Night Owl Cards

  I found out about a monthly card show in town just coming up on three years now, and already I'm wondering how soon it will be before there's nothing there for me anymore.   I went this past weekend fully aware that I'd see more tables dedicated to TCG stuff. When I walked in I thought I would try to count how many tables were selling Pokemon/Magic/Yu Gi Oh and how many were selling cards of actual humans. But after spotting the three tables to my immediate right all selling it and knowing the table to my immediate left always sold it, I gave up on that and tried to focus on someone, anyone selling something I could use.   It's pretty clear that kind of dealer is taking over this show. Without doing the count, I'd guess that at least half of the tables were TCG this time. Then, out of the other half that's sports cards, cross off the dealers focusing only on graded stock and also the dealer or two selling nothing but boxes they got through a month's worth ...

  This is my most recent Dodger binder -- binder No. 37 -- sitting there on the floor waiting for its forever home on one of two four-tiered card shelving units in the card room.   It's been sitting there for more than a month. I was supposed to figure out a spot for it during vacation last month but that didn't happen. Turns out it's going to take significant thought and upheaval to get that thing in there.   I always thought that when I got to Dodger binder No. 40, I would stop right there. Any other cards gaining entrance would have to boot other cards. But it looks like it's time for that already.   It seems like a send from Johnny's Trading Spot always touches off this kind of talk. An earlier shipment had me kicking out Bowman and Panini cards of supposed Dodger players who never even made the majors. They're in boxes now. But now I'm going to have to go a step farther.   I think next up will be Bowman and Panini cards that just aren't interesting...

  Let's just stay with the out-of-season Christmas posts here. Why not? Nobody's celebrating late January. As many of you know, Rod of Padrographs is a great guy who opens up a bunch of current product around the holidays and then distributes a lot of it to his favorite bloggers. I'm one of those! Most of the cards he sent this time were Dodgers or Orioles. The Baltimores are for my nephew, but he's in college now, when card interest is way low, so they'll stay with me or maybe be sent to another Orioles collector. He also sent three unopened packs: All of these have since been opened. I'll show off the contents at the end of the post. But I need to get on with the Dodgers because, brother, did Rod boost my 2024 content in that area.   Here is where most of the Holiday team set came from -- before I opened that Holiday dome in the previous post. One of the cards is a silver glitter parallel for Yamamoto. Rod took care of just about all of my Stadium Club team n...

  We're getting our first snow of the season today. The good news is November is almost over before we saw snow, which is pretty unusual. The bad news is it's lake-effect snow, on the holiday, and why couldn't it have snowed on Nov. 15th when no one was visiting anything? But we'll get over it, we always do. It's nice to be inside with no responsibilities and cards to pass the time. Today I've been sorting the bunches of cards I received from Johnny's Trading Spot a couple of weeks ago. That always demands some open time in my schedule so I can squint at the copyrights on the back for the cards I don't know. He's always unearthing something I've never heard of. The box arrival was actually signaled a few days earlier with a thank you note and three cards for playing one of Johnny's guessing games recently. I was mystified by the envelope because I didn't remember participating, but it turns out I had, just poorly and wanted to forget abo...