Night Owl Cards

I used to enter a few box breaks. By "a few" I mean maybe two a year. Now, I almost never enter a box break. I'm not entirely sure why. Commitment issues probably. No, actually I know the main reason is money. I never have it. I must carve out specific moments in time, scheduled waaaaay in advance, in which I may spend money on cards. I can't let a box break announced out of nowhere upset my precarious financial situation. But what about free? A free box break? Oh, yes, I have time in my schedule for that. Colbey of Cardboard Collections recently decided to give away two boxes of 2016 Donruss Optic out of the goodness of his heart. Well, well! Twenty-four packs of Optic! That's an eyeful! Optic is key because all the shiny detracts from the absence of logos. I don't notice quite as much that the players are wearing sanitation jumpers when everything is so bright and lustrous. And even though I had completed the Dodgers base set from that year of ...

I know nobody cares about my little problems, but I've made it a part of my blog act for going on eight years now, so there's no way I can dial it back. I always reserve my trade packaging for days off. It's the only period when I have enough mental energy for finding, sorting and packaging cards. I'm way too much of a mess during work days to be doing that stuff. Who knows what you'd find in your envelope if I tried to squeeze packaging in during a work shift. Some old tissues wrapped around thumb tacks or something similar. It'd be ugly. And harmful. So, Wednesday was my day off. I was ready to get some packaging done. It was then that I realized that my daughter had her road test. The test was scheduled for 1 in the afternoon, which, for a night owl like me is like scheduling it at 8:30 in the morning. I set my alarm early -- 10 a.m. But there was no need because fire engines screamed down my street at 7, and I approached the day with a refreshing 3 ...

I still get emails from people periodically asking me for advice on how to run a blog. No, not Hope Solo , although she could learn a thing or two from me, but from regular card-collecting people. Some want to know how to get started, or how to get trades going, or how to get some interaction. My advice is simple and nothing no one else hasn't said already: you just have to be yourself, write about what you like, and maybe most of all: get out there. How does one "get out there"? Well, like I said, you have to be yourself and write what you like. Don't write things on your blog that you don't believe or don't interest you. There is a temptation to do that if all you're looking for are readers or comments. But it won't end well. Write often. Yes, that takes time and none of us have time. But like anything in life, you get what you put in. Writing often not only attracts readers and keeps you in their very active and busy lives, but it makes y...

Just because I don't enter group breaks anymore doesn't mean that I don't enter group breaks anymore. In fact, the best time for me to jump into a group break is at the start of the collecting season. Since I collect a particular team, it's a great chance for me to get in, get all the cards from that team, and get out. And it cuts down on my ridiculous habit of buying packs so I can find a card of Joe Blanton. A perk of entering a group break at the start of the year is you might land some parallels or inserts or maybe a cool hit. It happened to me a couple of years ago . Perhaps it could happen again? You'll have to wait. First, let's see the base Dodger cards that I received from Colbey at Cardboard Collections : Lots of key figures right there, especially in that right column. I do believe that is a photo of Adrian Gonzalez's three-run shot in his first at-bat in a Dodger uniform. There are the rest of them. It looks like Paco "D...

I received my cards from Colbey's "Fleer Matte Finish" break a week or two ago. I entered this break because I needed just one Dodger from the '97 Fleer set -- and you see it here -- and I needed a load of Dodgers from the '96 set. You see those here. The Fleer sets from 1996 and 1997 aren't very exciting. In fact, the base cards are the polar opposite of what was going on in the card world at the time. But that's what makes these sets so interesting to me. What was Fleer thinking going in this direction? It's a common question among those who collect '90s cards. And when viewed from the angle of all of Fleer's base sets in the 1990s, it's just part of the strange route that Fleer took during this decade. From the point that Fleer returned to card making, in 1981, I considered them as another Topps. Fleer seemed -- to me anyway -- like it wanted to be Topps. Donruss demonstrated right away that it was not Topps, and as the years wen...

I used to try to get involved in every single group break that any blogger put out there, and then throw a private little stink fit when someone beat me to the Dodgers in one of them. I don't do that anymore. Mostly that's because there are a lot more group breaks than there used to be, and it's because I have figured out that I can't afford to get involved in more than one at a time. I'm OK with that. I don't freak out -- too much -- when someone lands a card that I want in a group break that I chose to skip. That's not to say I don't have my moments. Colbey at Cardboard Collections held one of his many group breaks a little while ago, and I didn't get involved because I was broke. The break ended up being a complete Dodger fest. This NEVER happens, not even in breaks in which I'm not involved. Yankeefest. Sure. Bravefest. Definitely. Astrofest. Yeah, even the Astros. But never Dodgers. After seeing the cards speigel landed from that...