Night Owl Cards

  I realize that I am fortunate to have a card room. Not every collector has one, in fact I didn't have one until three years ago, and I've been at this collecting thing for a long, long time. (My first packs weren't in '97 or in '87 or even in '77. Try 1975).   Inside that card room I have a card table and a card desk. I'm fortunate to have those, too. I have two binder shelves and a separate shelf cabinet for some card boxes. All very fortunate developments.   That's why I've been a bit concerned about my treatment of my room recently. Sure, some of the resulting mess was because I was upgrading some shelving (see photo above) and also launched a time-consuming giveaway.     But there's really no excuse for the clutter-fest on my card desk. I need to treat it better.   I know it doesn't look that messy. But that's deceptive. I'm losing cards, you guys, because of the way it looks. The bottom left third of the card desk is reserved f...

  You ever have one of those blogging days where you have a post picked out and you're going through the process of scanning/picture-taking, uploading and figuring out a title, and then something else pops up that you should really write about and then something ELSE pops up that you should really write about? Yeah, this post is going to be a bit of a mess.   So, several days ago I pulled out of a box the first beer stein I've ever received as a blogging present. It arrived from reader Bob, who goes by GOGOSOX60 in the comments.   That stein arrived with some random packs of 1986 Topps. But I'll talk about that later. And, yes, I know the binder shelf in the background is sagging. I'll talk about that later.         The stein commemorates the 1974 World Series between the Dodgers and the Oakland A's. Even without knowing who Danny Goodman is, you can tell it was created by the Dodgers. Goodman was the Dodgers' marketing/souvenir guru for 25 years and h...

  One of the biggest things I miss about my baseball childhood is when the Pittsburgh Pirates were generally known as one of the best teams in the game.   This wasn't a brief-shining-moment thing, like when the Pirates made the NLDS in 2013 and then returned to irrelevance soon afterward. The Pirates were damn good when I turned on the television in the late 1970s and I read about how good they were in the mid 1970s. I don't remember the 1960 team that fought the good fight against the Yankees and won, and the early '90s Pirates teams weren't exactly as lovable as those previous teams, but I did root for them. All of this happened within a matter of 30 years and it was just known during that time: the Pirates are gonna be good. Just as it's known now: the Pirates are gonna be bad. Probably the best of those teams -- and this is from a guy who is really attached to that We Are Family team -- were the early '70s version, which reached the postseason three straight...

  This is the card that drew me in to the 2021 Topps Chrome Platinum Anniversary set. I was minding my own business wandering through ebay one day when the card popped up all renegade-like on some unrelated search. "Steve Sax?" I said to myself. "A card of Steve Sax? A shiny card of Steve Sax?" What is this? I knew it was new but I had never seen it before. The fact that it was a card of Sax erased all other previous thoughts I would have had of this set -- "phooey, it's another 1952 Topps design, phooey, it's more shiny for shiny's sake, phooey, how many rookies are in this thing?" But I didn't think any of that. All I thought was, "what the heck is this set?" and "how do I get this card?" About a month later, I received an envelope with that very Sax card. I didn't even need to buy it myself. It came from, I believe, reader Grant, who doesn't like putting his name on envelopes.   I know a card like this, a set ...