Night Owl Cards

A good way to measure the path and development of this blog is by following the exclamation point. Some bloggers often use exclamation points in their post titles. I thought I didn't do that very much, but it turns out I once did. I did the research and here is how many times I've used in exclamation point in a post title over the life of NOC: 2008 (four months): 7 2009: 17 2010: 11 2011: 19 2012: 17 2013: 4 2014: 3 2015: 3 2016 (6 1/2 months): 4 What's that tell you? Well, it tells me I was a goofy goober the first three or four years of this thing, plastering exclamation points all over everything. The totals for 2011 and 2012 are a little skewed because that was during my 1975 Topps mini quest and I can't help but use exclamation points for anything related to minnnniiiiiiiiissssssssssssssssssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But the last few years has shown a more subdued night owl. It's been a more accurate gauge of my personality. I am very subdued in pers...

I received this autographed card of Ricky Nolasco from Matthew of Bob Walk the Plank . It's a terrifically designed card made all the more powerful by Nolasco's hard-signed signature. Ricky Nolasco didn't exactly have a long and proud history with the Dodgers, but the card is so nice that I'm very happy to own it. I was so impressed with it, in fact, that I asked myself this question: "Why do I have sticker autographs in my collection?" It seemed like a reasonable question. I'm not really an autograph collector. I don't seek out autograph cards. I view them as a perk, but not the basis of a collection. And if I'm treating them as a perk, shouldn't I accumulate only the autographed cards that look the best to me? The on-card, hard-signed cards? I've also started thinking about possibly selling some of my cards online. Possibly COMC or, shudder the thought, ebay. Sending off some of those sticker autographs would be a sensible firs...