Night Owl Cards

  (How much you wanna bet Pete is checking on the ponies?)   I have been trying to update my want lists on the blog for three years now.   It's slow going because it's super tedious and not in the "fun tedious" way like updating a binder.   Mostly what I need to update are Dodgers team set wants. I've been working my way backwards and I'm at the tail end of finishing the 2002 wants with Upper Deck and a few randoms to go. Working on these sets makes me realize how many evil sets were created while I wasn't collecting in the first part of this century. There are so many sets where half the team set is short-printed, rookies you never heard of are short-printed, just really annoying stuff. Do I even have the energy to track down an SP'd card of someone named Rick Roberts? Those are the things that go through my head when I'm updating these lists, and then I get deflated, lie on the ground and groan and stop.   I still have 2000 and 2001 to go and the...

  Yesterday was Ron Cey's 73rd birthday and, don't you worry, I took care of acknowledging it. It didn't show up on the blog but it did appear on Twitter. That isn't even all of autographs in the collection. You can fit only so much in the frame. But the rate of me accumulating Cey cards, autographed or otherwise, has slowed dramatically. There haven't been many new Cey cards recently (Topps has mostly ditched its retro-appreciation of '70s/'80s players for, ugh, steroid-era '90s players). And all that's around for me to collect are a few autograph cards I don't own or a bunch of parallels. I've mentioned this the last few Cey birthday posts, and I was starting to get sick of hearing myself repeat this lament. But then one day, while pondering cards to obtain, I looked to the ceiling and that's when it struck me: Of course, north! Go north! O-Pee-Chee!!! I don't know why I never thought of that before. I have OPC Ron Cey cards in my c...

My want list site on the blog crashed more than two years ago and I've been attempting to reconstruct it ever since. I haven't spent the full two-plus years on it. I go months and months and months without even touching it. But lately I've been making a little more of an effort. The site was redesigned to be listed by year, instead of by card manufacturer. Within each of the years, I then list Topps first and the others alphabetically afterward. I've pretty much got the years 2009-19 updated completely and I have most of the Topps sets done for all years. I'm currently finishing up 2008 for other brands and I'll continue to go back in time from there. But meanwhile I skip around and add stuff from the 1960s -- I just added the Dodgers needs for Post and Jello -- or some stray set from the '90s that suddenly intrigued me. In short, the list will never be finished. Although I like the way my want list is constructed these days (it's also got ...

(NOTE: Since this was posted, my flagship and Update wants have been virtually erased, and Archives wants dented, please consult the main want list if you're feeling generous). One of the more aggravating parts of collecting annually is the end of the year. Every November or December, I look back on my want lists and notice all of the set and team needs still sitting there from the past 10-12 months. Sometimes, when I want to really irritate myself, I look back on the previous years -- wants from 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 -- and shake my head at all of the items sitting untouched, for years now. I have told myself repeatedly that with the next online order, I am going to tackle that particular year's wants so I don't have to look at them taunting me anymore. And then I don't do it. There's always something more enjoyable out there than a recent Topps Opening Day Dodger need. So 2016 is no different than the previous years that are already part of the g...