Night Owl Cards

    This is post No. 5500 on the blog. Not that the number means all that much, unless you tell someone outside the hobby that you've written 5,500 blog posts about accumulating cards. That will probably draw some sort of reaction.   To them -- most of them anyway -- it's all just mindless accumulation. It's all stuff for the throw-out man eventually. But to me, and the people who read this -- this blog isn't FOR YOU, people who think cards are dumb -- every card added has meaning. It fits into a specific category that pays tribute to whatever thing -- baseball, player, year, hobby -- that means something to that collector.   There's probably no more appropriate time than to go through some recent pickups -- wildly unconnected -- that have been occupying space on my card desk for too long. Yeah it's another show-off post. I'm 5500 posts in now, I can't change.   This will illustrate exactly how many kinds of cards I think are important and also that I ...

 I know I've written about the weather a lot the last week or two. It's January. Weather is about the only thing going on this month. It's generally cold in almost the whole country right now from what I gather, but, per usual, we're off the charts here. The lake-effect snow dump isn't as bad as it was in Christmas 2022, but we're in one of those "when's it going to end" stretches. It certainly doesn't help when the weather forecast tells us the lake effect will be gone once Thursday's here and then magically changes to "expect 3-5 more inches (more like 7-8)" with not a word about the previous forecast. That's we're I am right now as I write this. Yeah, yeah, I know, just get to the cards (spoiler: there are only two), but you can scroll, right? Here's a look at how much the weather has dominated this week:   That's the little bird house/bird feeder set-up my wife has in the backyard (that middle lump is one of th...

  I have never traded with anyone for longer in my life than Cards On Cards . Not with my brothers. Not with co-worker Carl years ago. Not that one kid in high school. Heck, high school lasted four years. I've been traded with Kerry of Cards on Cards for 15! I have proof of that, which will become apparent in a couple days. But trust me for now, I'm talking about one of the OGs when it comes to trading.  For years I have sent him my Cardinals and I get his Dodgers. That's an arrangement that has always worked. Since we first started transacting, he's had other collectors come after his Dodgers. I don't know how he distributes them all. I know that when Cardinals collectors have wanted to team trade with me in the past, I've shrugged my shoulders and said, "sorry, Cards on Cards gets them all." I just don't have that kind of inventory. I'm always setting aside cards for him, which makes me feel good when another envelope arrives from all the way...

  Some time ago I wrote a post about years with the final digit in common and the cards that were released each of those years. Which was my favorite? For example, this year, which ends in a "3" and all the previous "3" years with cards going back to the '50s: 1953, 1963, 1973, 1983, 1993, 2003 and 2013. I think a lot of people would make this group their favorite, after all Topps has used the photo-inset theme with '63, '83, '03 and '23.  I don't remember which number I picked as a favorite, because I can't find the post; it happens when you have over 5,000 posts. But I probably picked the 5's. The 5's have some of my all-time favorites: 1965, 1975 (of course) and 2015. I also like 2005 and I once liked 1995 a lot (not so much anymore). And, heck, I did a whole set blog on 1985 Topps. I'm still chasing some of those 5 sets and I'm not limiting it to Topps either. This key Ozzie Smith is a fine addition in helping legitimi...

I just came back from a visit to my beloved Buffalo. There is so much I want to do there, but since much of my family -- on both sides -- lives there, I  mostly spent a lot of time catching up. Nothing wrong with that, but it limits the Buffalo things you can do. I wanted to go back to the antique place I saw in a mall during my visit last year. There were a lot of cards there but I was caught off-guard. Totally prepared this time, I was underwhelmed with this visit. There was hardly any vintage, way too much football and junk wax galore. Also, the following annoyed me: A lot of the cards were under glass, so you'd have to find someone to ask to look at them. Particularly annoying is there were multiple dollar boxes under glass. Meanwhile, not far away, were comic books for a dollar each that I could touch and manhandle all I wanted. Come on sellers, stop it. I walked out of there with nothing. I had planned to buy a couple '70s albums (so many great cheap ones) to go with my c...

  I have the latest selection of freebies from Johnny's Trading Spot that have been sitting for a little bit waiting for me to say something profound about them. But these aren't profound cards, they're pretty nondescript, with the only thing they have in common is that they're modern and most of them are needs. So when nothing springs to mind, you know what that means on NOC. It's countdown show time! Yes, that thing that is all too easy but has been a staple of this blog since the beginning. It will never not be fun to me, and those who don't like rankings just aren't fun. It's what I do. So let's see how these nine cards stack up. 9. Grant Holmes, 2016 Bowman Platinum This is a dupe. And Holmes is still toiling in the minors seven years later. That was not the plan and all the cards of Holmes in 2016 is proof. 8. Kenta Maeda, 2016 Bowman Platinum Also a dupe and also a 2016 sensation. But Maeda actually made the majors and is still there, althoug...

  Every starting pitcher in the Dodgers' rotation this year has had injury issues, except for Clayton Kershaw. It's particularly ugly right now (also grrrrrr to the schedule-makers for pitting the Dodgers against the Padres, Twins, Cardinals, Braves and Rays consecutively with the back two-thirds on the road and just one day off). Only Kershaw and Gonsolin are able to pitch, and I think maybe Syndergaard. Almost none of them can go more than five.   I received this Big League Noah Syndergaard card from madding of Cards On Cards recently and it's to be determined if the diminished Thor is the Dodgers' top offseason acquisition of 2023. J.D. Martinez and Jason Heyward are also in the running but nothing's been too inspiring so far. A couple of weeks ago the blog Red Sox Fan In Nebraska listed out the Red Sox's top offseason transactions for each year going back to 1991 . I thought that was interesting and looked up the same for my Dodgers. But I went through the ...