Night Owl Cards

  These are bizarre words for me to write but this year marks 50 years since I first held baseball cards in my hand. Those cards were 1974 Topps baseball cards. Had Heritage not been so scared to begin with Topps' first real baseball set when it kicked off the brand in 2001, we'd be celebrating my 50 years with the '74 design in Heritage. Full circle! But Heritage has been out of kilter ever since and I need to take a time-out every time I try to figure out which set Heritage will be replicating in the 2030s when it should take milliseconds. Heritage did the '74 thing last year and the design means so much to me that I completed the whole thing despite last year ending in a "3". It's such a classic set that I started with 50 years ago -- even though I chucked those cards at the end of the summer. I used the Eddie Leon card as a post-topper once before, quite awhile ago (I like that post , most of what I wrote in there still applies). It's one of those ...

  I suppose it seems dismissive to consider finishing the 2023 Topps Heritage set a "trial run," because completing any Heritage set is no easy achievement. But as I was in the middle of trying to complete it, I realized that this was an excellent test for whether I could really finish the upcoming 2024 Heritage set (1975 Topps design), which has been my Heritage goal since I had a full idea of what Heritage was. The only Heritage set I had finished prior was the 2008 set (1959 design) and that took me more than a decade. I didn't want to go through that again.   But I didn't. The final card to complete 2023 Heritage arrived Friday.   That is card No. 498, one of the ONE HUNDRED short-prints in the set. The rookie prospects cards are the final cards in the set. These four have played a combined 37 games in the majors.   I very nearly ignored adding the card because I already had this card:   One of those big-box parallel exclusives. How long could my brain survi...

  I got up a little early Saturday and zipped over to the local card show. This is the one that I mentioned several months ago , how it was nice to finally have a show back in town, regardless of how limited it was.   Apparently they've been having monthly shows ever since my last visit but I forgot about them. Recently though, I did pick up on an increased social media presence and followed their Facebook page. It seems like they're here to stay.   Approaching the site Saturday, there were more signs pointing you toward the show (I had to find it almost blindly the last time). But approaching the check-in, there was no one at the table to greet me/take my admission money. I looked around. Nobody. I poked my head into the show room. Plenty of guys standing around, but none of them seemed like they cared about the table. So I just walked in with my automatic five-dollar discount.   I'm not good at counting tables at shows, but I'd guess there were around 20. I di...

  My post titles have been terribly generic lately, I must be in a funk, or more likely, too busy. I'll snap out of it, but it may not be til January. By the end of next month they'll all say "got some cards." Anyway, I got some cards -- from a couple of veteran bloggers. The blog-to-blog swap is getting rare. and even rarer, I've already sent return packages to both of them, they just went out in the mail yesterday!   The first cards are from Jeremy of Topps Cards That Never Were . He was asking me about my 2023 Topps Heritage want list. This is super-appreciated because even though I'm steadily picking off high-numbers, I'm not sure if I'm going to meet my goal of getting it completed by the end of the year. People need their holiday gifts, you know.   Jeremy sent me these two key highs -- seems like Kelly is always in the high numbers -- but that wasn't all. (Yes, those Angels cards will appear on my year-end post, in the "Topps screw-ups...

  It's getting to be that time of year when there's no time for anything, I mean more so than the other parts of the year in which there's no time. Through it all, though, I'm collecting cards. I'm always collecting cards. I don't leave the hobby for a few days or weeks or months and then come back to it. My collection is on my mind daily and adding to it -- or thinking about adding to it -- is constant. This is why I have so many card collection projects. If one gets too difficult, I can pivot to something else and still have some collecting to do without any break in the action. But for me -- due to time and money -- I have the time to focus on only one set at a time, particularly if it's somewhat tricky. Right now that set is 2023 Heritage. Yeah, I'm still obsessed, though probably not as obsessed as those people who completed Heritage back in May. I'm down to the short-prints, have been for several weeks now. That means no more buying packs or bl...

  That's a moment-in-time snapshot of my card table and surrounding other activities in my card room. There's a lot going on in there right now. Not only is it the central hub for cards coming in and cards going out, but there are two large boxes of cards coming in that I'm trying to get myself around. Also, TCDB offers have ramped up again. And, those card stacks off to the left will tell you I'm in the middle of another Dodgers dupes card sort. I try to do this once a year, around September or so. But I skipped it last year so there's even more to do. Also, life has somehow turned what was once a week-long activity into a two-month activity. I don't know how it did that, but it dood. More card stacks. More incoming. There is a lot to do, card-wise. And blog-wise. I have topics in mind that involve research. And little time to do it. When I'm in that kind of crunch, sometimes I dismiss incoming cards for blog posts, thinking that I just can't come up wi...