Night Owl Cards

Happy Carlos May Day! I wanted to find this cartoon to acknowledge the always fun trivia question, "who wore his birthdate on his uniform?," but didn't have time to search all of my cards to find it. Tigers fan Don came to the rescue on Twitter and told me it was on the back of the 1977 Topps Al Bumbry card. Mystery solved. But it made me think that I would really like to catalog my cards by cartoon. Really. There are so many cool facts that I learned from reading cartoons on card backs during the '70s that I often want to find the fact but can't find the card. So, I might do that some day -- you know, when I have so much time on my hands that I'm spending the whole day rocking on the back porch. But today I have no time, so you're getting a bunch of random thoughts that I've had over the last few days just thrown together like so, because I can't form a properly structured post. Try to enjoy. When I scanned the Matt Kemp Bowman...

I'm afraid the second part of this card show won't be as interesting as the first. But I'll do my best to keep you entertained. The second table that I go to regularly is basically the "what can I get cheap" table -- although lately all tables have been like that for me. But usually, I blow a lot of cash on the first table and then try to pick up a bunch of modern card needs at table two for low, low prices. Table two has whatever sets are the latest and greatest at the time. So for this show, there were binders of Topps Update, 2012 Bowman, Heritage/Heritage Minors, Archives, as well as binders from some sets one and two years old -- Bowman, Heritage, etc. Every October I try to clean out my Update Dodger needs at this table. This time I picked up only two. The Kershaw All-Star item up top, and the Kemp All-Star card. The rest of the Dodger Updates are either on their way to me or I have them already. Funny how Kershaw and Kemp I had to get for myse...

Yesterday, Dinged Corners (so glad they're back) asked what we all would recommend to someone who hadn't been collecting in months. What was out on the shelves, virtual or otherwise, that would catch one's fancy? I ran through my mind all of the various choices released this year, discarded some automatically, and rambled off some incoherent answer. At the end, I realized there really wasn't anything great from 2011, and that the item that I recommended -- Topps Heritage -- won my vote solely because I like how it looks stacked up in a pile. To me, it looks like a cord of wood -- if wood was sliced very, very thinly. Don't look at me that way. I find firewood comforting. It's a cold weather thing. But I also realized that this was a sign of someone with a short attention span. Only a 2-year-old would recommend a card set based on what it looks like stacked up, as if they were building blocks. But that's how I've gone through card sets this year....

When I go to a card show, since I go to so few, I like to take my time. By taking my time, I don't mean staying there for five hours. I don't have the patience for that, and I'm not much of a gabber, so there's no chance I'll get in a 30-minute discussion about the '74 Topps "Washington N.L." variations. But I do like to scope the room, which is very large, and at least scan every table. I scout out dollar boxes and expand my horizons by visiting mojo tables. Generally, I like to fill my senses with each show. But not this time. This time I was with my 13-year-old daughter. She doesn't care about sports in the least. And you know 13-year-olds. If they're forced to do what they don't want to do, it's as if they're in solitary confinement. They won't try to find something interesting, they won't try to help out, they'll just plug in their ipod and turn on the vacant stare. Normally, this wouldn't rush me, bu...