Night Owl Cards

  It's been more than a year since I did one of these. There are reasons for that: These posts are brutally time-consuming and I should do posts like this in shifts, but I haven't learned to do that. Also, I'm covering a time period in which I didn't collect and also a time period in which set-collecting was going out of style.   But I'm plowing through, at least for another year.   It's 1997 and that sound you hear is me opening a single pack of Topps and thinking "well, that's enough of that."  That's all I did in collecting in 1997. But it was more than I did in 1996, which was absolutely nothing! For me, 1997 is about taking a job that I still have and preparing for the arrival of our first kid. All to the theme of "I get knocked down, but I get up again, you're never gonna keep me down." (Yeah, I know, you hate that song). Like in 1996, far too many sets were issued in 1997 and a whole bunch of them couldn't even muster 4...

I was back at the dollar store that sells cards today. It was in the general vicinity of where I bought my wife's Mother's Day present (no, I didn't buy the present at the dollar store. Don't get huffy). I know I've talked about watching my card budget and buying 2009 cards like UD First Edition. That's all lovely for current cards, but there is no beating what I find at this dollar store, at least among your retail options. I've developed a strategy for my trips to the store. I know what bags hold the football and basketball cards, which I don't want. And I've struck upon just the right "shaking" strategy to make sure I don't end up with this anymore. I suppose you could consider this "pack searching," except I don't harm any of the cards doing this or open the bags either. Today I bought six bags for 6 bucks plus tax. I ended up with no non-baseball cards and I counted maybe a dozen doubles out of 210 cards. And ...