Night Owl Cards

  I grew up in a Coca-Cola family. We didn't drink it all the time. It was mostly reserved for certain Fridays when we had pizza for dinner. But that set me on a path of Coke being my go-to soft drink for years. I liked my variety so other soft-drinks entered the scene but Coke was it, as the commercials said, and Pepsi was not. The only time I drank Pepsi was when I wanted to sample the difference and, naw, that's not for me. The Pepsi Challenge was a lie.   But anyway, Coke kind of messed me up. I drank too much soft drink for too long and that will catch up to you. It's bad news. All of those drinks are. And, like I've said, I haven't drank a Coke or any soft drink in 10 years. Still Coke's connection to my childhood remains and so does Burger King and Kellogg's cereals and Hostess snack cakes, and all of those things will destroy your insides. But the cards won't. As you know, I've been on a quest to obtain all of the Coke sets from 1981 in my ge...

  I am currently collecting a bunch of sets where I need to think about card condition. That's not a concern with modern cards most of the time (although graded-card collectors give themselves extra things to worry about). Pulling cards out of a pack and adding them directly to a binder is one of the great, overlooked benefits of current cards. The problem is finding a current set worthy of a binder. But with vintage stuff, I'm always on the lookout. I can't be one of those collectors who isn't bothered by moldy, drowned, regurgitated old cards (pre-1950s excluded, of course). I have some standards. For example, I just received a bunch of 1970 Topps cards from Don, a former blogger who I connected with through Twitter (I have his cards ready to go, just need packaging and mailing time). I don't know what it is about 1970 Topps but ever since I started collecting the set, the condition of the cards has been all over the place, much more so than any set from around t...

  I haven't completed, nor attempted to complete, a Stadium Club set since I finished the 2015 set.   Although nothing since has inspired me enough to try to complete it, I do still like Stadium Club and I do try to buy some of it just to get my fix. I've done that for six years now ... well, five years because I never saw 2020 SC in stores. So it's been five years of a sample here and a sample there. It's what passes for Club-hopping for me these days. Mostly what I want these days is simply to complete the Dodgers team set. I've done that now for all of the most recent series of Stadium Club, from 2014 to, as of last week, 2021. A few days ago, I received the last two Dodgers I needed to finish the base set. Cody Bellinger and Corey Seager. (Sorry for the crooked and light photos. Without my trusty scanner, I've discovered I have zero patience for photographing cards, especially glossy ones).   I exchanged some Stadium Club cards with regular trade partner, Jo...

  Most of my vintage focus the last couple of months has been on the 1976 Hostess set. I didn't mean for it to take up so much of my time. I have other card things I want to do and had planned on doing those while I built the Hostess set. But Hostess will dominate your world, it's diabolical, and I didn't expect that. First of all, the set is 150 cards. All of the Hostess sets from that time are. That's insane. I'm used to my food issues being 60 cards, max. Most, like Drake's, are barely 30 cards. Kellogg's is what I primarily saw as a youngster and those were always around 50 or 60 cards. That's doable and sensible if you're fishing cards one-by-one out of the cereal box or ordering them off the side of the box with your newspaper delivery money. But, no, Hostess wanted you to run through a Twinkie-fueled gauntlet in which you cut cards off the side of a box, three at a time, or pulled them away from your greasy Suzy Q's, and then repeated that...