Night Owl Cards

  So, after experiencing a personal crisis with my all-time favorite oddball a couple of months ago , I took some action. I removed all of my Kellogg's 3D cards from 1970-78 from their top loaders and placed each of them inside a shoebox in stacks. This, I hope, will limit the cracking that I saw with some of my top-loadered Kellogg's cards. I kept the 1979-83 Kellogg's cards in their top loaders and upright in the same box where the '70-78 Kellogg's cards used to live. I haven't experienced any of the '79-83 cards cracking so I think they're safe. Meanwhile, my Dodgers Kellogg's cards, all of them from 1970-83, are still in top loaders in their own stack. That's playing with fire, after I experienced the issues with the other Kellogg's cards in top loaders. But only one of the Dodgers cards has cracked, it's the 1970 Bill Singer card above. Oof. The point is, I now have my Kellogg's cards in four different places, a shoebox for 70-78...

I don't like missing card shows, because there are so few of them and they're shrinking by the year. So even though I was lucky enough to go to an unexpected show a couple of weeks ago, it's still eating me up that there is another show next month staring me in the face that I am going to miss. It is very much like me to focus on what I can't have instead of what I do have. Getting myself converted to a more positive way of thinking is a constant battle. So this is my attempt to focus on the PRO column in my hobby life, rather than the CON column. I may have just a couple of card shows to attend each year, but I also have many other card shows available to me from around the country. That's the benefit of writing a semi-well-read blog. People read about what you like, go to their show in Dreamland, Arizona, or wherever, and -- wham! -- you have card show cards in your possession. I like to call these people who go to a card show in distant lands "car...

One thing that boggles my mind repeatedly in my various blog readings across our hobby is how readily available cards are in other parts of the country. I often lament my lack of a decent card shop and the relative lateness at which new product arrives in my area. There are many sets that I never see in person because of where I live. But I thought I was doing pretty good as far as card shows. No, there isn't one a week or one a month like there is in several places, but the few that I do get to go to are good-sized shows with a large variety of cards. You'd have to be awfully picky not to find something you like at shows like that. Still, even with all that bounty before me, there is one thing I've never seen at those shows in more than five years of going. '75 minis. Once in awhile I'll discover one in a discount box. But I can count those times on the paw of a three-toed sloth. And I have never, ever, ever seen a box or a binder full or even half ful...

With this post, I am getting dangerously close to a "when I was your age I used to walk to and from school uphill both ways" lecture. But it's the only way I can think of to convey how much I enjoy cards like this '68 Topps Jeff Torborg. When I was a kid, there were no boxes to bust, no card stores to visit, no way to send away for cards, and certainly no internet. The best and only way to get baseball cards was to visit your neighborhood drug store. And, yeah, I did walk there most of the time. Cards were hard to come by, even though they were around 10 cents a pack when I first started collecting. The occasions -- and they were truly occasions -- when I received cards were so seldom that I remember each and every one to this day. I remember which store, I remember how many packs. I even remember some of the cards that came from the packs. I didn't accumulate many cards over an entire year. Collecting the whole set was out of the question. I couldn't afford i...