Night Owl Cards

(Happy Labor Day. I am actually celebrating this Labor Day because it's so early this year that school sports don't even start until this coming weekend and don't fully hit the fan until next week! Usually, there's a full-slate of soccer bombing us the Tuesday after the holiday. Small favors! Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 342nd in a series):   This is Grady Sizemore's first solo card in Topps flagship. He was a hot topic during my early blogging years. It boggles my mind that he's a manager now. I'm not sure he wanted to start his Major League managing career with a team as terrible as the White Sox, though I'm guessing if you're "in baseball," as the big-leaguers sometimes say, having one of the 30 managing jobs available is an honor.   Last year around this time I wrote a post about the worst major league teams since I became a fan . It didn't take even a year for that post to be out of date. Little did I know that a ne...

  When I was a high school senior, I took like three math classes. I don't know why, I must have been deranged. The same teacher taught all three classes. He was your typical early '80s high school math teacher. With dark hair and a mustache, he kind of looked like Burt Reynolds, if Reynolds was not quite as dashing, dressed in a way that attracted chalk and mumbled odd sayings that seemed to amuse only himself. The classes were tough, we all thought they were and, as teenagers do, we made fun of him outside of class. It wasn't a class you could act up in -- he had a bit of a temper -- so we grumbled about our teacher at lunch or in the hallways.   I can still see him turning from the chalkboard to face the class, hands outstretched with chalk in one hand and eraser in the other and saying something that summed up what he had just written that we couldn't decipher and then he'd blink several times. One of his many sayings, really the only I can remember was "qu...

  There is a full cart over at sportlots that is just waiting for me to have time and money. Veteran readers know that this is not a great period for spending cash on cards for me, but the wallet loosens by mid-March.   One of the first things I will do when that time comes is click that ship button. The majority of my sportlots order is set needs and in a couple cases will finish off sets I've been chasing the last few years. Happy, happy, joy, joy!   I've mentioned before that set collecting makes the most sense to me, even in this age of Topps playing head games with the few set collectors who remain. While other kinds of collecting feels a little disjointed or scattered, collecting a set comes with a goal: finish the set. There is a defined end. And I've gotta have goals.   This brings me the most peace in collecting and even if that sportlots order feels like it's stagnating, I'm still working on those sets. Not too long ago I finished a TCDB trade with Mokola...

  In many ways it seems like the years are speeding up and 2023 has only been three months long. But sometimes I think back to something and say to myself "was that still in this year?"   I knew I wanted to review my trades for the year on Trading Card Database but I could've sworn that I started trading in 2022. That's just my fading brain. I wrote vigorously about my first TCDB trades and they were in February of this year.   Before TCDB trading I didn't think I needed it. I was trading plenty through the blogs and the thought of taking extra time for another trading avenue was not appealing or seemed doable. I was wrong about that, although it does seem like extra work sometimes. I still trade through the blogs, on a much more smaller scale (because everyone's doing the TCDB thing), and sometimes I mix things up. I list a card available for trade on TCDB but then ship it off in a non-TCDB deal and forget to update its status on TCDB (in TCDB trades, the sta...

  Some time ago I wrote a post about years with the final digit in common and the cards that were released each of those years. Which was my favorite? For example, this year, which ends in a "3" and all the previous "3" years with cards going back to the '50s: 1953, 1963, 1973, 1983, 1993, 2003 and 2013. I think a lot of people would make this group their favorite, after all Topps has used the photo-inset theme with '63, '83, '03 and '23.  I don't remember which number I picked as a favorite, because I can't find the post; it happens when you have over 5,000 posts. But I probably picked the 5's. The 5's have some of my all-time favorites: 1965, 1975 (of course) and 2015. I also like 2005 and I once liked 1995 a lot (not so much anymore). And, heck, I did a whole set blog on 1985 Topps. I'm still chasing some of those 5 sets and I'm not limiting it to Topps either. This key Ozzie Smith is a fine addition in helping legitimi...

  Chaos continues to reign around here. Between the job upheaval, the malfunctioning keyboard, the constant stormy weather, I never know what I can do with the blog as the situation shifts almost by the hour. Right now, miraculously, the keyboard is operating -- let's see at what point in this post that goes south -- so let's get try to get some words out between torrential downpours.   I have a few small card envelopes sitting on my desk that need to be recorded here. And they really have to get a move on because the absolutely drenched mailman delivered some absolutely drenched bundle of card packages today (no cards were harmed, don't worry). Once the boxes and envelopes dry off, they'll need somewhere to go, so the following cards need to make way:   I've completed my 20th TCDB trade. I know, that's not 100 trades like a couple other bloggers, but for a half-hearted trader like me, it's pretty good. Remember, I had zero desire to trade on that site until...

  Trading Card Database trade offers have come pretty fast-and-furious for me in the last month-plus. None of these are big trades, but there's been eight of them since early February and that adds up when you're trying to conserve space on your card desk. So I'm finishing off what I have to show here and providing a little countdown as well. I've noted that certain cards have been popular sends from my TCDB partners. They definitely revolve around sets. I think a main reason for that is because I have noted my wants for sets, but haven't done a lot of other want-listing for stuff like Dodgers and such. That's the next project. TCDB is full of projects. It's practically like my mom was -- always finding me another task to do. But I certainly appreciate getting set-fillers, more than almost any other kind of card really. I'm on this planet to fill sets -- if you're defining existence by hobby missions anyway.   So let's see what the most popular c...