Night Owl Cards

   As you know, I completed the 1956 Topps set five years ago. It happened in April. Wonderful day.   Two months later, I bought a car. Not much to connect the two events at the time, except I had some extra cash floating around that allowed me to do both things.   But on Thursday -- five years later -- the end of a long, winding journey arrived for both. Here's how:   Yesterday afternoon, finally, FINALLY, I picked up that same vehicle from the body shop. This is the one that was attacked by ice three months ago, rendering it undriveable. Through a combination of factors -- overloaded and understaffed body shops, the backwoods in which I live, way more damage than originally anticipated, incredible wait times for shipment of parts -- I was without that vehicle for three months and six days.   Because of various other issues, some of which I mentioned earlier, the only traveling I did for a month was to and from work and to and from the grocery store down t...

  I've been in full set-building mode for a number of weeks now. I expect that to continue through the end of the year and beyond, with periodic breaks to pick up some Dodgers. Since it's difficult to pick up more than a couple cards at a time from my 1967 and 1970 Topps quests, I've latched on to easier pursuits (or somewhat easier pursuits like the Hostess cards). One of those is finishing another 1980s Fleer set. Since I announced my intent to complete all the '80s Fleer sets a few years ago, I've finished 1981 and 1982, 1988 and 1989. I finished 1984 within the first few years of the blog, and I'm pretty far along with 1985 and 1986 (Completing 1985 is next). I have quite a ways to go with 1987. That brings me to 1983 Fleer. The '83 Fleer set is part of that wonderful quartet of Fleer sets from 1981-84. For me, these are the "most Fleer" sets with those pictures that summed up Fleer in that era. The later '80s sets have some of that, but no...

There is something about this card that a lot of collectors don't like. When I first heard about what they didn't like about it, I was baffled. I never gave something like that a thought. I was a bit offended, too, because I always liked what they didn't like. And so we're at a variation of that fun quarantine game of "Things You Like But I Don't" with "Things I Like But You Don't". I thought of doing the "things you like but I don't" list but, quite frankly, it's too easy. And I've covered much of it in past blog posts. I'm quite the contrarian and I don't mind pointing out that I don't care for what the masses like, and so I've done so many, many times. Trying to find 10 things I like that you don't is a bit more challenging. That's mostly because in the collecting world you can always find someone who likes something, no matter how wildly unpopular. So, even though I came up with...

Heh, that post title will draw in the readers! You can tell how quickly I got over 2020 Topps. The last two posts have been about a 95-year-old author and checklists. But no apologies, let's move forward. Or, um, backward: These are the checklists of my youth. Ugly little things, aren't they? Like most collectors from this time period, I wasn't exactly thrilled to pull these out of a pack. But I don't remember audibly uttering "awww, a checklist." There were 10-to-15 cards in a pack. Not every one was going to be a winner. And, besides, every card had a number on the back. You need every one to complete the set. Still, I'm not advocating for these to return to card sets. We actually do still have them in sets. They look like this now: The fronts of the cards are terribly random and usually don't have any sort of connection to the rest of the set. But there's that checklist if you want to go nuts with your favorite writin...

I am in the final stages of completing the 1973 Topps baseball set. In fact, if I do a little fudging, I've basically completed it. -- No, I don't have all of the cards in hand. The Cleon Jones, Joe Niekro, Leo Durocher and Yankees team cards are on their way. So is the elusive final checklist card, ol' number 588. But more on that later. -- No, I haven't acquired an extra Walter Alston card (a high number) or an extra Mike Schmidt rookie (Ron Cey's second-year card). Both reside in my Dodger card binders and I'll consider the '73 set complete even without the two extras, although I do intend on getting both at some point. -- No, I haven't grabbed all the non-numbered team checklists. I still have the Red Sox, Indians, Twins and Padres to go. I'll get them, but I'm not going to delay my announcement of completing the set for them. -- No, I haven't bothered with the manager variation cards or the team checklists with extra stars o...