Night Owl Cards

  What might that be? The Dodgers' second straight World Series title? The Bills' win over the infernal Patriots last weekend? Finally killing off the yellowjacket infestation underneath the siding in August?   Nah.   My biggest win of the year was landing the prize in the vintage giveaway over at The Diamond King a couple of weeks ago. In keeping with the season, DK has been giving away a bunch of cards from his collection. I waited out the numbered and prospect lots and I was rewarded. Vintage! Sweet, sweet vintage.   As a veteran vintage collector, I saw cards in the lot that I already owned, but that didn't stop me from entering because there were several cards I didn't own, including cards on freshly made want lists! Plus, I could always do a giveaway myself with the extras.   There was so much variety in this group that it took me awhile to figure out how to present it here. I'm still not sure that this won't turn out to be rambling without any direction...

A few weeks ago, Topps announced the release of a product that kind of set me off. The $100, online-only, limited-edition, god-help-us-if-this-is-the-wave-of-the-future Heritage High Numbers set threw me into full rant rage , and I basically swore off collecting current Topps product for 2013. Then I turned around and obtained the Dodgers from that dirty set. Rod from Padrographs grabbed a box of Heritage High Numbers and sold off cards from it in a team break. It cost me under 5 dollars to get the Dodgers, plus a few other cards that are already coming in handy. You may wonder why I'd buy cards from a set that annoys me so. Well, that's easy. First, I'm a Dodger collector. I see a Dodger card, I want it. It's kind of like when a dog hears bacon sizzling. There's no thinking involved. Get bacon. What's to explain? Second, the set was already purchased by someone else. In my ideal world, no one would buy any of the sets, and Topps would head crawling ...