Night Owl Cards

  Ever since the local monthly show (and many other shows throughout the country) has become overrun with TCG cards I've debated skipping or at least not automatically attending every month. It's become less and less productive over the past 9 months to a year.   But like they say in the majors, "that's why you play the game." I was pretty surprised when I walked into the usual hall Saturday.   First, it was packed. I normally attend closer to 1 p.m. when typically the crowd has thinned out. But I could tell driving into the parking lot that there were still many people there. Second, the show was overwhelmingly sports cards. Any Pokemon, Magic, etc. seemed limited to a handful of tables. I don't know what caused the sudden shift back to sports cards but I was glad I got up off my recliner.   The change affected my mood more than my shopping. The tables were still overrun with graded football and basketball and I'm sure I heard "PSA" uttered 25-5...

   Among the large cities in Upstate New York, Syracuse is the one that I drive through the most. But it's not a destination city like Buffalo or Albany. It's a place where I brave the traffic on the way to somewhere else.   The only two exceptions are to watch minor league baseball or go to a card show. It's the closest large city to me so it does have its perks. But I don't know it very well. So when I realized there was a show coming up and that it was corresponding with a major highway renovation project in central Syracuse, I was concerned.   The normal route to the show at the fairgrounds would take me directly into detours, one-lane traffic and potential gridlock and confusion. I had to find an alternate route, in a city I don't know. Through years of self-navigation, in cities much larger than this, I've never relied on GPS. I thought this might be the time I'd need it. I activated it but never turned it on. In fact, I think I might have found a new ...

  It hit 90 degrees today. I'm not someone who is bothered by the heat, but once it's 90 I take notice. It's not super rare around here -- I'd say we're in the 90s about 5 times a year -- but I was still tempted to stay inside.   Fortunately I didn't.   I was in a yank to get to the monthly card show. I've been frustrated lately by the lagging arrival of my online card purchases the last couple of weeks. I don't know if this is a traditional July thing (sellers and postal workers on vacation), but shipments are not appearing on the days I was told. Also, I have received back-to-back postage-due slips on orders, which seems a little outrageous.   So it was one of those times where I thought "I can't get anyone to send me my cards, I'm going to go get them myself ." Crank the AC, I'm coming for you, show!   I had no expectations for this show. With just five 1969 Topps cards needed, and none of them available the last time I visited, ...

  I fall into this trap of unspoken moping about the length of time that it takes me to complete sets. Sometimes I whine publicly: Ebay shoppers are snapping up all my cards. The prices online are increasingly ridiculous. Waah! Waah!   But objectively, when emotion is taken out of the conversation, we've got it pretty good in a lot of ways. Do you ever think about how it used to be? Before the internet? If you wanted to collect a set 30 years ago, you relied on card shows, mail-order catalogs and magazines or trades with friends, relatives or acquaintances. You also bought lots and lots and lots of packs in hopes that 1 of the 12 cards inside would be one you needed. Twenty years ago, I was not online. I had just gotten back into the hobby a little. I discovered there was a person downstairs in my work office that collected 1970s cards like I did. And I knew another person in my office who had cards, but he was more interested in selling what he had. That was it. But I wasn't ...

  The last time I wrote one of these posts, back in March, I said I wanted to start digging into the 1990s to see if there were any One-Card Wonders. It seems impossible that such a player existed in the '90s -- managing to appear on just one major-release in their career -- but I had already found one , and I wanted to see if there were others.   But nothing is ever easy. Even for the player I found, he also appeared on an insert in Fleer that same year, and now I have to figure out whether an insert qualifies for appearing on a second major-release card? Thanks a lot, 1990s, for making things extra complicated ... again. This is what I discovered while searching through '90s cards looking for that One-Card Needle In The Hey That's Way Too Many Card Sets. I couldn't continue. It was much too time-consuming. I don't know if I'll ever go back. To get that out of my system, I went entirely in the other direction -- the 1950s. I haven't checked any '50s se...