Night Owl Cards

   One thing that has become very clear to me over the last year is that my way of collecting cards -- the way that was the established primary way of collecting for as long as I've been alive -- is being phased out.   There are a variety of reasons -- and forces at work -- for this. I am reminded of one of them every time I attend the monthly card show.   In the past year, the show has moved from primarily sports cards to primarily RPG/TCG cards. I have less than zero interest in these. When I paid my entrance fee at the table, the guy there asked if I wanted to enter the raffle and gestured toward a gift basket filled with TCG stuff -- don't ask me what it was, I couldn't tell you. I gave the guy a flat "no" that sounded like "of course not."   But I'd say more than half of the tables was Pokemon, Magic and whatever else there is in that fantasy realm. Just about the rest was graded football and basketball of mostly modern cards. But I've writt...

   Trading cards takes a lot of time. Also, sometimes it takes a lot of work.   Everyone collects differently and sometimes it's difficult to match up with another collector. That happens all the time. No big deal really. Then there are the fellow collectors that drag out trades for too damn long.   I never participated in collectors forums, but I've heard that trades were often like that there. I have no problem trading away nice cards, but I'm not going to send a couple dozen messages back and forth to come to an agreement on an exact accounting of precise compensation. I've dealt with this in the past with a couple bloggers. It's not fun. Trading is supposed to be fun.   That's why I gravitate to super simple trades. My favorite are: "I'll send you some cards whenever and you send some cards whenever." That's how most trades go on the blogs. It's about the only ones I make these days.   It's also why I participate in stuff like Diamo...

  I stopped at the monthly card show Saturday. It was the second straight weekend card show I had attended. This would have been crazy talk in the first 10 years of my blog, but it's something that could easily happen two or three times a year now -- and if I wanted to do a little more traveling around the state, I might be able to go to a show nearly every week over the next six months.   I'm not quite that obsessed. Two in two weeks is quite amazing enough for me.   So you may remember in the show write-up last week that I said I actually finished the show with cash left over. That means I carried that cash into Saturday's show. I padded it just a little, but I budgeted about half the amount for this show that I did for last week's.   It turned out to be plenty because I left this show with money left over, too!  I'd like to blame the expanding number of tables selling Pokemon and such -- it's getting so pervasive that I'm starting to see a world where the...

  I've collected for a long time. It's kind of difficult to imagine someone picking up collecting for the first time in 2022. This very year. But I'm sure there are some newbies out there. I'd like to think they're the new kind of collector who goes to the store looking for packs to rip. But probably not. Probably a bunch of newcomers looking for a '54 Aaron to grade. I'm not sure whether 2022 is an ideal year to start in the baseball card hobby, and this is the thought I had that led to this post. I once wrote a post titled "the best years to begin collecting" six years ago (2016 is 6 years ago? 😳). This will be the opposite of that. This one will be more controversial, I'm sure. That's because collecting cards is super-subjective. What's good and bad, great and lousy almost always depends on the individual collector's frame of reference. Whatever year that collector started in the hobby was the greatest year ever, and that set/t...

Man, December is kicking my butt and it doesn't even have to do with any holiday stuff.   I just have a couple of cards for you and it shows you how much energy I have that I labeled the post "a couple of cards" after sitting here for too long trying to come up with a title. I grabbed two cards in Diamond Jesters' latest time-traveling trade and they both happen to be from 1968 Topps. I'm on record as not enjoying the 1968 burlap design that much, so how do I explain my pick-ups? Well, 53-year-old cards are 53-year-old cards. They always have an advantage over newer and shinier cards whether they look like grandma's kitchen wallpaper or not. Secondly, I can't resist players like Frank Howard. Even though he wasn't playing for the Dodgers by this point, he's still someone I wished I could have seen play. 6-foot-7 batters don't come around very often. Everyone 6-7 and above is either Aaron Judge or a pitcher. And you know how much people loathe ...

I think most baseball card bloggers are familiar with "throw-ins." Those are the extra cards that a fellow collector sends in a package of goodies for another collector. They are "throw-ins" because they are cards that weren't specifically agreed to in the transaction or, more likely, cards that don't fit the recipient's collecting M.O. So, for me, if I'm getting some cards in a trade, anything that isn't a Dodger card, a set need, an oddball or a card or player I've repeatedly praised on the blog is a "throw-in." I've received many, many throw-ins over the years, from "what the heck is this Padre doing with these cards?" to "hey, all right, I can use this!" But I received a throw-in the other day that really classes up the definition of a throw-in. It came from Nick of Dime Boxes , mixed in with a bunch of other cards that shows that he knows me very well. Such as ... ... well, here are th...