Night Owl Cards

  A big benefit to the 5,000-post/card giveaway was cutting down on the card clutter in my collection. I've always been an accumulate-to-appreciate kind of collector. These collectors who have just 50 cards, all on display stands, I don't get. I'm not running a museum, I'm building a collection. A fantastic, ever-growing, awesomely-increasing collection.   But it's pretty clear that my means won't accommodate my desires. "His eyes are bigger than his stomach" has always been a problem for me when it comes to cards. I've also encountered a couple of "you can't take it with you moments" lately and although that never really gets to me, it's at least time to do some weeding out.   The giveaway helped. It will help even more when I finally get to reorganizing the collection based on what I got rid of -- cutting down on storage boxes and finding more binder space, specifically. I'm in the middle of updating my Dodgers binders thoug...

This is the most sentimental day on the calendar for me. It doesn't have anything to do with baseball (although I did take a tour of old Busch Stadium in St. Louis on that same weekend in 1987). So I avoid slipping into mushy thoughts here by putting a baseball spin on the day. Last year I celebrated a milestone moment for this day by opening a rack pack of 1987 Topps. And in previous years, I've talked about my fondness for the city of St. Louis because of Oct. 29, 1987. But since that time, I've soured on the St. Louis Cardinals, the media there, and some of their fans. In 1987, I rooted for the Cardinals against the Twins in the World Series and turned off the TV in disappointment when Minnesota won. But if the same two teams were involved today, I'd be rooting for the Twins. I'm not sure why I rooted for the Cardinals that year anyway. It was two years removed from Jack Clark, Ozzie Smith, Whitey Herzog and GOD, I hated that team. So what possessed me...

This is the first card I pulled out of a pack of 1977 Topps cards. It was a rack pack. My dad bought it for me from a store on the other side of town. The store was a couple blocks down from a hospital. We were coming home from visiting my mom there. I don't remember why she was in the hospital. It wasn't anything major, because I don't remember feeling alarmed or anything. In fact, I remember the entire ride home as a very pleasant, comforting experience. Just me and my rack pack of brand, new 1977 cards. It was going to be a heck of a collecting season, what with me pulling a Dodger in my very first card out of a pack. And it turned out to be a terrific collecting season. One of the best. I've recounted it once or twice . Probably more. The way I collected cards that year -- the communal nature of the collecting process during that season -- makes the 1977 set very special to me. It is why it is the next set I am collecting during my bid to complete all of ...