Night Owl Cards

I am getting near the end of my filing of 2019 cards. All that's left is a little bit of Topps Update, Archives (still looking to get the last of those '75s, you know) and the Topps Holiday cards. While I continue to desperately search for a shoebox or other storage device to stash those 2019 cards, a few post ideas have popped into my head. One is a common thought that just about every collector who still buys packs has lamented a time or two: "Geez, I certainly pull a lot of this guy!" I've written a post about that, like 10 years ago, and then I updated it three years later. In each case, I compiled a top 10 and the lists weren't very scientific. I just went with my gut feeling of who I seemed to pull a lot and also who most annoyed me when I pulled their cards. But this time I decided to calculate the numbers and I'm not going with a strict top 10 either. I'm not buried in 2019 cards of these players. I am a casual collector when it...

Yup, I've got another online-only set for you today. But at least I wasn't the one who bought the cards this time. This delightful Corey Seager 1975-style mini, issued last year, arrived from R.C . He's the one who sent the '75 mini Kershaw previously . That one came from a 10-card set that accompanied the 2015 Topps mini set. I'm not sure if Seager here was packaged the same way. I have a hunch that it was though, because Seager came with six buddies! Good gosh, I sure do love those bright '75 colors. The color schemes are fairly accurate here, except for the Harper, which is way off. There was no such color combination in 1975 Topps. Also, the red-orange combo, featured on the Machado, should have blue team letters, not red. You may have noticed that adds up to only seven cards. That's because R.C. paid attention to my directive and took the three Cubs out of there! OK, well, actually, he's a Cubs fan and wanted Arrieta, Bryant and s...

It's a couple days after a card show and that's when the card sorting really hits its peak. I usually wait to do any kind of sorting until after a show and then add the cards I bought at the show to the other cards that have been waiting months for filing (I still have cards from my last show in September that need to be filed). So this is not the time to go searching for trades. But I've got to do what I've got to do. I didn't get any cards in the mail last week. And there were none today. It doesn't matter because card show, but still it's time to snap out of that funk. I just wrapped up a deal with Scott Crawford today. And I'm finally getting down to getting some cards together for Cardboard Clubhouse, Not Another Baseball Card Blog, 2 x 3 Heroes and Nachos Grande. But what about the rest of you guys? Yeah, that's big talk from someone who takes two months to get a card package together. But I need to get some cards out of my house. Spe...

As a writer, I have a relationship with the stories and posts that I write. You've probably heard writers describe their stories as their "children" and I can relate. While some can pound out a post, hit "publish" and then forget about it once the sun goes down, it doesn't work that way for me. I write some posts that I want to forget, but can't. And I write other posts that I like ... a lot. I have favorites when it comes to posts. Yesterday's post was a favorite. I couldn't wait to get the idea up on the blog. It didn't get the biggest response, but that's OK. The cool people know why I liked the post so much. I was writing to them. But since I like to offer variety on my blog and because I knew I had probably bored the "what's new" crowd with last night's post, I thought I'd find something for them. I was getting a few birthday goodies for my daughter today when I ambled over to the card aisle and grabbed...

This is the kind of blog title that I would have liked to have reserved for when I complete this set. But with the number of card obsessions I have, who knows if I'll ever complete it or get to use the title. Between searching for '72 Topps needs, and cool Dodgers from my childhood, and cool modern Dodgers, and awesome oddballs from the '70s, and finishing a couple of 2015 sets, and vintage , vintage , vintage , I've done very little with my sole 2016 completion task. That quest is to complete the 2016 Heritage tribute to the 1967 Topps Stand-Ups test issue. It's an insert set -- of course -- but it's just 15 cards, so it shouldn't be that tricky. I pulled the Arrieta card myself back during my first Heritage purchase this year. Now, finally, I have two more -- one-fifth of the set complete -- thanks to The Writer's Journey . Here we have a player whose name sounds like an Italian pastry and a guy who should be a party planner because ...

We are living in a wonderful time for collecting cards. As much as I go on about vintage and long for how cards used to be sold, you can pretty much find whatever card you want almost instantly these days. And, that, to me, is the best thing about the hobby today. A distant second -- but still terribly cool -- is the fact that you can air your card desires to anyone who is reading and they show up in your collection. Thanks to the internet, and blogging, someone knows the cards you like to collect and sends them right to your door! I don't know about you, but I won't stop marveling over this. The card show doesn't seem to be the be-all and end-all when you look at it that way. The card show came to ME. So it is with the package that Dave sent. He knows what I like and he apparently has access to quite a bit of it. I realize this is a tired old premise that I've probably used a few times already, but these cards I got from Dave are like I went to the card show m...