Night Owl Cards

  All these years doing this blog thing and the hobby still hasn't figured out how to work around my schedule.   I've got a couple of items to catch up to because I was too busy earlier in the week (doesn't Topps know I'm running a giveaway contest ?).   First, NOC was named "Favorite Blog" during TCDB's site awards Sunday.   It's the sixth straight year at the top for NOC and the seventh time in eight years. Maybe it's time to retire me out of the category? But I won't say no to continued winnings. I'm still a sucker for awards.   Second, Topps revealed the design for 2026 flagship on Monday.     I wasn't going to mention anything on the blog about it until it was time to open packs, mostly because it's not that inspiring to me. But I've pondered it a little more and I think this is a design that will look better in hand.   That was somewhat the case with 2025 Topps but I think this one will fare better. Let's go quickly t...

  Here in the Northeast, August is still summer vacation. Hearing about people going back to school this week in the south or out west is disturbing and I'm grateful I have only known stepping into a classroom for the first time during September.   However, August is nothing great here either. I've written many times about "August dread" -- I've experienced it since I was a little kid. And with my job for the last 30-plus years, August remains the calm before the storm -- a month's worth of trying to squeeze in every bit of fun you can before the education system saps your will to live.   Also, August, for this house, is a month of less money (the education system pays the bills). I don't cut out card spending completely as I did during past Augusts, but I still need to watch the budget. I balance the lack of funds with the need for cards to dull the August edge -- card by card. Singles are the way to go this month, rather than boxes or packs.   So here ar...

  All right, a quick post to get the bad taste of the last post out of my head.   Perhaps you've been wondering what I've been doing the last month? Yeah, you know about all the work. It's March and all that. But this is a baseball card blog! What else? Sure, you know people are sending me cards. That's plain as day. But what else? What am I -- individually -- doing to help my collection, my hobby? You know, anyone can ride a motorcycle up and down the street as a hobby -- there's plenty of that going on and will be for the next seven months -- but am I doing something actually constructive in my hobby? Am I contributing to my own collection?   I'm happy to say that I am -- even with precious little time.     Just recently I completed the 2006 Topps Dodgers' gold team set. Strangely Jose Cruz Jr. was the last card to arrive. But the '05 Dodgers weren't a desirable lot.   TCDB says Jose Valentin is also a needed Dodgers gold. He's mentioned as a ...

    As a team collector, I don't really do a great job of acquiring the separate team sets that Topps puts out each year. It's a little difficult to stay focused because the team sets often feature mostly the same cards that are in flagship -- out of around 20 cards, maybe three are different. But mostly it's me forgetting, because I do want the team set each year. Jim, from cards as I see them, does a much better job of remembering and each year he has a post in which he compares the Dodgers in Topps flagship to the Dodgers in the team set. He wrote one this year a couple of weeks ago and I made a mental note to add the team set to my collection. I even took the next step of finding it online and adding it to my cart. Over the following days I'd note that it was still in there and think about cashing out but I still hadn't. Good thing because a week ago a box showed up on my porch unannounced. It contained: The 2024 Dodgers team set AND the 2022 Dodgers team set. ...

I don't know whether it's because I watched the Yankees lose last night or that I recently landed a couple of Yankees cards that finished off some sets, but I'm in a cheerful New York state of mind with this post. This very unnatural-looking card of The Mick, fresh off of my Nebulous 9 list, finally, at long last, completed the Mantle insert set from 2006 Topps. As regular readers may know, I have been attempting to complete as many things as I can from the 2006 Topps set as that's what vaulted me back into the modern part of the hobby. I don't normally try to finish insert sets randomly, but that's what I've been trying to do with '06. It's more of a half-hearted attempted 15 years later, but I can say I wrapped up one in 2021! Mantle is all over 2006 with a card for every home run he hit running rampant at this time. But the Mantle insert set is a tidy 10 cards (OK, OK, 10-card insert sets are actually infuriating). Each card featured Mantle on one...