Night Owl Cards

   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 ...

  I went to the big card show at the state fairgrounds for the first time in almost a year yesterday.   Since I had completed 1970 Topps about a month ago, I didn't have a specific major quest for this show. But I knew there would be a lot available so I made some vague goals:   1. Finish the 2024 Topps flagship set 2. Focus on the Fleer Laughlin World Series cards 3. Upgrade a handful of 1970 Topps cards 4. Find some 9-pocket pages and maybe a binder 5. Find some more oddballs   Here is the progress report after going to the show:   1. Finish the 2024 Topps flagship set ✓ 2. Focus on the Fleer Laughlin World Series cards 3. Upgrade a handful of 1970 Topps cards 4. Find some 9-pocket pages and maybe a binder ✓ 5. Find some more oddballs   Pretty happy with that, although that's just 40 percent success. The only reason I put down pages/binder as a goal is because I knew I didn't have any real expensive goals and maybe I could fit that in. But of course I l...

  My collection storage system is built around binders. Boxes are secondary. In a perfect world, all my cards would be in binders and there would be no boxes. But boxes are easier to store than binders. Binders take up more space. That's a trade-off I've been willing to make, for having a much more pleasing card-room display (shelves of just boxes just doesn't cut it for me). But it means I'm always in space conservation mode. For example, a couple of weeks ago, Kenny/ZippyZappy asked me if I could use any binders, he had received some regulation-size ones from his father. Always mindful of space issues -- I am almost all out of rows on my two sizable shelving units -- I said maybe one or two. That's not "one or two." That's six. Actually, he sent seven -- one is out of the box for some mid-1980s Fleer repurposing. So, yeah, I don't know where the heck those are going. Right now the box is in the attic, waiting for when I need them, or I carve out...

  I'm still in the middle of my "Dodgers extras" giveaway, probably not even halfway through. I've been sending out four packages a week, which is actually a combination of Dodgers giveaway cards and usual trade packages. So it's slow-and-steady going. Another mailing should go out by the end of the week. And I expect the giveaway packages to continue for another month. But I've already received a return mailing for one giveaway envelope I sent -- and that was not expected at all. I am not looking for cards in return for this. I know card collectors are super-generous and give without thinking but, really, nobody needs to send anything to me. I just want these cards out. That said ... WEEEEEEEEEE! A package? For moi????? Bryan, who is a regular commenter on this blog (major night owl points for those who comment on this blog only), sent me an oddball-heavy envelope, which is squarely in my wheelhouse. Such an expert choice of cards to ship me. He also sent a...

A long time ago, I overheard my wife try to explain my hobby to my daughter, who was much younger at the time. "I think it relaxes him," she said to my obviously perplexed child. I had never thought of it in those terms prior to then, but now it's fairly obvious to me: collecting cards is a way of relaxing. I don't plop in front of the television after a night of work, I write about cards, sort cards, stare longingly at cards. And I feel the stress quietly slip away. It is a terrific stress-reducer. Last night I endured annually one of the most stressful work nights of my job. This won't compute for anyone who hasn't experienced my job responsibilities, but the college football national championship is the one sports event that causes me the most stress. The major cause of this is the starting time for the game. A start time of 8:15 p.m. eastern standard time is terribly inconvenient for an east coast newspaper sports section. For a sport that ends ...