Night Owl Cards

  March is kicking my ass per usual. But I have a hobby to off-set that, and when I get the time, I dig into the greatness and realize my life should consist of nothing but sorting all the goodies people send me!   I've been swimming in new-to-me cardboard for the past month or so and it was ramped up when my friend Greg ( @grogg.bsky.social ) sent another amazing package -- rather a big ol' box -- that I knew was coming, and even knew some of the contents, but was still not prepared for the greatness.     There's the box now (with the dreary winter backdrop -- right now the wind has decided to howl for three days straight). Inside that box were several smaller boxes, with lots of variety but with one thing in common -- I collect that stuff!!   Now whenever I show off an arrival this size with this kind of variety I usually go for the big finish. But I realize some readers don't care about the old stuff (although I've probably driven away all the people who only...

  Happy Halloween to those who celebrate, and that's a whole bunch, as I've never seen more Halloween lights displays in my entire life. Somebody is making a lot of money. I've posted off-and-on for the holiday, depending on my schedule (and whether I'm fending off kiddies at the front door). In the early days of this blog, myself and others might try to dig up an orange baseball card for the occasion. You remember when all you could find to represent the night of ghouls and goblins was a lousy 1988 Donruss Baseball's Best or some random orange parallel? Heck, it's all I could find last year . Well, Topps has you covered this year. For its Update set, which often comes out around Halloween (but not always), Topps has issued Panini-like parallels with Halloween themes. The background for individual players' cards have been replaced by dancing ghosts , Jack-o-Lanterns , black cats and other spookies. (They remind me of the Peanuts special ). There are also pl...