Night Owl Cards

  Like many collectors I am completely over relic cards. When searching for a card I want, I'm never looking for a relic card. I don't list them among my wants, I don't consider them when I'm looking to complete a team set. To a slightly less degree, the same goes for autograph cards. I do search for them on occasion, but very rarely is it a card quest of mine. There isn't a single set issued today in which I'll say "ooh, I want that autograph."   My collecting background does not include chasing hits, so this is pretty much par for the course for me, but they're even more irrelevant than ever to me.   So when Johnny's Trading Spot shipped me two long boxes of Dodgers, about 75 of which contained cards with scribbles or embedded with cloth bits, my brain stared at them for a bit. Sure, some I really liked, but a bunch I honestly don't know what I'll do with them. For now, the best thing they're good for is a blog post. I went throu...

I will buy just about any single card for a dollar. Even a card from 1990 Donruss, in the right situation, if I was desperate enough, I'd have no problem handing over a buck. A dollar, I think, is the perfect match for a wanted card. I don't live in a land of dime boxes, so I don't have some skewed view that every card should be 10 cents. Ideally, I'd like the average to card to be maybe a quarter. But in this era of online sales, slick modern cards, bells and whistles and vintage all over my want lists, I think if I could pay a dollar for most of the cards I want, I'd be happy. Then there are the times when spending a dollar seems like a steal. This card arrived for the price of a dollar, actually it was under a dollar but I had to factor in shipping. This is the short-printed Sandy Koufax card from 2017 Update and it was going for Too Much Money back when Update was released during the fall. I fought off the urge to buy it then and I was rewarded. Thi...

I apologize in advance for all the blurry images on this post. There's only so much you can do when the entire post is about Sportflics cards. Today is Bill Madlock's birthday. Always a favorite of mine, I think of Mad Dog as a Pirate first, then a Cub, then a Dodger (he also played for the Giants and Tigers). Madlock's career with the Dodgers was relatively short, just the 1986 season and parts of 1985 and 1987, and he was much more successful with the Pirates and Cubs, what with all the World Series and batting titles with those two clubs. That's why I've always thought it odd that Madlock should be depicted in the 10-card 1992 Kellogg's All-Star set as a Dodger. But there he is -- as ghostly as the image is -- as a Dodger. The other nine players in this set -- Willie Stargell (Pirates), Tony Perez (Reds), Jim Palmer (Orioles), Rod Carew (Angels), Tom Seaver (Mets), Phil Niekro (Braves), Jim Rice (Red Sox), Dan Quisenberry (Royals) and Mike S...

One thing that Archives has over its second-tier set peers, like Gypsy Queen and Opening Day, is staying power. Although I've never liked the way Topps has approached or produced Archives, you can't help but analyze it if you are a veteran collector or a fan of history. And this is how Topps gets the word out. Collectors are going to talk about the set whether they enjoy it or not, because the set is tied to history and card collectors' histories. We think we know the way the cards should be because we hold those collecting memories close ... very close. More than most sets, Archives brings out not our love for baseball or a certain team or individual players, but our love for cards. That explains why we want to see this set succeed or -- if it can't match our appreciation for card history -- wither and die. And it explains why we get upset when Topps returns to the 1980 design, two years after it included the 1980 design in the first edition of Archives. B...

This is the time of year that I usually whine about work. It's cosmically unfair that my busiest time of the year happens at the exact same time that others are taking entire weeks off to frolic in warmer climes. But this the lot I chose in life. I decided not to be a college student for the rest of my life. I decided not to be a teacher. I decided to write sports for a living (Nick, if you value lots of time off, you may want to stick to education as a career pursuit). And sports says that March -- yes, spring break time -- is the busiest time of the year. I'm realizing that the older I get, the more I don't care whether I get time off in March. That's both a product of mellowing out and of ... heh, receiving more vacation time (one of the benefits of getting older). So in April -- another time period when education types take weeks off when I usually can't -- I will be taking a little time off, too. And then everyone can be jealous of me. But right now...

December 23rd is a big day for me. Each year it's the day of "the wrapping and the cursing." Or the "cursing and the wrapping." Take your pick. For me, the thing I like least about Christmas is wrapping presents. I'm not a big complainer when it comes to Christmas. I love almost everything about it. But I was cursed with a complete inability to wrap presents. What your average person with average dexterity could wrap in five minutes takes me 40 minutes, if I'm lucky. On Monday, while completing my Christmas shopping, I walked past the "free gift-wrapping" table for a reason that I will be searching for until next Christmas. I'm just on an eternal quest to make my life more difficult, I guess. So, time is short. But I need to post at least a little bit of what dayf of Cardboard Junkie sent me as part of his great Christmas giveaway. Hopefully, I'll post a little now and then some more after Christmas. That's the plan anyway. F...