Night Owl Cards

As a member of the media, I am trained to recognize BS when it's walking toward me. Coaches lie to us. Colleges spin us. Businesses try to use us. It's an on-going battle against crap. Because of this, I am ever sensitive to the waves of hooey that come at us from every direction. I have little tolerance for pitches, commercials, sales drives, even the cute girl at the phone kiosk in the mall. If you're not saying something with meaning/truth, I ain't buying. Because of this, Twitter is best avoided during the first half of the day. I swear every card business in the world spends the morning shilling whatever they have to shill under the guise that it's THE GREATEST THING EVER on Twitter. It makes Crazy Eddie seem like he had Low T. But there is a lot of other BS -- what I like to sugar-coat as "pointlessness" -- on Twitter, which I still wade through because I like to stay informed and it's a great way to do that. Among the pointlessness of r...

If I made a concerted effort to focus on it, I'm pretty sure I could come up with an embarrassing moment for every day of my life. Fortunately, I am not a teenager anymore, so whether I am embarrassed is not something that I obsess over or will be the ruin of me. But it's true, embarrassing things still do happen. A lot. Fuji's latest question asked me to share with everyone an embarrassing sports memorabilia story from my past. Well, I'm afraid I can't do that. Because I'm going to share an embarrassing sports memorabilia story from my present. As in "today." I'm telling ya, every day, man. Ev-er-y-day. You see the Rafael Furcal Icons jersey card scanned here? See the big ol' wrinkle in the middle? That arrived in the mail today. I bid on that card. I won that card. I was proud that I won that card. I was proud that I won it and that it was free. I was the man. A relic card? Of a player on my favorite team? For free? Greatnes...

I'm finally getting around to displaying some cards sent to me by The Daily Dimwit. I'm not terribly bright about a lot of things, so I'm stumped as to why he's The Daily Dimwit. After all, he cracked a code that I wouldn't even be able to solve if you spotted me the first four steps and wrapped them in bacon (because everyone gets inspired when bacon's involved!) Daily's cards were all Dodgers. Well, almost all. This isn't a Dodger. It's the all-time minor league, single-season wins leader. He pitched with Los Angeles of the Pacific Coast League. I don't think he wore a derby during his games. But he WAS a dentist at one time. Anyway, the Dodgers included the Manny Ramirez Icon parallel card that you saw at the start. That touched off the trade. Most of the rest of the cards were 2010 Topps Update needs. All of those gentlemen -- all still with the Dodgers by the way -- are each involved in legit photos. No picture-tin...

I bought a blaster of the new Upper Deck Icons product a couple of weekends ago when I was on a baseball-card buying high. I had birthday money to burn; I had just busted my second box of Allen & Ginter ; and my vacation was coming to a close. I wanted one last thing to finish off the week. Because, you know, vacation memories aren't made of activities and friends and family and all that junk. They're made of the cards you got! I didn't post my Icons findings right away because there were a bunch of trade packages to open and all that Gint -a-Cuffs fun. Plus, I wasn't all that interested in what I found. Other folks are so much better at the set-examination stuff. I just don't have the interest in reporting how many packs are in a box, etc. I guess that means I'll never write for "Consumer Reports." But even though I'm not doing all that, I still arrived at the same conclusion as others. First, I'll start with the positives, or "pros...