Night Owl Cards

  Happy 4th, people who are stuck reading this on their electronic device! Not all of us can be floating on a lake today. For example, take me, I'll be sitting in my office, like I do 325 days out of the year. It's been a few years since I've been to a park or beach or lake on this day. A lot of people take this week off. I've always preferred to wait until later in the month. But I've prepared a holiday-tangential topic for those just as indoor-bound as me. A couple of months ago, I pulled the above Independence Day parallel card. It's just the second time since these parallels first appeared six years ago that I pulled one. The other time was quite celebrated and I've mentioned it too many times in the past. For obvious reasons. So that's just twice, five years apart, which is logical considering they've always been numbered to /76 and I buy relatively few packs. These parallels have always been cool to me maybe because they're so unavailable b...

  Happy Independence Day. Hope you aren't working like I am. This is the day that collectors who are online show off their red, white & blue, patriotic-themed cards. There are a lot of them. I think Panini churns out something with stars on it every week. There are red, white and blue cards for every era. Today, I've seen current stuff, I've seen U.S.-flagged themed Upper Deck stuff, cards from the 9/11 period, cards with flag patches, etc., etc. But those aren't my era. I wasn't collecting in the late 1990s, nor the the early aughts. I don't collect Panini, I don't collect patches. The best thing I've seen from the last five years are the 2019 Topps Independence Day parallels. I was fortunate enough to pull the Max Muncy while in a hotel room on vacation four years ago.   But MY era is the '70s/'80s. And for me, there's nothing more patriotic than those red, white an blue cards that came out during the bicentennial.  I showed a bunch of ...

  This post probably would have been more timely last year, on the 45th anniversary of the bicentennial, and these two sets. But I hadn't completed both of them last July 4th. I finished the super-patriotic 1976 Kellogg's set in December 2019 and the equally patriotic 1976 Hostess set in December 2021. This is the first Independence Day where I have all 207 cards here with me ... forever. These are among my favorite sets of all-time, they strike right at the heart of being a kid and everything that was happening then. But I showed every cards in each set when I completed each one, so there's no need to do that now. Instead, I figured it would be fun to find out which players had cards in both sets. What a thrill that would be for the player! Well, it turns out a whole bunch of them appeared in both the Hostess and Kellogg's sets. It's really no exclusive feat. Heck, Jorge Orta and Marty Perez appeared in both sets! It's not like this honor was reserve only for R...

(Happy Independence Day! Remind those who may question why you need all those baseball cards that it is your right as a U.S. citizen to collect baseball cards! You have the FREEDOM to collect baseball cards! Life, liberty and the pursuit of baseball cards!!! It's time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 304th in a series): I am sure some of you figured I'd be posting another 1976 Hostess card on this occasion. But I don't have any new ones to show at the moment. If I had myself together, I would've had the entire completed set ready to display on this holiday. But it's a bit more challenging of a set than that. I'll display it when it's good and ready. However, I have used this holiday to pick up a few more '76 Hostess cards. They are in transit. I've also used this holiday to add a handful of 2003 Upper Deck 40-Man red, white & blue parallels. Just as I've maintained that Upper Deck 40-Man is a much nicer-looking set than Topps Total whe...

Happy Independence Day, all of you who are stuck inside reading right now. I hope your day is free of worry and stress. As a child, Independence Day was my most worrisome, stress-filled holiday. I didn't like loud noises and fireworks, damn, they were LOUD. I don't remember a thing about the 4th of July in 1976, the 200th anniversary of our country, but I'm willing to bet there were a few loud noises that day that sent me diving under my bed. At that time, baseball cards hadn't quite become the solace that they are today. I was in just my second year of collecting cards and the meaning of those cards had yet to develop beyond "got it, got it, need it." No, when I wanted to get away from it all, I would read. I liked books for sure, but magazines were the coolest and most desirable periodical on the planet at the time. My grandmother -- who grew up on a farm -- had bought me a subscription to Ranger Rick magazine in 1975. I still remember the picture o...

A happy Independence Day. I hope you're all enjoying your freedom today. I love my country and I still think it's the best country that has ever existed. I land squarely in the middle of the sanity meter in which one end wants to press system restore a thousand times so we're all living in 1950, and the other end wants us to erase every last vestige of capitalism so I'm sharing a pot of food and a cot in a field with the people who dig through the wrestling video pit at Walmart. God bless you all, and may you always be able to say whatever the hell you want, you very insane people. Anyway, it's been five years since I physically posted on the 4th of July. I've either skipped posting or a filed remotely from some sun-splashed happy land. But I decided this year I owe it to the readers to pay tribute to the Fourth in the form of cardboard. In honor of the 13 original colonies that had their Declaration of Independence ratified by the Continental Congres...