anymore, who knows if I'll ever get there).   When you update these c...

  I am about the only card blogger that I can think of who has multiple blog posts dedicated to old-school checklists. All those posts were generated by nostalgia, pure and simple. I cannot reasonably expect those checklists to return to current sets nor pretend that I enjoyed pulling them out of packs way back then. But the look of them -- the very '70s look of them -- I do enjoy and they make me smile, as ugly as they are.   I can respect them for the purpose that they served at the time -- it was the only way to track your collection. The checklists in current flagship show up on the back of random action/celebration shots. Those cards have no purpose -- front or back -- and need to go. If you're going to placate a few old-school collectors by including checklist boxes on the back, make the fronts themed, something like notable highlights from the past year seems easy enough.   Anyway, due to the current treatment of checklists and recognizing that nobody needs to be p...

I'm fairly certain I have written about checklists more than any other blogger. I'm at least in the top five (quick, someone rank the checklist bloggers and then check them off!). I write about them more often because I come from the heyday of card checklists. The checklist has been a disposable afterthought for decades so nobody else ever thinks of them anymore. But I think of them because cards like the one above were front and center in my collection as a kid. You couldn't help but notice all the tiny boxes and shrunken names. And, I think of them so much that a checklist has made my Nebulous 9 list at least twice . The second time was recently with the 1982 Fleer Dodgers checklist (the Yankees are on the reverse but we're not showing that for obvious reasons). I'm happy to say that the checklist has been removed from the Nebulous 9 because Nick from Vermont sent it to me. Now, here is the reason why I needed that checklist: If you're one of...

I have just added a checklist to the Nebulous 9 list. Yup, a checklist. This checklist you see here. The 1989 Topps set has been completed for a long time. Most of the completion grunt work happened in '89 as I went all out to try to complete a set by purchasing from one drug store. In the process I accumulated stacks and stacks of doubles for virtually every card in the set. Except, seemingly, this checklist card. I'm not sure what possessed me to check off this card. This was getting to the height of the "Every Card Is Valuable -- DON'T TOUCH IT WITH YOUR FINGERS !!!!!! " era. And I embraced those thoughts completely. So checking it seems totally out of character. I'm guessing I had an extra one of these checklist cards and I wanted to relive the days of my childhood when I checked off everything in sight. I'm sure it was a rush. But then, I guess, I lost my extra copy. Why do I want an unchecked checklist for my set? Well, my '89 se...

It's the final few days of the season. The winners of each division have already been determined, and all that remains is a couple wild-card races. Around this time of year, the more daring revisit their preseason predictions and see how accurate they were. The gutless try to pretend they never made any. I'm not gutless, but all I'll say is I predicted two division winners correctly -- the Rangers and the Brewers. I also correctly said that the Dodgers would finish third. As for the rest, you'll have to find the post yourself. But even if you did predict a bunch of place-finishes correctly, that's really not much of a feat. Anyone can do that a few months before the fact. Now, predicting World Series opponents YEARS before the fact -- that is something really worth noting. Mystical, magical, spooky stuff. It seems impossible to do. But Fleer did it over and over again during the 1980s. The card above is just one example. Fleer put the Royals and Cardin...

It's Friday, so I'm taking a break from the usual mindless drivel for something even more mindless: 1970s checklists! In my quest to figure out the greatest cards of each of the stars of the 1970s, I thought I'd detour into checklists. They're not as exciting as cards of players with, you know, actual photos on them, but at least checklists were treated with dignity during the '70s. They were a key part of the set, not throwaway pieces of crap like they are today. So here's a look at the checklists of the '70s. No poll this time. I don't think people want to vote on what they think is the best (or maybe they do. I can never figure you guys and gals out). If you have an opinion, comment away: 1970 Topps : One of only two checklists from the decade that features an image of a player, even if it is a drawing. The player looks Gil Thorp - ish . 1971 Topps : I'm always partial to '71 Topps . This is the only checklist with a white background. The ...

I have lots of questions about cards. Most of them are mundane and probably not worth answering. But these are the kinds of questions that hound me until I get an answer, so hopefully someone has one. Question 1: I bought a blaster of Upper Deck Series 2 today, mostly in the quest to try to snare as many Dodgers as I could. However, I turned up zero Dodgers and a case-load of Mets , which does me no good but probably helps a bunch of bloggers out there. The question is, does this qualify as a Mets card? It was the guaranteed relic card in the box. Milledge is now a National (or minor leaguer or whatever he is now). But the jersey bit, with the cool stripey line, is obviously a Mets jersey. When I am classifying such cards in my team binder, I always go with what team is listed on the front. In this case, this would be a Nationals card. But the jersey is so apparent . So, Mets fans, is this a Mets card? A Nationals card? Or do you whip it across the room in disgust and let the ...