Night Owl Cards

For the second time in the life of this blog, I enjoyed a nice meal over cards with a fellow collector. I've chatted over Buffalo wings with Angus of Dawg Day Cards several times after card shows as we relived the glory of our cardboard conquests. Yesterday was a little less heroic. Just a pleasant meal at a local Irish restaurant with another guy named Greg, who wrote a couple of card blogs years ago -- Lake Effect Baseball Cards and Nearly Mint -- but I've also known for a long time on Twitter. Greg was accompanied by his wife, Megan, who I was also familiar with from Twitter. It's always cool to see people in the flesh who you've communicated with so many times only online. You know their interests and hopes, aggravations and joys, yet you've never talked face-to-face. I finally got to do that with Greg. Back in the old days, he would write about his pursuit of the 2008 Topps framed silk cards and it was interesting to hear that he's still at ...

Every day is a good day for baseball cards, but there are some that are better than others. This is one of them. I don't know if it's the sudden arrival of summer here in the Northeast or just that July has always been the most spectacular month out of the year, but I can't help but notice how many players with cool baseball cards were born this very day. Let's take Moises Alou, for instance. This 1992 Stadium Club card of his has always been a favorite, one of my go-to cards from the entire set. Alou is a '90s player so you can always find something notable on a card for him, but this one is clearly the best: Montreal Expos uniform. Red Montreal Expos uniform. Montreal Expos helmet. The bluest sky ever. The chain link fence. Get me to a baseball game, stat! How about another '90s guy? Greg Vaughn was also born today. Again, we're' fishing in the 1992 pond, a terrible year in many ways, but for baseball cards the hobby was starting to dig o...

I don't keep up on the current major league baseball scene as much as I should. There are fantasy geeks and seamheads and stadium junkies. And then there's me -- a lover of baseball who tries to keep pace in a crazy, modern world, but knows it's impossible to memorize the No. 4 starter for the Oakland A's. When I get a chance to review the league leaders -- which happens about, oh, once a month (I remember when it used to happen once a day) -- I am perpetually amazed by who is in the top 10. Josh Willingham has 35 homers? Paul Goldschmidt has 42 doubles? Marco Scutaro has 180 hits? Fans of the teams who field those players may chortle, but it's a damn, fine feat that I even know who they are given what blows up on a daily basis around here. Mostly what I do is try to grab a few names as I rush out the door, hoping that they'll stick in my brain. Like Jurickson Profar. That name stuck. And I'm lucky it did. Because Matthew at Number 5 Type Collection...

I received this card from Chris, creator of the very informative Vintage Sportscards and 1973 Topps Photography blogs. Even though there is writing on the card, I jumped at the chance to obtain it because 1) it's a '56 Topps card that I didn't have; 2) it's a Dodger; 3) the writing is quite amusing. I wonder if the person who carefully crossed out the Ed Roebuck name and printed "Don Drysdale," with an extra "Don" just in case, actually believed he had converted the card into a Drysdale card? Drysdale, as you may know, did not have a card in the 1956 Topps set. His rookie card is in the 1957 set. I was never one for writing on cards. I did a lot of things to my cards as a kid. But writing wasn't one of them. So, I thought I'd try it out, about 35 years after I was supposed to be doing stuff like that. And I decided to do it on a modern card, just because you NEVER see scrawling on today's cards. Here is what I came up with:...