Night Owl Cards

  My first sportlots order of the year has been sitting on my rolltop desk waiting for me to brag about it.   It's not bragging material, really. There were a lot of upgrades that I don't need to show, but I sure did enjoy getting that 1977 Topps Joel Youngblood to replace the creased one in the set binder that I didn't even know was creased until a rare day of sunshine came through the card room (who knows how many creased cards are hiding in the Northeastern darkness of my home).   Some stuff has been put away already and others have been sitting in a stack waiting until the one last pokey sportlots seller finally snapped out his stupor and shipped the last card (this always happens).    I've determined what my 10 favorite arrivals are -- but there are more than 10 cards. Per usual, these are interesting mostly to me and could very well bore you to tears.      10. Gavin Lux, 2020 Topps Chrome   The last card needed for the team set. Can you...

    OK, now that I've established myself as an oddball in the current collecting landscape -- preferring vintage cards and all -- it's appropriate that I show off some recent "oddball" arrivals in my collection.   This runs the gamut and covers 85 years of trading cards and some of it isn't even cardboard.   Let's see:   Fired-up by my first acquisition of a 1960 Leaf high-number Dodger card in Rip Repulski, I decided to grab another one with this Joe Pignatano. It has a few minor flaws (it was listed as "good," which is usually "good enough" for me), but it still looks great.   That leaves just Stan Williams to complete the team set. Upon landing the Repulski, I received an email informing me that the Williams was available for a reasonable price on sportlots. But I didn't jump on it (I'm rarely financially ready to pounce on opportunities) and it's not there anymore.     Here's a card -- and an owlie greeting card -- that ...

   OK, so I get it, yesterday's post was a bit of a curveball with no actual cards displayed. That post was more for me than for you, I like to review my writing from time to time (I've had thoughts about examining my writing style on this blog, we'll see if I ever go through with that).   As I've said before, if I wrote nothing except "here are some more cards I got," this blog would have closed down in 2010. I like to mix it up.   But honestly, I am all about the cards when I'm not forced to do something else with my time (i.e.: job, chores, duties, responsibilities, various crises, mind-numbing drives). That's almost all of my free time: cardboard. I suspect it's like that for you, too, if you're tuning into this blog.   So, what the hell, why not show what cards I've added in my free time, under the radar, while I'm writing about magazines or music or whatever the heck else you didn't come here to see? It's a rather eclectic...

  My Black Friday COMC order came in yesterday. I'm pleased to say that it showed up more than two weeks earlier than was originally forecast. This order was not as grand as I wanted it to be. When it got time to request shipment, money was a little tighter than I expected, I had to let some cards go. But I didn't let go of the oddball cards, which actually was a good portion of the order. I gravitate toward oddballs -- I think readers know this about me -- and since I've completed so many of the main sets from the '70s and '80s, oddballs are almost all that's left. That's fine with me, because the more I think of it, I like hanging out with the oddballs. When I think of what's the opposite of those kinds of cards, high-end grade specimens of superstars and hot rookies, I know that those cards can bring out my least favorite kind of behavior in collectors, just about the rudest people I've seen in the hobby. But I rarely see that among collectors who...

  It's been a fairly stressful week, between traveling, a delayed doctor's appointment, the loss of a beloved player from my youth, and now the most taxing World Series matchup I could possibly conjure up as a fan. The weekend will help a little (stupid sports teams still have to play on the weekend, tho) and so will the collection. I just happen to be wrapping up a super-simple sportlots order with the final cards trickling in. I like simple orders. Big-ticket and super-cool arrivals are always fun but they contain a certain amount of worry what with prices paid and condition concerns. Simple orders are just simple cards, they don't cost much but still they fill holes and are always wanted.   Some of those cards were upgrades and they've already been filed away with a smile. A 1983 Topps Ron LeFlore, a 1986 Fleer Bobby Castillo, items that should have always been pristine but weren't, and I was horrified. But now the monster is back in the closet.   Others were reg...

  I know some readers have been expecting me to write about Fernando Valenzuela after news of his death. A few comments on the last post mentioned him even though I cited him just once in passing. I learned of the sad news as I ended work around midnight Tuesday. The work schedule is unrelenting midweek these days. This is why I almost never post on Wednesdays now, so there was no chance to get to it yesterday. But I was devastated. Valenzuela is probably among my top 10 favorite Dodgers, or at least should be. His arrival synced perfectly with my budding interest in young stars -- a common teenage fixation -- and the Dodgers were happily accommodating with not only Fernando but Sutcliffe, Steve Howe, Sax, Guerrero, Rudy Law and a bunch of others. I lived far away from Los Angeles, so I have no tales to tell of nearly running into Valenzuela in Dodger Stadium or him signing a ball for me. But I did witness his MLB career from the very beginning. I've written about him a bunch ...