Night Owl Cards

  Card blogs are for showing off your own, very personal card interests. If nobody else cares about them it doesn't matter. That's why it's your blog. But I've made a blog living out of trying to make those very personal card interests about something with wider appeal. I consider it a challenge. Today, I'm all challenged-out. I have the rest of my COMC haul to show off, the non-Kershaw part. It's a variety. I can't wrap up all the items into one tidy subject, at least nothing I haven't written about before. So you're going to see them with no theme, no deep thoughts. It'll be just cards ... except the things that aren't cards ... that only I care about. Like so: These are a couple of cheap items in a modest attempt to boost my collection of Martina Hingis. She's my favorite tennis player, I should have at least a full page of her cards. Not cards but stickers, and only the greatest stickers ever made. I'm mostly talking to a wall whe...

  I skipped out on a card show today because it was more than an hour away, gas prices are stupid and I couldn't get up in time to make it worthwhile (I work until 1 or 2 a.m. Saturdays while Sunday card shows start at 10 a.m the following day and are packing up by 3). So I'm spending my Sunday just wandering aimlessly when I could have been directing my energy leafing through binders and boxes at a show. There won't be a lot of direction for this post but, don't worry, I'll show you some stuff. First off, some big news on the Trading Card Database collection update front.   I've been adding cards from my collection to TCDB since September and I finally am closing in on listing all of my Dodgers on there. Here is the up-to-the-minute total, and note where it ranks among other TCDB collectors:   As it should be.   That total is sure to go up. It's actually 66 cards more than the amount I showed on Twitter yesterday. I'm sure there are pockets of my collec...

  I'm sure this happens to everyone, but when I'm shopping for other people, most of the time I'm also shopping for myself.   During the Christmas season, especially if I'm in a store that sells cards, I'll swing by the card aisle if there is any cash left after shopping for the significants.   And when I'm looking for cards online for someone, I find myself throwing a few things for myself in the cart, too.   Sometimes when you're shopping for someone else, you end up with a card just because! I think that's what happened with the Devin Mann Bowman Platinum autograph card up top. It arrived from The Diamond King .   I had snagged a couple of cards from his most recent Flash Freebie (it pays to look at people's vacation photos, you guys) to distribute in my 5,000-post giveaway and -- what's this? -- it's my second Devin Mann autograph card! (Devin Mann is in his second year of Double A in Tulsa, but I'll ignore that now).   These were all...

  I grew up in a Coca-Cola family. We didn't drink it all the time. It was mostly reserved for certain Fridays when we had pizza for dinner. But that set me on a path of Coke being my go-to soft drink for years. I liked my variety so other soft-drinks entered the scene but Coke was it, as the commercials said, and Pepsi was not. The only time I drank Pepsi was when I wanted to sample the difference and, naw, that's not for me. The Pepsi Challenge was a lie.   But anyway, Coke kind of messed me up. I drank too much soft drink for too long and that will catch up to you. It's bad news. All of those drinks are. And, like I've said, I haven't drank a Coke or any soft drink in 10 years. Still Coke's connection to my childhood remains and so does Burger King and Kellogg's cereals and Hostess snack cakes, and all of those things will destroy your insides. But the cards won't. As you know, I've been on a quest to obtain all of the Coke sets from 1981 in my ge...

  Usernames are an interesting window into individuals. Often, nobody ever sees your username, except for whatever entity is verifying that you really are you when you transact online (prove, prove, prove you're not a robot). But in our line of entertainment, usernames are quite visible. It's what appears when we comment on a blog or in other social media spaces. Choosing a username is key, I think. But it's pretty obvious other people don't (yeah, you, buttmunch69). I have no idea what some people's usernames mean. Other people, I look at their usernames with quiet admiration. "Yeah, that's a good one." Then there are people who don't even have a user and comment anonymously. To me that's like handing in a blank test paper. Some commenters I know only by their username because they don't have a card blog of their own. Lots of folks comment on my blog who are readers only. I consider that a blessing. One of the best-named of those readers-o...