Night Owl Cards

A hobbled Kirk Gibson is the first winner in the Awesomest Night Card Tournament. Gibby's celebratory moment edged out Davey Lopes in the 1977 NLCS to advance to the next round of the tourney. Here is the final voting tally: 1. Kirk Gibson, '88 WS, 1989 Upper Deck -- 17 votes 2. Dave Lopes, '77 NLCS, 1978 Topps -- 13 votes 3. Endy Chavez, 2007 Topps -- 7 votes 4. Britt Burns, 1983 Topps -- 4 votes 5. Steve Foster, 1992 Donruss -- 4 votes Last week I thought that the Chavez card would win. It's a tremendous photo and a tremendous moment. But I'm glad the Gibson card won. Dodger greatness is always worth a vote. Let's see what the next round brings. Here is the next group of night cards vying for your vote: 1989 Topps John Tudor: One of my favorite night cards. It's the only night card in the '89 set. The fact that Topps was able to get Tudor into a Dodger uniform so quickly, since he was traded late in the '88 season, was quite a fe...

You may have noticed that not one of the card backs that I have featured in the countdown so far has displayed cartoons. That is only because those other card backs had something else seriously going for them. Ordinarily, the lack of a cartoon is a major problem on this countdown, while including a cartoon is almost a sure-fire way to get onto the list. I like tiny drawings of funny-looking men. Many of the card backs remaining in the countdown are rated highly because there are cartoons on the back. I admit I am biased. I prefer cartoons over photos, over fancy statistics, over slick-looking graphics. That's because one of my favorite parts of card backs as a kid was the cartoon. When I collected back then, it was a given that there would be a cartoon on the back every year. I actually learned more from card backs because I paid extra attention to facts that were accompanied by a cartoon. I also thought that anvils could drop out of the sky and hit you in the head. There ar...

A little piece of advice: If you have a card blog, and you are interested in trading, and you want to add specific cards to your collection, then you must, immediately, as in this instant , get a "most wanted" list on your blog. You can put it on your sidebar, or do one of those fancy tab things at the top of the blog (please, someone tell me how to do that, I haven't figured it out yet). You can even put the "most wanted" list up in your header if you want to be all ugly about it. Just get it done. Because it's quite effective. I first saw this on Saints of the Cheap Seats . Then I saw it on garveyceyrusselllopes . I thought it was a great idea. Little did I know how great. People are always checking out my "most wanted" list, which I call "the Nebulous 9." It's an easy tool for potential traders. If they don't feel like wading through a giant want list, they can just check out the abbreviated list. As a result, I...

I completed my Topps 2010 set yesterday. But I don't feel like writing about it. OK, if you insist, I'll write it about it a little. The card is the Dan Runzler item featured here. It was sent to me by madding of Cards on Cards. He read that I needed a stinkin' Giant to fill the set, felt understandable compassion, and shipped it off. So the set is complete. Next, I need to find a binder ... and pages ... and a place ... to put the binder ... I'll stop writing ... with ellipses ... now. So, why don't I feel like celebrating the completion of a set? Isn't that a monumental moment in a collector's life? Yep, it is, usually. I don't know. Just not in the mood, I guess. I got tired of 2010 Topps after awhile (you people who are collecting Topps football, how is that design not putting you in a coma?). I think I'm a little burnt out on set-collecting. Although I do still consider myself a set-collector. I'm also starting to understand w...

My recent vow to make every trade its own post has been a welcome challenge. It's forced me to find something unique about the cards, or at least one card, and write about it. I like that. It's good for me. Like peas and cauliflower and (*gag, wretch*) beets. But it's also causing issues. I'm in major backlog mode. Both physically and mentally. The mental part is that I've got a crapload of ideas from these cards and they're all lined up waiting for their stories to be told. But I have zero time. Zer-O. You don't know how often I wish I was independently wealthy. Not because of the money. But because of the TIME. I need to become a college student again. The physical part is there are cards from trades stacked up all over in the living room waiting, just waiting for somebody, anybody to, for the love of god,   DO SOMETHING . The line of card stacks is getting longer and longer and longer. I can I hear the stacks crabbing about the stac...