Night Owl Cards

  My team supply of 2023 Archives came in a couple of weeks ago. It's always a relief to knock out those team wants for a product you don't want to buy anymore.   I'm sure you've seen every one of these by now, so I put them in a group picture so I won't drag things out.   Until getting the full set, I had just the Outman, Muncy and Miller. Muncy has shown up like four times at my house already. You can always tell what is either extra-printed or who collectors have no interest in. This year's Archives gives me the face scrunchies like it always has. This year it's the 1965s where there is too much space above the player in the photo. It doesn't happen often enough where I think "there's got to be a weird legal reason for this"/"Topps is playing games so we think there's a weird legal reason for this," but it comes up enough to take me out of enjoying the '65 design. But my issue with this set has been established, let...

  How many years have I bought a blaster-or-whatever of Topps Archives and been annoyed an hour later that I bought it? Five? Seven? Ten? Archives, in its current form, has existed for 11 years now and I established long ago that it doesn't make me happy. And in this year of not taking chances when it comes to card purchasing, I thought I was over this. Two steps forward, one step back. Like last year , I was doing a little Christmas shopping a few days ago -- just a little because who can stand more than 20 minutes in a big box at this time of year? -- and swung by the card aisle. Only this time it was Target, not Walmart. A couple weeks prior I had found the card shelves very healthy. This visit, they were less healthy -- the ransackers had been at work -- but I found a blaster of Archives. I had seen a little bit of it interesting on the blogs, I wanted to see what the 2003 design looked like, so I took the gamble.   Mostly what I found was cards that don't look like the ol...