Night Owl Cards

  Before I get to the main theme of the post, I wanted to poll the card bloggers -- at least the ones who use Blogger -- and ask, in the last two weeks or so, what time does your post show up on blog rolls and Blogger's reading list after you post it?   I'm asking because it's been very frustrating for me, hitting publish -- both here and the 1993 Upper Deck blog -- and then not seeing that post pop up on blog rolls/reading list for hours, sometimes a day ... or more.   A couple of examples.   My last post on Saturday, " Going to the Files ," didn't show up on either of those two Blogger notification systems for hours. I published it around 5 p.m., early for me. But it didn't show up until the next day after I got up in the morning -- then there it was, saying I published it 12 hours prior.   On Sunday, I made a post to the 1993 Upper Deck blog. I published it around 2 in the afternoon. At 8:30 p.m., my blog roll, which includes both of my blogs, said thes...

  I found out about a monthly card show in town just coming up on three years now, and already I'm wondering how soon it will be before there's nothing there for me anymore.   I went this past weekend fully aware that I'd see more tables dedicated to TCG stuff. When I walked in I thought I would try to count how many tables were selling Pokemon/Magic/Yu Gi Oh and how many were selling cards of actual humans. But after spotting the three tables to my immediate right all selling it and knowing the table to my immediate left always sold it, I gave up on that and tried to focus on someone, anyone selling something I could use.   It's pretty clear that kind of dealer is taking over this show. Without doing the count, I'd guess that at least half of the tables were TCG this time. Then, out of the other half that's sports cards, cross off the dealers focusing only on graded stock and also the dealer or two selling nothing but boxes they got through a month's worth ...

   This is the first Brooks Robinson card I ever saw. I was into my third year of collecting before I pulled his card. Never saw his tremendous '75 Topps card nor his '76 card. Instead, I pulled his final solo card (excluding the Record Breaker card in '78). I thought he looked old. Too old to be playing. And what was with the card number he received in 1977 -- No. 285? A number ending FIVE? Wasn't he really good or something? I just didn't know very much about Brooks Robinson then. Had I known, and been older, maybe I wouldn't have liked him, him and Frank Robinson and Palmer and all those guys who did a number on the Dodgers in 1966. And, still, I didn't care much a few years later, when my brothers and I went to a card show where Robinson was signing. I was there for the cards, let my brother, the Orioles fan, get in line for Brooks. So he did. I've told this story on the blog before, but it was like 12 years ago and I have other readers now. My broth...

If you were blogging around 2008-09, you know about a blog called "Things Done To Cards". It's still going , although it's updated maybe a couple times a year. It's one of those collective blogs in which several writers contribute articles. I contributed a couple a long time ago, I remember I once wrote about how in sixth grade me and and a friend would cut up the 1977 Topps four-player rookie prospect cards to create "mini cards". That's what "Things Done To Cards" was all about -- doing things to cards, whether it's a company encasing a scrap of cloth inside a card or an amateur card artist doodling on an unsuspecting player. Recently, a collecting reader, Joe, who has sent me all kinds of nifty stuff over the years, delivered a random assortment of cards, some that he had saved for me and others he had picked up randomly at card shows and such. A few of the cards had things done to them, although I didn't catch on righ...