Night Owl Cards

For awhile there, I was a bit miffed over the reaction to Tuesday's post. I'm aware that there aren't as many set collectors as there once was and especially on the blogs it seems to be a very rare breed -- much rarer than it once was. But I expected more than one person to be at least a little amazed by the different path to putting a set in order by card number, especially since all I ever heard from set collectors prior was there's just that one way to skin a cat. I should know by now that there is no guarantee when it comes to blog comments. But I think this is the new normal. Everything on the blogs is down these days: comments, views, number of posts by other bloggers, trades, cards arriving in the mail from other bloggers, just general enthusiasm for the card blogging life, down, down, down, down. The interesting thing is that I've noticed the latest downturn (there have been several over the last eight years or so) within the last year. If you go ...

Lots of things to address lately, but as usual, I am ill-prepared. So let me address, instead, the jumble of cards on the desk that I have received over the last month. It's such a jumble that I am beginning to lose track of who sent what. And that means if you've been an extremely busy bee at sending out packages -- like Jeff of 2 by 3 Heroes -- then it's a guarantee that I'm going to mess up something that you shipped out. Nothing tragic, mind you. I just can't figure out whether Jeff has sent me two packages or three packages in the last three weeks. First-world problems, I know. I was going through the disheveled stack -- with cards angled in different directions in a vain attempt to alert future me that "here begins a completely new package that he sent" -- trying to determine if he once, twice, three times sent me a package. I've finally settled on three times -- which is probably wrong, but it gives me the opportunity to force that terr...

I am conflicted about the color orange. Do I like it? Am I annoyed by it? Orange gets a bad rap. Some people consider it ugly, too bright. But where would October be without orange? Pumpkins, leaves, Chrome refractors. You need orange at least one month out of the year. Orange food is excellent. Oranges, sweet potatoes, sweet potato fries, sweet potato pie, pumpkin pie, carrot cake, orange sherbet, notice how I gravitate toward desserts. Ever since I was a rug rat, I favored orange-flavored food over any other flavor. Orange-themed sports teams? There is good and bad. The old-style Tampa Bay Buccaneers' creamsicle (yum!) uniforms need to come back --- now. The Houston Astros caps and unis of the late 1970s are a classic from the decade. Today, the Astros and Baltimore Orioles exhibit excellent use of orange, yet the San Francisco Giants never know what to do with the color and soil it with their very presence. The Padres tried orange in the 1990s. It didn't work fo...

I've collected cards for a long time now. But because I go at my own pace and don't attempt to grab everything from the latest and greatest, I've missed out on some things that are almost regular occurrences for other collectors. For example: This is my first rip card. I didn't pull it -- I don't really buy boxes anymore. It was sent to me by Jeroen, The Dutch Card Guy . Since it's my first rip card, you must now be submitted to my very outdated and antiquated views on rip cards. And those are: I can appreciate the intrigue created by a card like this, but I have a fundamental problem with voluntarily ripping up a baseball card. Just putting aside the philosophical argument of turning a card into a wrapper, I don't know if I like the idea of ripping up my own baseball cards ... in my own home ... where there are people who don't understand the whole accumulation of baseball cards thing ... and giving them IDEAS . One simple tear in front of th...

I am a participant in one of those team dump trades -- what I like to call an "everything must go" trade -- with Pat at Hot Corner Cards . He is offering team lots in exchange for all the Tigers one can muster. I'm still mustering Tigers, but Pat sent the Dodgers a long time ago, so it's about time I acknowledge something about this deal. Whenever I receive a whole mess of Dodgers sight unseen, there is always a weeding out process. With an abundant number of Dodgers already in my inventory, I need to take the time to figure out what cards I really need. All of this usually happens behind the scenes. So, I figured this time, why not put it in front of the scenes? I'll let everyone in on determining which card I need from the piles of Dodgers I received! It can be one big What You Need party! Sound like fun? No? Sorry, I've drafted you anyway. So what I'm going to do here is show six cards each and let you determine which one I need. Let t...