Night Owl Cards

    Growing up is all about figuring out who you are and what you want to be, but also what your interests are, what you enjoy and what speaks to you.   The first 20 years of your life you're constantly changing your interests -- I don't think about it much but I know it happened to me and when my daughter was young and a teenager, I saw it happen to her.   When I was 18 and starting college, I decided I wasn't interested in baseball cards anymore. I was pretty certain of that. I did buy complete sets of 1984 and 1985 Topps (when I was 18 and 19), just because having new baseball cards come to the house was always a thing, even if my interest in going out and buying packs had waned.   That idea of no longer being a card collector continued through almost the entire rest of the '80s, until when I came back to the hobby like gangbusters in 1989.   Because in 1989 I realized that I thought I knew better -- but I really didn't. And it cost me.   In 1984 al...

  I received news today that our one remaining vehicle to drive is on death's door. It's not worth fixing and it could go kaput any day.   It's been two months since ice fell onto our other vehicle and it's finally being worked on, but it's probably a week away (plus any inevitable delays) from being back and driveable.   So that's where we are, two grown-ass adults with grown-ass jobs operating as if we're 18 year olds with no car. Fun, right?   But it's just the most visible example of how nothing works anymore. I sit at work in my office sometimes with no heat because the failing boiler has been turned off for the summer. And I don't need to tell you bloggers about how the blog roll isn't functioning. It takes a good 2 to 8 hours -- sometimes never -- for the latest blog update to appear in reader or along the blog roll. I'm publishing this in the early afternoon in hopes it will see eyes by sometime this evening.   But thank goodness for ...

(I am preparing to have my dinner at the office again tonight after yet another prediction of a late afternoon/early evening snowstorm. This is convenient for 9-5 workers, who can close up shop early, but definitely not for me. Let's see if I can get out of the work parking lot late tonight. Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 363rd in a series):   My collecting during the junk wax era was sporadic. I've written many times that I didn't collect between 1986-88 (save for one pack of Topps I bought in '88). I collected Topps like crazy in 1989, then went cold turkey again in 1990. I came back somewhere in 1991 collecting casually and then bought a bunch in '92 and '93.   I can see good and bad points to this. The good: I have no fond memories for mediocre sets like 1990 Donruss or overvalue 1989 Upper Deck. The bad: I missed several players commonly known by junk wax devotees, who were kids at the time and memorized the front and back of every card.   For...

  Several nights ago, just before turning in, I was leafing through my huge hardcover book of all the Topps cards from 1952-85. It's a good way to relax before bed and I should go through it more often than I do instead of staring at youtube videos.     The book may not be quite as fascinating as when I first saw it in a mom-and-pop bookstore back in the late 1980s. I've completed so many Topps sets since that point and the only cards pictured in there that I have not obtained are from the 1950s and '60s.   Except for one set.   1984 Topps Traded   It's the only 1980s Topps Traded set I haven't completed. In fact, it's the only Topps '80s set period that I haven't completed.   That's because the Dwight Gooden pre-rookie card is in this set. But the most recent set I haven't completed other than 1984 Traded in that book is 1968 Topps! 1984 Traded should be finished! Instead I have only 13 of the 132 cards.   I decided after looking throug...

  At the end of each year I publish a wrap-up of my card-collection experiences for the previous 12 months. In that annual review, I list "sets I will complete in (fill in year)" as a friendly jab at both new year's "goals" and my inability/refusal to set new year's goals. I don't have any concrete plan to complete the listed sets in my review. For a lot of reasons -- even more now than ever -- I keep my expectations low. One of those reasons is I'm working on so many sets already that I could travel through the entire upcoming year just working on those without adding anything else onto my plate. But a card-collector's eyes are bigger than his stomach -- despite what you see of the clientele at card shows. I can't help but add more set stuff to chase. In the coming year, I'm quite sure I'll be adding 1987 Fleer and 1992 Topps to my "officially chasing" lists, just because they're key (and easy-to-chase) outliers in the ...