Night Owl Cards

I posted this photo on Twitter of a card package I received yesterday. I had set it on the upstairs landing for a moment because I was carrying a couple of other things and the package was heavy. It's 18 pounds. But all 18 pounds aren't taken up by cards. That's me being a little evasive there, but I don't have the time today to display all the goodies within. Let's just give you an idea with a brief question-and-answer session: Are there new cards in there? Yes . Is there vintage in there? Yes . Are there oddballs in there? Yes . Are there non-baseball cards in there? Yes . Are there nonsports cards in there? Yes . Are there pretty lady cards in there? Yes. Are there Nebulous 9 needs in there? Yes . Is there other stuff in there? Yes . All right, that's enough of that. The box is from Dave, who has sent me many great cards over the years. He said he's had to do a purge of some of the cards in his collection, and he s...

It doesn't take more than a couple of minutes of online searching to find a study on how childhood personality and tendencies can predict adult behavior. First you have to weed out the links that pop up immediately that make you fear for our society -- is your child a sex abuser/serial killer? Then you come to the inevitable scientific and scholarly studies. But what about children and cardboard? What does their physical treatment of cardboard say about their behavior as adults? Well, sadly, I believe there is no study on that. So I'll have to invent my own observations and conclusions based on absolutely nothing. Take this 1972 Jim York card with the corners cut off. What does that say about the kid's future adult self? I looked up the genesis of the "cutting corners" phrase, and it refers to any kind of traveling -- taking a quicker, potentially more peril-filled diagonal path rather than following the lines and turning the corner. So did this York co...

If you pay attention to what is written on social media, particularly on Twitter, you have probably heard how lousy 2016 has been. Any time a celebrity dies, or the election becomes more sordid, or a tragedy befalls people somewhere in the world, there is the inevitable, "oh, f-you, 2016" lament. I think this sentiment has arisen because the world has shrunk so much, even in the last five years. We are fed information from everywhere at a rapid clip. It's not like 1983 anymore when we'd wait until the evening news or morning newspaper to be informed of the day's happenings and in between focus on what was in front of our faces. We're battered with information constantly and with stuff we'd never know 20 years ago, and we actually move things we have no control over higher on our priority list because of it. Of course we think 2016 is a wreck! It's all we see, because we won't turn it off! Personally, my 2016 hasn't been that terrible. ...

Topps' flagship set this year was my biggest card disappointment. I won't say that it was a major disappointment because I really didn't want to try to complete another flagship set after putting my all into 2015. But 2016 Topps was not even close to my style and the disappointing part is that this set probably indicates the direction in which Topps is headed. So I bought very little Series 1 from this year's set and even less Series 2. I thought about ignoring Update altogether because: 1) I don't want to keep seeing those smokey photos. 2) I know half of the cards will show players in the pukey retro Padres All-Star uniforms. But, in the end, I had to get at least one hanger box to see if I could find some Dodgers and a couple other items that I could salvage from the burning wreckage of the 2016 Topps collecting season. I'm showing these cards approximately two weeks after Update arrived. Today was the first day I even looked for it. It appeared t...