Night Owl Cards

  The National has come and gone for another year but my National is still in the works. Longtime readers know that I don't go to the National, I wrote a post about why last year . Though I'll never rule out going in the future, a card-carrying introvert like me won't regret it if he never attends.   But usually at this time, inspired by the pictures I see from the National, I acquire some cards of my own. I call it "My National".   I'm fortunate enough that I happen to have enough money to spend on cards right when the National is going on, usually birthday-related, but not always. This year I had some money from a Beckett Vintage article plus an unexpected reimbursement check  So I got to acquire cards without blowing cash on plane tickets, gas, tolls, parking, food, lodging and admission, too!    Now, "My National" didn't come without some annoyances, as well. There are still a few cards that haven't arrived due to constant ebay delays tha...

  Happy Independence Day. Hope you aren't working like I am. This is the day that collectors who are online show off their red, white & blue, patriotic-themed cards. There are a lot of them. I think Panini churns out something with stars on it every week. There are red, white and blue cards for every era. Today, I've seen current stuff, I've seen U.S.-flagged themed Upper Deck stuff, cards from the 9/11 period, cards with flag patches, etc., etc. But those aren't my era. I wasn't collecting in the late 1990s, nor the the early aughts. I don't collect Panini, I don't collect patches. The best thing I've seen from the last five years are the 2019 Topps Independence Day parallels. I was fortunate enough to pull the Max Muncy while in a hotel room on vacation four years ago.   But MY era is the '70s/'80s. And for me, there's nothing more patriotic than those red, white an blue cards that came out during the bicentennial.  I showed a bunch of ...

  This post probably would have been more timely last year, on the 45th anniversary of the bicentennial, and these two sets. But I hadn't completed both of them last July 4th. I finished the super-patriotic 1976 Kellogg's set in December 2019 and the equally patriotic 1976 Hostess set in December 2021. This is the first Independence Day where I have all 207 cards here with me ... forever. These are among my favorite sets of all-time, they strike right at the heart of being a kid and everything that was happening then. But I showed every cards in each set when I completed each one, so there's no need to do that now. Instead, I figured it would be fun to find out which players had cards in both sets. What a thrill that would be for the player! Well, it turns out a whole bunch of them appeared in both the Hostess and Kellogg's sets. It's really no exclusive feat. Heck, Jorge Orta and Marty Perez appeared in both sets! It's not like this honor was reserve only for R...

    The last three years in the hobby for me has been about making a more concerted effort to complete sets. That's not sets that have been issued in the past year or even in the last five years. It's sets that I have long appreciated, over more than four decades in the hobby, that it's about time that I finish. This is where most of my love for the hobby lies, it's time to stop fooling around. I've done very well at avoiding all the advertising come-ons and the "latest-and-greatest" bells & whistles over these few years and 2021 started much the same, with me completing several long-time coming sets (you'll see them in the year-end spectacular). Everything went well until around the end of September and then I hit a wall. Most of the wall was created out of new-car-payment bills. There's nothing like a new bill to stifle new hobby purchases. But also, I've been trying to finish one particular set and it took me a couple months to get the l...

  I'm sure I'm not the only one waiting on overdue packages right now. We've all heard the post office tales and I'm not immune. One of my Christmas gift purchases that I bought in mid-October has been sitting in a warehouse at the Los Angeles International Airport for nearly two months. A few packages have arrived, but not quickly and there are a couple of others that are still out there. And some card orders have been slow to arrive as well. Remember when that notification that said, "your package has shipped!" would get your blood pumping? Now it's almost the modern equivalent of "your check is in the mail." I'd be a bit more relaxed if I didn't see the constant arrival of packages addressed to my wife. I suppose I should be pleased as possibly some of those packages are for moi. But, man, what does the post office have against me?? I've been keeping them in business all year round! So I was even more excited than usual today when ...