Night Owl Cards

  In many ways it seems like the years are speeding up and 2023 has only been three months long. But sometimes I think back to something and say to myself "was that still in this year?"   I knew I wanted to review my trades for the year on Trading Card Database but I could've sworn that I started trading in 2022. That's just my fading brain. I wrote vigorously about my first TCDB trades and they were in February of this year.   Before TCDB trading I didn't think I needed it. I was trading plenty through the blogs and the thought of taking extra time for another trading avenue was not appealing or seemed doable. I was wrong about that, although it does seem like extra work sometimes. I still trade through the blogs, on a much more smaller scale (because everyone's doing the TCDB thing), and sometimes I mix things up. I list a card available for trade on TCDB but then ship it off in a non-TCDB deal and forget to update its status on TCDB (in TCDB trades, the sta...

  After an initial rush of trades on TCDB, what were my first dozen-or-so deals on the site, the offers dried up for several weeks. I could have jumped-started some trades myself by making some offers finally, but I find that part very time-consuming and I've got limited time already. That's why I'll never whine about no TCDB trades because I know it's a two-way street. But I don't have to deal with that particular issue right now because it's like someone flipped a switch, all of a sudden the offers are pouring in again. This time several of the offers were from people I've dealt with a long time through the blogs, either they have their own blog or they've been a frequent commenter. As often is the case with my blog buddies, these trades are much less formal, even on TCDB, and we side-stepped some of the rules that are in place for when I transact with people on that site that I only know as a collection of letters and numbers. But before I get to thos...

  The curse of multiple collecting themes in your collection is often they overlap and then what do you do? I don't even have as many collecting themes as some bloggers and I run into this all the time. For example, I received a few cards from The Angels, In Order recently as Tom was offering up some extras in his collection again. These aren't the cards I chose. Tom sent them along because they were listed on my wants for the 1991 Line Drive Albuquerque Dukes set. They were two of the final four cards I needed to finish off that set. I am now down to John Wetteland and Jose Offerman to complete it. But you saw the Offerman card already. It's in my collection. It's in my Dodger autograph collection. That's a separate binder from where the '91 Line Drive Dukes go. Now, normally I don't mind grabbing an extra of a single card to go into multiple collections. But something about this particular time annoys me just a little. Why do I need to bother getting a se...

  I feel myself finally succumbing to trading on TCDB. It'll probably happen. Sometime in 2023. The thought of recording all my trade bait/dupes on there is not appealing and is keeping me stalling, but if that doesn't become an impossible obstacle, I'll get with the times. I still like the idea of blog-to-blog trades better. And I'll still try to continue to make those happen until there's no one on the other end. I just completed one small one and am in the middle of another one. The completed deal -- and keep in mind this is a very casual "I'll send you some cards sometime, you send me some another time" deal that is very much the hallmark of the card blogs -- was between my blog and The Collective Mind .   These cards carry all kinds of old-fashioned blog trade "tells" with them. For example, consulting my blog want lists, I don't know how much they're checked these days. This card comes off my 1995 Topps Archives want list. The ...

  Usernames are an interesting window into individuals. Often, nobody ever sees your username, except for whatever entity is verifying that you really are you when you transact online (prove, prove, prove you're not a robot). But in our line of entertainment, usernames are quite visible. It's what appears when we comment on a blog or in other social media spaces. Choosing a username is key, I think. But it's pretty obvious other people don't (yeah, you, buttmunch69). I have no idea what some people's usernames mean. Other people, I look at their usernames with quiet admiration. "Yeah, that's a good one." Then there are people who don't even have a user and comment anonymously. To me that's like handing in a blank test paper. Some commenters I know only by their username because they don't have a card blog of their own. Lots of folks comment on my blog who are readers only. I consider that a blessing. One of the best-named of those readers-o...