Night Owl Cards

  I feel like my position on the NFL is stuck between two prevailing opinions of football, with few sharing my perspective.   On one end are the people who are madly devoted to the league, they tailgate, leap on tables, hold Super Bowl parties, place bets, play in five fantasy leagues and collect the hell out of the star players. On the other end are the people who have dropped football from their lives -- It's barbaric, it shortens lives, it worships only money and some of its participants are some of the worst humans in sport.   I am neither of those perspectives (though I share traits from both). I like the NFL season -- far more than college football, which I can't wait to ignore forever. I am excited when the NFL starts, I appreciate it when there's no more MLB season, I enjoy the community that encircles the Bills and it is one of the few connections to my favorite city and the time I lived there.   I can't give it up. But it wears on me. too.   When was t...

  I received this card at the end of last year from Kenny at Torren' Up Cards. It's a Leaf-something-or-other card featuring infielder Trey Sweeney and his autograph but in a very generic setting. Because of no logos, it was easy for Kenny to say that the card was now a Dodger card because the Dodgers had acquired Sweeney from the Yankees in a trade. But Sweeney didn't stay with the Dodgers very long. He was traded during the deadline period to the Tigers in the Jack Flaherty deal. And Sweeney has been playing for the Tigers in the postseason. So this is now a Tigers card, which means I can send it to a Tigers collector. I happen to know a few of those. Hmmm, who should get it? I thought of this card while opening a package I received last week from Cardboard Catastrophes . Inside was an Oklahoma City team set -- OKC is the Triple A team for the Dodgers. Trey Sweeney was one of the cards. This is Sweeney closer to being a Dodger than on that Leaf card. You can see the ...

  By my quick calculating card blogging is at its lowest point in terms of frequency and number since my first few months of blogging. I counted about 12 card blogs now that write at least 5 days a week. Then there are around 50 card blogs that write less than that -- a few times a week, once a week, a couple times a month. So that's maybe 65 blogs that write about cards at least once a month. The amount of former card bloggers that I know is five times that amount. This means interaction is down and that's a bummer, but the good part is everyone -- card bloggers and former card bloggers and definitely non-card bloggers -- still collect cards. And they also (*phew*) still remember who I am.   I received a major reminder of that last week and I'm still getting to that later in the week, but here is an appetizer:   These are 1975 buybacks -- all needs -- from Cardboard Catastrophes (who is still blogging, thankfully).    Jeffrey's a Yankees fan, and he guessed th...

  I've already mentioned a couple times how April has been a pretty poor month for me buying cards in person. From missing three easily attended card shows to not coordinating my trips with the random hours of the card shop in town, April's been filled with blown opportunities. I'd say thank goodness the month is coming to an end, but I've been dreading Responsibilities May ever since the year started so I don't expect a lot of card goodness happening next month either.   Fortunately, other card collectors don't seem to be having the same problem. And, I'm rather humbled (and a bit sheepish) that they are remembering me in the process of finding cards that I should be finding.   The latest example is from Cardboard Catastrophes . Everything he sent in an envelope is exactly what I am hunting for when I'm actually getting myself to a show or shop. In other words: 1970s ODDBALLS!!!!   Crikey. This is what I need to be getting off my butt for -- Hostess car...

Email malfunctioning is forcing me to write and publish this on my phone. Let's see how this goes. About a week ago I completed the 1990 Swell set thanks to an envelope from Jeff at Cardboard Catastrophes . He had the last 9 cards I needed. That's eight, I know, the 9th is the Mickey Lolich. This set of 135 cards was pretty easy to finish, and as I mentioned in a previous post, these are much easier to land than the '89 or '91 Swell cards ... at least they're offered up a lot more often in TCDB swaps. This is also probably the first set completion that I can attribute greatly to TCDB deals. I know before I was trading on there, I didn't think I needed TCDB's trade function. I can still manage without it, but TCDB trades seem ideal for low-hanging fruit like '90 Swell. That's gonna be the theme of 2023 as far as set completion, finishing off those low-hangers, because all the big-boy bill-flashers are keeping the vintage sets I...

  When you have incoming card packages constantly arriving as a blogger, clutter isn't something confined to the stacks of cards, envelopes, notes, those cut-up pages of three pockets and top-loaders and penny sleeves galore, clogging up space on desks and tables and floors. It's also the clutter that you see in your phone gallery and on the desktop of your computer. I often take pictures of arriving cards for future posts and then they sit and stare at me for weeks, I think the little photo icons are actually stamping their unseen feet impatiently, until I finally write about them. I hate being stared at almost as much as I hate to-do clutter. There is also one whale of a box of incoming cards that has no space to land (it's sitting on the floor trying to avoid being kicked right now). So I've got to make way. Here is where I'll start: I received an envelope -- or was it two, don't recall -- from Torren' Up Cards recently. One of the items was an unopened, ...