Night Owl Cards

  How many times is too many times to go to the Dave and Adam's store when you're in Buffalo? Turns out the answer to that is "three times," at least for me.   I didn't realize it over the weekend, but my latest trip on Sunday was my third visit there this year. I've blogged about each instance , too. ... And my enthusiasm has waned with each visit.   This is more because of the way I collect but also due to the state of the hobby today and, probably, the state of buying and selling in general today. There was stuff there for me -- but it wasn't syncing up.   As I mentioned the last visit, Dave and Adam's store is half apparel (Bills, Sabres and Topps) and half cards and collectibles. I only care about the cards. Because I still collect modern cards, I usually find stuff there and am often impressed with the stock -- blasters and blasters of whatever Topps/Panini has available at the time.   But here's the thing: Topps doesn't have a lot avail...

  Hey, it's July. My favorite month. Maybe I can celebrate by surpassing the record-low number of posts I made to this blog last month.   I never would have figured that June would be the month with my lowest total ever. If I had to guess, it certainly would be March. But I posted just 12 times last month, four less than my previous low, which was in May 2019 when my mom passed.   Nothing happened in June nearly as tragic as six years ago but just a firestorm of everything: multiple writing assignments outside of this blog, constant vehicle issues, the present job schedule and this past weekend, in which I went out of town for my nephew's graduation.   It's the final high school graduation for all the nieces and nephews. All done. Probably no high school graduations again unless I make it for a grandkid's ceremony. While I was in Buffalo, I made sure to return to Dave and Adam's.     I never spend too much time around the clothing, it's all too expensive, e...

  I spent a couple of days away to visit folks in the Buffalo area.   I've mentioned many times how much I love that city. Not only is it full of nostalgia -- it's where I spent my college years, where I met my wife, etc. -- but it is much more "me" than the place I live currently, where I've lived more than 30 years, a.k.a., not the most civilized place in the world.   For example: The hobby of sports card collecting.   My life of collecting cards where I live is mostly buying online, waiting for a card show to appear every month or so, and taking a gander at the card aisle whenever I happen to be in a big box (which is a lot less often than it was 5-10 years ago) and finding it barren.   Those are my options living where I do. Admittedly, they're not too bad and better in some ways than they once were, I mean I never heard of a monthly card show in my neighborhood even two years ago. But if I lived in a city like Buffalo, I could do so much damage.   In t...

I just came back from a visit to my beloved Buffalo. There is so much I want to do there, but since much of my family -- on both sides -- lives there, I  mostly spent a lot of time catching up. Nothing wrong with that, but it limits the Buffalo things you can do. I wanted to go back to the antique place I saw in a mall during my visit last year. There were a lot of cards there but I was caught off-guard. Totally prepared this time, I was underwhelmed with this visit. There was hardly any vintage, way too much football and junk wax galore. Also, the following annoyed me: A lot of the cards were under glass, so you'd have to find someone to ask to look at them. Particularly annoying is there were multiple dollar boxes under glass. Meanwhile, not far away, were comic books for a dollar each that I could touch and manhandle all I wanted. Come on sellers, stop it. I walked out of there with nothing. I had planned to buy a couple '70s albums (so many great cheap ones) to go with my c...

 (The final battle to reach the Cardboard Appreciation Hall of Fame is going on right now! Have you voted? If not, please vote in the poll by copy-and-pasting this link: https://vote.easypolls.net/62e4287f8d4471006256dcda . I probably will be badgering you about this all week).    I went to Buffalo for a couple of days to visit family last week. It's really my favorite place in all of the world and the wife and I actually had the first of what will probably be a few conversations about retiring there someday.   There is so much that I want to do there when I go, but I don't get to do even one-quarter of it, because I never have much time and family takes up most of it.   But I did manage to stop by Dave & Adam's this time around.   Dave & Adam's is a major online card collecting presence and has been for years and years. It was born right in Buffalo with a small card shop in the early 1990s. I had moved out of Buffalo by that point and didn't actual...