Night Owl Cards

I started this blog in 2008. It doesn't seem that long ago, but it actually is when you consider the lifespan of a major league player with a major league team. Clayton Kershaw is just one of two players who were featured with the Dodgers in a 2008 Topps set that is still with the Dodgers. The other one is Andre Ethier. This despite the fact that he has been traded in my mind about 78 times in the last seven years. If you want to relax the parameters a little, then there are a couple of other Dodgers in 2008 cards that are still with the team: Rick Honeycutt is still the pitching coach. And Eric Stults is back with the team after a long time away, although he was sent down and may end up getting released anyway. But back to Kershaw, because all that other stuff was a tangent. Back in 2008, I made a commitment to Kershaw. I saw a pitcher who would perform greatness and I was confident it would happen. In that year, I decided he was my favorite player a...

When I first started trading, my circle was very small. Just my brother and I. He was the only one I knew who collected baseball cards. He was the only one who had something that I wanted. So in the spring and summer of 1975, we made a few exchanges. Some trades were silly. I didn't like the look on some player's face, or my brother didn't, and we swapped so we wouldn't be tormented by Gene Locklear or Don Hahn ever again. You know kids. The few "serious" trades that were made involved our favorite teams. Red Sox for Dodgers. And vice versa. These trades became automatic, so much so that they weren't even trades. If he pulled a Dodger that I didn't have, he handed it over to me, and I did the same with any Red Sox. A couple of years later, my youngest brother became old enough to have an interest in baseball and cards, and Orioles were added to the trade agreement. Meanwhile, a few friends collected cards, and during those first ...

Back when I first started this blog, the card blogging atmosphere was a little bit different. There were a lot more "how-to-collect" card blogs, or what I would call "card advice" blogs. They actually came in pretty handy because I was really only a couple of years back into the collecting game and didn't have a full grasp on what the hobby had become. I came away with a lot of great pointers and am now in the position myself to give advice. If you're nuts enough to ask me for some. One of the things that I heard back then related to shipping cards through the mail. Here is the gist of what that advice was: "If you send cards in a plain, white envelope, you get everything you deserve." I took it to heart. And when I actually dared to send out a plain white envelope, or PWE, I accepted the consequences with humility . But then this year I joined Listia. I started shipping out more three-, two- and single-card packages than I ever had be...