Night Owl Cards

  Here's a fairly timely post. Yes, I've been watching the Olympics. It's partly my job and I'm so happy everything is happening six hours ahead of time. Makes things easier amid all the other obstacles I encounter these days when putting together an informative sports section. As I've said before, my favorite summer Olympic sports to watch are indoor volleyball (that beach thing has to go), track and field and archery. Track and field is the only one of those three NBC shows a lot, but I don't have the energy to deal with password hell to get on Peacock and see other sports. Maybe if baseball was actually in the Olympics I'd make the effort. But I like seeing the U.S. rack up gold medals no matter what the sport. And to stay with the theme, I've racked up another gold parallel team set. I wrote a post six months ago about trying to chase down gold parallels for Dodgers team sets for some of the recent Topps sets where I like what it did with the parall...

There is so much wrong with that post title. Why would a Braves fan be willing to get rid of Braves cards? And why would he be sending them to me -- someone who is not a Braves fan at all, in fact, often times, is a Braves-hater? Well, I'll try to make some sense out of it. The Braves fan is Steve of The Card Chop. He mentioned around the end of 2015 that he was refocusing his collecting goals. He was going to concentrate on completing some Topps sets, which is what helped him get into the hobby in the first place, and focus less on random Braves hoarding. Good for him. I can't get myself that disciplined. Apparently, that means ridding himself of a few Braves cards, what he called "non-essential Braves cards" in a note that came with the PWE (see, this is where my lack of discipline comes in: there is no non-essential Dodgers card). In fact, in full, the note said: "I am bequeathing to you a couple of non-essential Braves cards as I am altering my c...

A few weeks ago, I received an unexpected bundle of cards from a man who apparently has a bottomless inventory and runs Jaybarkerfan's Junk . A lot of us have been the beneficiary of Wes' largesse (I'm not being dirty, look it up), and that includes me on several occasions. I enjoyed looking through the Dodgers he sent and planned to blog about them whenever my perpetually behind behind found the time. But before I had a chance to catalog what I received, a much larger and insane package arrived from Wes. It was downright freakish. How freakish? It contained 80 different serial-numbered Dodger cards. A package like this deserves its own glorious post, one that can properly match the mood and the glee that surrounded me as I opened it. That post will probably arrive later this week. In the meantime, I present you with the earlier package. Consider it the opening. The preamble. The prelude to greatness. Yes, this is just the beginning. But as your mom often said ...

So, three more guys are going into the Hall of Fame this year according to the announcement earlier today. Two of the three, I don't give a rat's patootie. But Greg Maddux, well, Greg Maddux is different. Maddux is the best pitcher I have seen in my lifetime of watching baseball. That lifetime goes back to the final days of the 1976 season, so I've seen a few decent pitchers. Maddux, trust me, was better than all of them. He was my kind of pitcher. Hell, he was my kind of ballplayer. When I see other pitchers fumble and stammer out there on the mound, I think, "why can't you be like Maddux?" But it's pretty obvious no one can be like Maddux because I'm talking about him like he's one in a trillion. Maddux was the smartest guy in the room, and while others may resent that, I never will. Intelligence rules. Maddux also had artistry and, god knows, I think artistry rules. So, Maddux had intelligence and artistry AND talent. Damn, that's b...

I have finally whittled down my list of cards for "The Best Dodger Card Ever Made" Countdown to an even 100 cards. That means I can begin the countdown. But not now. I'm sleepy and cranky. And before I get dopey, I need my rest. So I'll just show you the final three cards to miss the cut. And you can leave your outraged comments about how you can't BELIEVE that card won't be in the top 100 and how you're never reading this blog again!!! But I won't care as I'll be in a peaceful dream haze. So, quickly, because I feel myself nodding off, here are the cards that got the final boot: 2006 Upper Deck Greg Maddux Back when Maddux joined the Dodgers -- the first time -- I couldn't wait to get a card of him in a Dodger uniform. But Topps kept foiling me by producing cards of Maddux photoshopped into a Dodger uniform. And photoshopped poorly, I might add. I don't consider that a true Maddux Dodger card. Upper Deck featured the fi...

I received these two gold parallel Upper Deck Documentary cards from Rhubarb_Runner over at e rayhahn, rayhahn the other day (got to look up the spelling on that name every time). I have two primary questions with this package. The first is: did Upper Deck dump all the Documentary cards in a pile in Missouri somewhere? Does Rhubarb merely have to walk out his back door, pluck a few cards from the enormous stack and ship them off? He seems to have unending stock of Documentary. The second question is: who attempts to collect the entire parallel set of Documentary? The parallel aspect of this hobby jumped, jived and wailed over the shark a long time ago, as any number of folks, including me, have mentioned. But, unlike some rather collectible parallels, like Upper Deck Masterpieces or Baseball Heroes, or even Topps' gold parallels, there are parallels of unpopular sets like Documentary that I can't see anyone collecting. It's not just because the set proved to ...

Spiff of Texas Rangers Cards recently put this card up for grabs, and I indeed did grab it. I had no idea what it looked like before it arrived in the mail. But I did know it was from the V.J. Lovero insert set in 1996 Upper Deck, and that was enough for me. The few cards I've seen from that set are amazing. The year this set came out is a complete mystery to me as far as cards go. I officially list my collecting hiatus as 1994-2005, but there were only two years in there in which I didn't see a single card. One of those years was 1996. I'm not sure why that happened. I was buying a house in '96, but that's hardly an excuse for avoiding cards. The Yankees and Braves were in the World Series, but that happened after the card-buying season, so it wasn't like I was too depressed to buy cards. The only thing I know -- 14 years after the fact -- is that I missed out on an absolutely seismic year in cards. After spending four years or so trying to catch up o...