Night Owl Cards

  During the 1960s, the Dodgers made the World Series three times, all within a four-year period. Throw in 1959 and they were in the World Series four times in seven years.   Currently, the Dodgers have been to the World Series four times in six years. It's a fairly similar run to the 1960s one, although this version of the Dodgers has been more successful winning Series. (Three compared to two).   I wonder if these Dodgers will be thought of in the way that the '60s Dodgers are, as a talent-laden team, filled with some of the best pitching talent ever, with some OK offensive talent -- though nothing like what L.A. currently has. They are respected. I don't think people got disgusted with the Dodgers showing up repeatedly in the Fall Classic -- something tells me that if fans then were disgusted by that kind of thing (I have my doubts), it would be toward the Yankees (five straight WS from 1960-64).   A lot of fans will jump in and say that the two scenarios are diff...

True set collectors, whose mission is completing the set and only that, have no use for inserts and parallels.   I am a set collector, but I like too many other things so I will not turn down a pretty parallel. Still, I admit they can be a nuisance.   For example, I am trying to finish the 2025 Heritage set. I'm down to the final five cards. It's more difficult to finish than it has to be because, of course, there are 100 damn short-prints. But also because there are a chrome parallels and sometimes when you are shopping for that last short-print, you are not careful and the listing isn't as clear as it should be, and you buy a card you don't need, and the want list remains unchanged.   This is what happened today when the chrome version of card #461 showed up instead of the regular version. It's my fault really, the word "chrome" was in the item description though it was not in the listing. I'll add it to my stack of 2025 Chrome cards, which aren'...

    When I first started reading card blogs, I didn't know there were so many kinds of collectors.   Growing up in the 1970s, there was basically one kind, or maybe two -- set collectors (those who could afford to complete the set) and team collectors (those who couldn't). Decades later I may have picked up on something called "a player collector" but I didn't know any of them.   In my insular collecting world -- basically the way it was for most collectors before the internet -- I figured everyone collected like I did. That's how my friends collected. And when I returned to the hobby in the early 2000s, the few guys I knew around work collected that way, too.   That all changed for me when I started writing a blog. Not only were there player collectors on top of everything I had known, but type collectors -- parallels, short-prints, autographs, relics, Hall of Famers, guys blowing bubble gum, standing for the National Anthem, featuring weird names, shown with...

  I've been blessed with a few Dodgers-centric packages in the last month. They're most appreciated because I get distracted with other non-Dodger things in my collecting and sometimes I feel that the Dodger part suffers a little. But only just a little.   Thanks to those packages I've reached another milestone. I'm going out of order with when I received the packages here to get straight to that milestone, but you'll see the other packages in good time. I always show them off.   I reached 30,000 unique Dodgers cards yesterday. It was a heavy mail day Monday, which was a nice surprise. Four separate envelopes. The Dodgers started with the beautiful 2024 Finest Shohei Ohtani, which is from the "1993 Finest 'What If ...' Prototype" insert set -- we're just getting more and more complex with our insert names.   That was my own purchase and it was Dodger card No. 29,994 in my collection.     Next up was a surprise envelope from Matt of Cards Over C...

  I went to a card show yesterday. You'll get the whole rundown tomorrow, but right now I'm in "now where do I put all this?" mode. This happens every show and Saturday's haul was a little bulkier than usual. So I need to clear out some space for all the new acquisitions by finally showing off a few cards that have been cooling their jets for too long on valuable real estate. All of these are PWE sends and all were Dodgers needs. Let's get to it. These are two Stadium Club inserts from last year. Will Smith seems to looking up at Mookie wondering "what's he so happy about?" I think I received these from reader Dave, or maybe Dana? Sorry, it's been awhile. I know they came with a nice card and there were a few other cards that I had previously and have already filed. But these are most welcome, even though Stadium Club inserts are totally unnecessary. More MOOKIE! I'm doing pretty well on the 1988 inserts for the team quest. This card show...