Night Owl Cards

    It's been a long time since I've written a post like this and thank goodness. These are the most crushing kind but also the most necessary. I woke up this morning to the news that Ben had passed away over the weekend . He was 43. Longtime blog readers probably remember him, he was the one who wrote Cardboard Icons , one of the OG blogs, it began two months before mine. I remember being excited to see his blog because he was a newspaper writer, his blog handle at the time was "Newspaperman". I found someone who understood my line of work. He got out of the business maybe a year or two later and, like me, wrote for Beckett magazine for a time. He moved on to work as a community service officer in California where he lived. Ben was very active in the hobby and on Twitter/X. He was up on the latest hobby trends and card sets. His collections were BIG to my eyes. He had a crazy collection of baseballs that had one thing in common -- they each had hit a major league ba...

This is my first card from Topps' Living Set. I think by now everyone knows about this year's online tactic by Topps. Every so often, it issues three cards of current players on the 1953 design for an outrageous price and we're all supposed to whip out our debit cards before the LIMITED SUPPLY DISAPPEARS!!!! I'm too old to play that game. I haven't done it for Topps Now. I'm not doing it for the Living Set. I do not collect cards under a deadline. Fortunately, Ben from Cardboard Icons sent me the Clayton Kershaw Living Set card. Ben's a Red Sox fan and he actually watched the Red Sox clinch the World Series in Dodger Stadium. Feeling extremely sorry for me (as he should) he sent me this card. ... Well, I don't know if he felt sorry for me. He's always been a good egg regardless, sending me cards when I don't expect it. So I have one of these cards now and finally I can give you my feedback that you've been waiting for lo these m...

As you may have heard, I am a set collector from way back. I love completing sets. Big, honking sets of 700-plus cards with no short-prints is preferred. But the set-collecting pull is strong, and I'll settle for what they're putting out these days, as long as it doesn't look like crap. Late last week I opened a package that contained the last card I needed to complete the 2015 Stadium Club set. It was the Kris Bryant card that I ranted about a few posts ago. Now, normally, this would be the best news of the day. A set is complete! All that effort and time, all that cash and cataloging, all that sorting and admiring. Completion! On your average day this would prompt me to craft a post all about 2016 Stadium Club, or list my favorite Stadium Club cards of all-time, or my favorite club sandwiches of all-time. But something bigger happened on that day. Something bigger and cardier. The package arrived from Cardboard Icons . Ben's a blogger from way back, former ...

As I get older, it gets more and more difficult to wrap my head around each year. It's 2015 already and I think I've just finished figuring out what 2012 was all about. For the last decade or more, the years have blended together, and I don't see that trend stopping, only speeding up. Baseball cards help slow things down a little. Each year of new cards is a marker for that year, and if the year goes by too fast, I can at least say, "well, I liked that set in 2008" or "this is what the cards looked like in 2010." Maybe that won't help in polite conversation when jerky co-workers are remembering each year by the countries they visited, but it helps me document things in my own little head. Unfortunately, it seems the years are now moving too quickly even for my baseball card collecting. Here we are raving about 2015 Topps and I'm still horribly delinquent in a number of 2014 card responsibilities. I still haven't completed the Dodge...

I am trying to keep these Brush With Greatness posts to baseball while there are still some baseball players left to feature. But I will make an exception for this one card. First, the card was sent to me by Ben of Cardboard Icons . It's fancy, shiny, over-the-top, all of that, and it must be recognized. Secondly, it's a card of a player that I covered when he was in high school. And to see him on a trading card -- even though he is entering his fourth season in the NFL -- still blows my mind. Brian Leonard was just a goofy kid from a school that sits literally in the middle of nowhere. The school is located in a town built along a single road. There are several stoplights along the way, but if you leave the main road and travel to the left or the right, you are in countryside in less than 5 minutes. The town is in the largest county east of the Mississippi River. It's very sparsely populated, on the northern edge of the Adirondack Mountains. Most of the high schoo...

You may remember I pulled this card from a pack of Upper Deck SPx from the hobby shop a couple weeks ago. I immediately put it on the blogging block because I knew someone would be interested in it and give me something nifty in exchange. That someone turned out to be Ben of Cardboard Icons , who is a noted Red Sox fan and a familiar trade partner. I dropped his card in the mail on Saturday, but I have already received the cards he sent me. And we're going to have a look. Now, keep in mind not all of these cards were sent in exchange for the relic. A bunch were Dodgers that Ben had set aside already. And I sent him some other Red Sox besides the relic (I actually need to send him a few more). The two cards that sold me on the trade are featured first, then others will follow. Ben sent an autographed card of Brett Butler. I can't think of a more appropriate card of Butler to get autographed than this '92 Topps. He was a bunting machine. And here is an autographed Bowma...