Night Owl Cards

(The days are all blending into each other. That can mean only one thing. I'm spending my summer like a teacher! Only problem is with my job it lasts for only one week. Speaking of defective jobs, here is another one of The Most Defective Sets I Know). 3. TMDSIK: 1996 TOPPS LASER There is a down side to being innovative. Sometimes it doesn't work. The '90s were filled with innovative sets -- some succeeded, some didn't. Topps decided to take the diecut phenomenon of the '90s and take it to the extreme. The Laser set was filled with intricate cuts that were meant to illustrate flames and light fixtures. There were two problems with this. First, the cards were ugly. The flamethrower cards are pretty nice, but that's as far as I'll go. The rest is awful. The primary problem, though, is storing these cards in pages. It is dangerous work. Every time you slide one in or out of a pocket, you're risking damaging the card. And it doesn't mat...

When we bought our first home, my wife changed a lot of things that the previous owner had in the house. I was all for it. I support my wife. Also, I'm not one of those weird guys that you see in the home decorating shows who have to have an opinion on the chair rail in the foyer. I have no opinion on that stuff. And neither should you. Even the women reading this. Why do I know what a chair rail is, then? Well, to keep the peace. The TV can't be tuned to the MLB Network all the time. Anyway, the previous owner had style. But it was not our style. Out the door it went. Especially those lion planters on the front porch. Even I had an opinion on those. One thing that took a long time to remove -- because it permeated the house -- was the stenciling on the walls. My wife did not like this at all. I had never seen it before, so I thought it was sort of cool, until I was informed that I was never to think that again. Apparently, stenciling became popular in the late 1980...

(Some synonyms for "appreciation" include "gratitude" and "tribute." Hmmm, "Cardboard Tribute," I can see. But "Cardboard Gratitude" sounds a bit desperate. I'll stick with Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 55th in a series): I received this super fancy Kaz Ishii card from reader Robert, who has sent me cards before. He needs to let me know what I can send him, so I can repay his kindness. The reason I'm featuring this card on Cardboard Appreciation is because it reminded me of how little I play with my cards these days. Oh, I sort them, and file them, and scan them, and read the backs. I call that "play," but it's only "play" in the very adult form of the word. A kid would never consider that play. When I was a kid, we flipped our cards. We made card houses out of our cards. We lined them up from one end of the room to the other. We rolled dice over them. We scribbled on a few of them.  We PLA...