Night Owl Cards

  Happy Independence Day. Hope you aren't working like I am. This is the day that collectors who are online show off their red, white & blue, patriotic-themed cards. There are a lot of them. I think Panini churns out something with stars on it every week. There are red, white and blue cards for every era. Today, I've seen current stuff, I've seen U.S.-flagged themed Upper Deck stuff, cards from the 9/11 period, cards with flag patches, etc., etc. But those aren't my era. I wasn't collecting in the late 1990s, nor the the early aughts. I don't collect Panini, I don't collect patches. The best thing I've seen from the last five years are the 2019 Topps Independence Day parallels. I was fortunate enough to pull the Max Muncy while in a hotel room on vacation four years ago.   But MY era is the '70s/'80s. And for me, there's nothing more patriotic than those red, white an blue cards that came out during the bicentennial.  I showed a bunch of ...

    I don't discuss night cards or publish weekly Awesome Night Card posts much anymore. One of the few mini-collections that I have is more of an under-the-radar card habit for me these days. But the night card binder is still going, maybe not as strongly but I still pull it out periodically to see what slots I can fill. It really is pretty when you open it up and look at the gleaming lights beaming from the pages. Recently, Max from the Starting Nine blog sent an assortment of cards catered to my interests and two of them were fantastically constructed night cards from this year's Stadium Club. Look at that Shed Long card above. Joy in prime time right there. Very cool. And I barely know who Shed Long is. So, you know the frankenset drill. I turn over the Shed Long card to see what number it is and see if it can fill a slot, or bump the other card out. Long is card No. 198 in 2020 Stadium Club. But there's someone in the way: Sorry, Shed, you're not going to unseat P...

I like my freshly-cut Hostess cards just fine. But when you readers are right, you're right. And when you supply the instruments to support your argument, then what chance do I have? A little while ago I was torn between keeping my three-panel Hostess cards intact or cutting them up to match the more plentiful trimmed versions that I was featuring in pages. Your responses overwhelmingly favored keeping the panels as they were, and many said there's no reason why you can't collect trimmed and untrimmed Hostess cake cards. Of course! Why didn't I think of that? Then, Mark Hoyle went one step farther. He clued me in on something that I never knew existed -- three-pocket pages. And then he sent them to me. The only three-pocket pages that I was aware of was this unusual item: This is for 4x6 photos, I guess. It's an awkward arrangement, but when you're desperate to store, you'll take anything. But obviously, that wouldn't fit Hostess pan...