Night Owl Cards

  For the last year-plus, my Wednesday workload has been what used to be the job of 4-5 people.   That meant that virtually my entire day was devoted to the job, even the so-called "off-hours" of the day. And many weeks work tasks bled into Tuesday, too. Writing a blog post on Wednesday was usually impossible.   However, finally, after wondering how long I would put up with this, yet another downsizing has meant that I'm getting my Wednesdays back. Beginning next week, Wednesday will be just like any other day of the work week.    I'm really happy about this, even though I have to get through this Wednesday first. As a bit of a pre-celebration with (checks clock) very little time, I'm squeezing in a short post. I received some cards yesterday from a stack sale over on Bluesky. After directing some of the cards to fellow collectors' stacks, I have eight cards left for my collection that I will count down.   Nothing exciting -- except to me, of course. Here t...

  My latest sportlots order is in and I went the "even I can afford that" route, which is mostly sportlots' reason for being.   Most of these were cheap upgrades and easy team set-fillers. There are a handful that don't fit easily into a compartment other than "cards I want."   I'm not going to show the upgrades other than the '70 Jesus Alou up top (replaces the one I have with tape on it) and the '76 Lopes Record-Breaker comparison:   The card on the left harks back to my collecting days in 1976. It's a nice keepsake but doesn't fit with my modern collecting standards. I've owned a cleaner copy in my '76 Topps set for quite awhile but another version for my Dodgers binder has not shown up at the house until now.   The other upgrades are related to the 1975 Topps set, specifically the minis. I will continue to upgrade '75 cards for as long as I'm collecting. Some of the minis I accepted just to get the set done so now it...

     I've been dealing with an arm issue that is very similar to what pitchers encounter. On Wednesday I finally got myself to the urgent care, and after picking up a prescription, I went to Lowe's to scope out some garden fence to protect the new bathroom wiring in the attic from squirrels (long story -- and squirrels are evil). After all of that, I figured I needed some kind of reward. The Target is right there -- as it often is when you see a Lowe's -- and, sure, I'll check the card aisle for the first time in three weeks. It's gonna be nothing just like every other time since early 2021, but you never know riii .... Wow. I haven't seen a shelf stocked like that in person in over two years. I'm not going to speculate as to what that means. I'm half thinking that if I returned 12 hours later, it'd be all cleared out. But I don't do those things like that.   That's all I took -- one rack pack of Series 1 and one blaster of Heritage. I had to...

  It is one week until Opening Day.   There are two traditions on this blog that happen around this time. This is the first.   I actually try to time the "30 teams" post around the beginning of spring training -- end of February/start of March -- but last year I forgot this post entirely. In order to make up for it, I posted the 2021 edition at the end of August, so I've been holding off on publishing the 2022 post to give my rankings time to change.   But six months isn't that much time to see the rankings move. The only significant baseball moment to happen during that time is the postseason and, well, you all know I already don't like the Braves and Astros.   Before I get to the ranking, I wanted to briefly follow up on my last post about 2022 Heritage. There actually are horizontal cards of individual players in this year's Heritage, Topps hasn't totally dropped the ball. There are 20 of them in the set. That's similar to the number in 1973 Topps, ...