Night Owl Cards

Since I am just a few cards away from finishing off the 1975 Topps minis and the 1972 Topps set must wait until I have cash to throw at high numbers, I need a set-collecting project that I can pursue at a leisurely pace, that won't strain the budget, and that fellow collectors are willing/able to send. That's why I'm chasing down the 1981 Donruss set. This is endlessly amusing to my 15-year-old self, because when the first Donruss set came out that year, it was as if I was buying homemade cards. I can hear myself snorting all the way from 1981. By '81, I had collected Topps and basically nothing but Topps for seven years. Topps was as professional as you could be when it came to card collecting. They knew what they were doing. And their product -- for its time -- was high quality. A large set with adequate photographs, complete stats and an attractive design. No one could do what they did. So when Donruss and Fleer offered sets in 1981, we opened our very fir...

(Every year the sports staff at our newspaper provides our Super Bowl predictions. I don't do very well at it. In fact, none of us are very good. I think a grand total of two picked the Giants to win last year. But we redeemed ourselves by going 6-3 in picking the Ravens. And yours truly came closest to the score: Ravens 34, 49ers 30. Only off by one point! The week's all downhill from here. Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 172nd in a series): If you ask me how long I've been doing this thing where I blog about baseball cards, I will tell you it's been four years, four months, 22 days and a few seconds. But actually I've been spouting off about baseball cards for a much longer time. In fact, there was one time when I talked about baseball cards in front of a semi-sizable audience. I was in eighth grade. Our teacher asked each of us to do a presentation about an interest of ours. I can't be more specific than that. I don't think she said,...

I was going to track down a photo of Dennis Miller to go with the post title. But those people who claim to have been born in 1985 (and we all know that's an impossibility) would say, "hey isn't that the guy who used big words on Monday Night Football"? And then I'd have to explain that he was using big words much earlier much later (you follow?), and I'd get sidetracked about what I really wanted to write about, which is, uh, basically, nothing. So, instead, we've got a photo of Ms. Fey and Ms. Pohler to appease the young'uns, and we can get to the point of the post much quicker. The point is I always seem to have a bunch of unrelated items to write about on the weekend. So, I'm going to gather them all together here in one tidy post. I'm warning you though: the Dodgers could take sole possession of first place while I'm writing this (they have already won tonight and San Diego and Philadelphia are tied 5-5 in the 9th). And if they do, I ...

I've had my fair share of jobs over the years. Maybe not as many as a lot of people, but I have been a dishwasher, a department store worker, a drug store clerk, a newspaper carrier, a stockboy, a bus boy, a burger flipper, a truck unloader (or whatever you call that job), and probably a couple others that I've forgotten about. But last week was my first job as a personal shopper. And it's also the first time I have ever gotten paid in baseball cards. I was out shopping for two bloggers who were interested in some of the cards that I found at a dollar store in town and reported about on this post . Both Dubbs of the appetizingly titled Cheese and Beer and zman of Autographed Cards sent some cash for me to purchase the cards, and last weekend I practically cleaned out the card selection at the store. There are only a few forlorn bags left. At a buck a bag and betwen 40-50 cards a bag, I'll be shipping off around 450 cards of the mid-80s Fleer variety to both guys....