Night Owl Cards

  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...

It is interesting to me how card collectors seem to have so much in common, as far as interests, personality tendencies, how their brains are wired, etc., and still can be so different. There are many things that card collectors do that confuse the heck out of me. ... Why? Why would they do that? ... And there are many ways card collectors think that don't match my collecting thought process at all. I think the influence of the time period in which a collector grew up has a lot to do with the differences. And that's what I'm going to chalk up to the excuse I am now giving to whatever lost soul decided to grade a 1982 Topps Burt Hooton card. Let's go through the reasons why there's no need to grade a 1982 Topps Burt Hooton: 1. The card came out in 1982. 2. It's Burt Hooton. I'm done. But, I'm thinking, somebody grew up in a period when everyone was grading cards and that, yes, even commons should be graded because, you know, they could, u...

I received a few Dodger cards from Adam of Cardboard Clubhouse recently. Among them was this 1977 Topps Dodgers team card. It's the first card to feature Tommy Lasorda as the Dodgers' manager. I am nostalgic over team cards and have written a few posts wishing for their return. But I admit that when I was collecting at this time, I didn't pay a lot of attention to the photograph. The people were so tiny, there were so many of them. I had a bicycle to ride. So I decided to take a closer look at this team photo for the first time. I spotted many of the familiar faces, Russell, Cey, Lopes Garvey, Baker. But my attention quickly turned toward the back row. I think you can see it now. The fifth guy from the right, standing next to who I believe is Rick Rhoden, has his head down! I know it must be difficult for a photographer to make sure 30-plus people are facing toward the camera, but come on! It's the team picture! There's a guy looking DOWN! Who is th...

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post titled "Let's Complete a Team Set Today" . It was a happy little tale about how I completed the 1996 Fleer Team Wax Dodgers set, as confusing as Fleer made it that year. But that was mere peanuts compared with what we're going to do today. I have a list on my sidebar called "The Nebulous 9". I like to put the final card needed from a particular team set on that Nebulous 9 list, because there is nothing more satisfying than completing a set. You may have noticed that the list is now down to three cards. That's because I won a contest at Bob Walk The Plank and he decided to wipe out my needs on the Nebulous 9. Because of his decision, he completed six team sets for me. SIX. Let's take a look at them now: 2015 Topps Archives Dodgers . Completed. Technically, there's still that stupid short print Jackie Robinson card. But I'm not paying $25-$50 (that's what it's going for these da...

I've collected cards for a long time now. But because I go at my own pace and don't attempt to grab everything from the latest and greatest, I've missed out on some things that are almost regular occurrences for other collectors. For example: This is my first rip card. I didn't pull it -- I don't really buy boxes anymore. It was sent to me by Jeroen, The Dutch Card Guy . Since it's my first rip card, you must now be submitted to my very outdated and antiquated views on rip cards. And those are: I can appreciate the intrigue created by a card like this, but I have a fundamental problem with voluntarily ripping up a baseball card. Just putting aside the philosophical argument of turning a card into a wrapper, I don't know if I like the idea of ripping up my own baseball cards ... in my own home ... where there are people who don't understand the whole accumulation of baseball cards thing ... and giving them IDEAS . One simple tear in front of th...

I received some Dodger cards from Spiff of Texas Rangers Cards a couple of weeks ago. Spiff is one of the first bloggers I traded with after starting this blog, so it's always great to get some cards from him. And I hope I have some Rangers left to send him! Among the cards that jumped out at me were two original Donruss cards. Those cards from 1981 always take me back to the excitement and bewilderment of having three sets to chase instead of one. Of course, the lasting trademark of '81 Donruss is the card stock. It is shockingly thin. It is so thin that I barely thought of them as cards when I was collecting that year. I bought fewer Donruss packs than Topps and Fleer that year, and I know it is because of the card stock. I kept holding them up to the light to see if I could see through them. But aside from the card stock, I liked '81 Donruss. The design was basic but original and kind of fun. The photos weren't fantastic, but neither were Fleer's. Th...

(This is a little countdown show I've prepared in advance. Given Blogger's moodiness, who knows if it will see the light of day this week. But I must press onward). In the history of collecting there have been certain sets that haven't quite hit the mark. In a word, I would call them "defective." Now, let's define "defective." I am not using "defective" to describe a concept. There are plenty of sets with flawed concepts. 2008 Documentary, 1997-98 Pinnacle Inside (cards in a can), 2009 Yankee Stadium Legacy. There are also plenty of sets with flawed marketing strategies. 1982 Kmart, for example. But those don't describe the actual card. There are some sets in which the cards in the set simply don't work. They don't operate properly. They're dysfunctional. It's possible that some of these sets have flawed concepts or marketing strategies, too, but the majority of frustration comes when the collector handles th...

A couple of days ago, Topps released news of its new "Five Star Club," an exclusive club for super-high-end collectors who spend an average of $10,000 on Topps products each year. There was a lot of hue and cry about this and understandably so. ( Here is a well-thought-out rundown and rant). I was part of that, and I'll try to explain my feelings here. First, I'm not a fan of clubs. Never have been. I like things that are inclusive, not exclusive. Clubs can get ugly real fast. And here is the part of Topps' Five Star Club press release that got me going: "Introducing the Topps Five Star Club, an elite club for our most passionate collectors ." (Emphasis mine). Here was my Twitter reaction: A typical editor reaction to get worked up over word choice. But, still, it annoyed me. "Passionate" is not buying thousands of dollars of product in order to sell it or discard it. "Passionate" is not holding on to one card des...