Night Owl Cards

  The other day on Twitter a collector mentioned that he was attempting to trade with someone from every state in the U.S. That immediately caused me to remember the trade map. Perhaps if you were around in 2012 -- I mean on the blogs -- you would remember the trade map, too. That's the last time I featured it. And the time before that was all the way back in 2010! You see, I too was trying to trade with someone from every state. Then crushing apathy killed the dream, so definitively that I haven't thought about the trade map for years. When I last showed it, I had just cleared Delaware and Nevada off my state trade list. That's the map I showed on Sept. 28, 2012. The blue states all include trade buddies. I had traded with collectors in 40 states at that point. That's when I stopped paying attention. But when the other 50-state chaser mentioned his quest on Twitter, I pulled out this old map and mentioned how close I had gotten. That caused others to say, "Hey! I...

I've been on Twitter for three weeks now, and I have to say the second time around is going a little better than the first. Twitter can still be annoying as hell, but I think my approach to it is better this time. I've kept to my "rule" of only tweeting about cards -- for the most part -- and I've chosen to emphasize the usefulness of the tool, rather than the crap that's too easy to obsess over. One thing that Twitter is useful for is trades. That's not the reason I got back on there again. I'm not searching for new trade partners by any means -- I'm perfectly happy with the many that I have now and I can barely keep up with them as it is. But I've been involved in three or four transactions since my return to Twitter. Two of the fellow tweeters have card blogs. Two don't. The first Twitter trade (or #TwitterTrade, as the kids are saying) involved @SWLVguy , who charmed me with his friendliness and enthusiasm for cards right away....

You thought this had to do with receiving damaged cards in the mail? I'm not that literal, boys and girls. One card collecting habit that I have always found interesting, although it's not something that I think I would ever do, is getting rid of the cards of a player once he's no longer with your team. You see this a lot with high-profile players. As soon as they're traded from a certain collector's favorite team, all of that player's cards are suddenly on ebay. I don't think I could collect like that. With the way that players jump from team to team now, I'd be exhausted trying to keep up. I suppose it's an excellent way to trim your collection. Want to get a few thousand cards out of the house? Figure out who has ditched your favorite team and that's a whole stack of cards you never have to worry about sorting anymore. It's also a good way to recoup some of the cash you blow on cards. But I get too attached. Even though Manny Rami...