Night Owl Cards

  I've already mentioned a couple times how April has been a pretty poor month for me buying cards in person. From missing three easily attended card shows to not coordinating my trips with the random hours of the card shop in town, April's been filled with blown opportunities. I'd say thank goodness the month is coming to an end, but I've been dreading Responsibilities May ever since the year started so I don't expect a lot of card goodness happening next month either.   Fortunately, other card collectors don't seem to be having the same problem. And, I'm rather humbled (and a bit sheepish) that they are remembering me in the process of finding cards that I should be finding.   The latest example is from Cardboard Catastrophes . Everything he sent in an envelope is exactly what I am hunting for when I'm actually getting myself to a show or shop. In other words: 1970s ODDBALLS!!!!   Crikey. This is what I need to be getting off my butt for -- Hostess car...

  Yesterday, a neighbor from the next street over came to the door with an envelope.   He handed it to my wife and told her it had been delivered to his address by mistake. The address on the envelope, sure enough, was my address with my name. The envelope, as you can tell, contained a huge rip on the right side.   My neighbor, who I have never met, said that he had ripped it open thinking it was for him -- I guess he didn't see the address. Then he said to my wife, "I think it's some kind of baseball cards."   My wife said the guy was very pleasant and didn't seem to know anything about baseball cards, but I couldn't help but get a little suspicious -- it just comes with knowing how the modern hobby works these days. Were all the cards in the envelope really all there?   The envelope didn't have a return address, but I can tell by the printing on the front, and by the contents, that this was kindly sent by Jeffrey at Cardboard Catastrophes . And only he c...

I don't do breakfast. I usually rouse myself out of my tree hole around 11 a.m. (although it's been a lot earlier lately for a variety of inconvenient reasons). By the time I'm ready for food, everyone else is at lunch. And because I consider lunch food infinitely more desirable than breakfast food, I simply slide into lunch with everyone else. Breakfast rarely exists in my world. This, no doubt, is heartbreaking news to whoever came up with the slogan, "breakfast is the most important meal of the day." They have no shot at shoving burnt toast and scalding coffee down my throat. The Eggo and Jimmy Dean people are powerless over me. I sound pretty smug about that, but I admit, this would be a tragedy if people were still putting baseball cards in and on cereal boxes. I'd have to eat cereal for lunch, I guess. Which would be quite the sacrifice because, boy, do I ever love sandwiches. Breakfast being the most important meal of the day would only mak...

All of my Christmas shopping is done. Even more impressively, all of my Christmas wrapping is done. The latter is a four-hour marathon of incompetence, so to actually rid myself of that whole embarrassment is something to celebrate. But I'm not as impressive as some of you people out there. You know who you are. The ones who send me cards that arrive immediately before the holiday, as if they're Christmas gifts or something. Some of you even write festive things on the notes with the package, like "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays." You're all so on top of everything. Meanwhile, I've halted card shipping because of a Pre-Christmas Post Office Phobia. There won't be any "Merry Christmas, You Wonderful Blogger" notes from me because I can't get out from under the holiday. But please note that I think you're all terrific. And, much, much, much better shoppers than I. So let's see what arrived amid all the ribbons ...

I periodically correspond about cards with people who are not regular commenters on this site. Most of them are insanely complimentary, which both stuns me while at the same time prompts my ego to run out in the street and scream "YOU SEE???!!! ... I TOLD YOU! ... YOU PEOPLE ARE FOOLS !" Also periodically, those same people send me cards. As if compliments weren't enough. One particularly generous person is named Matt. He has a thing for oddball cards, and he sent me this Nu-Card Scoops card from 1961. I have been aware of this set since I was a wee collector, having seen them in the first price guides and mail order catalogs and the like. But this is the first time I've ever been able to own one. This card is great for probably an infinite amount of reasons. But let me try to list some of them: 1. It's a "moment-in-time" card. In fact, the whole set is made up of moment-in-time cards. You know those "Career Day" cards in Topps S...