He Who Comes Out At Night

Just before Halloween rolled around, which by the way was a pretty rainy day in these parts, I received a surprise Halloween goodie bag from Night Owl. A guy going by the moniker of "Night Owl" sending out cards for the spookiest holiday of the year, that makes all the sense in the world. Well to me it does at least. Let's see what he included in this scary good package.

(Side note: Excuse some the glare in some of the pictures please. I was testing a new photo set up since my usual set up was unavailable.)

I've started collecting cards of hall-of-famers, "fan favorite" type players, and other such things recently. It's nice to have a little diversity here and there. Getting these to add in these Steve Carlton and Randy Johnson cards to the newest part of the collection was very nice.

Here's a nice combo of Hall of Famers (Hank, Ozzie, and Warren Spahn) and a a dude who seemingly pitched forever in Charlie Hough. I remember being fascinated with Hough's stats as a kid and wondered how someone could hang around the big leagues that long and wasn't a big name pitcher. Also, on the Warren Spahn card, the picture looks like a reversed negative. Not sure if that's some sort of unintentional error on the part of Topps or if it's some sort of parallel version.

Here's a nice slew of buybacks. My buyback collection is slowly growing. I really dig the Bob Stinson card.

As was the case with an N.O. package, it also hit my various team collections, especially with these two really cool Expos cards.

Conlon cards are fantastic. Here's some old-timey Indians and a St. Louis Browns card.

80s Indians cards including some of Len Barker, who's one of the "fan favorite" type players I like to seek out cards of here and there.

Of course, the highlight of any package from Night Owl is the vintage he includes. No package would be complete without a Hostess card. George Foster looks so annoyed in that shot it's not even funny. Of the two 1973 cards, I think I like the John Lowenstein card the best simply because of the background.

There were also a number of Reds cards included, including my first card of Reds prospect Shed Long, who the Reds need to add to the 40-man roster this year to avoid losing him in the Rule 5 draft.   There was also a Homer Bailey rookie card and the sooner the Reds get out from his albatross of a contract the better. He won a total of exactly 1 game last year. Yes, one 1 game for a guy due over $20 million this upcoming season.

To cap off the Reds portion, there were these Joey Votto cards as well. All three are new additions. One of these days I need to figure out how many Votto cards I actually have. There's got to be a decent number.

As I mentioned earlier, that was a scary good package from Night Owl. Also, as I mentioned, I tried a new set-up with the photos this time. It didn't come out as well as I'd hoped but I'm working on some adjustments to it.