Night Owl Cards

As I continue to assess what I really enjoy collecting, I find myself in a sort of collecting limbo. I'll go back to my traditional collecting desires, my many Dodgers cards and Dodgers binders, and that feels quite comfortable to me still. And then I'll dive into some of my more recent interests -- the '70s NFL cards and the Sabres cards and the music cards -- and those seem wonderful in a much more unfamiliar but exciting way. I'm a little out of my comfort zone when it's not all baseball, all-Dodger baseball all the time. I'm not nearly the expert that I am in the baseball arena. But that's OK. The hobby is anything I want it to be. I can test the limits of my comfort if I want. And that's exactly what I did recently, although it wasn't my choice at the beginning. But first, let's see some cards that I am completely comfortable with because I have been collecting them for the life of this blog and earlier: These, and the ...

(The origins of "Cardboard Appreciation" stem from a concerted effort to find value in the cards in my collection, true. But C.A. was also born out of a backlash toward the "individual entitlement" mindset. You didn't know C.A. has socio-political beginnings, did you? It does. The pervasive feeling of individual entitlement is a plague on current U.S. society and can be observed in myriad forms from small to large. It's as if we're a nation of 13-year-olds. I'm a big believer in "be thankful for what you've got," or, if you prefer, "your lot in life isn't as wretched as you think." Believe me, thinking like this helps. A lot. ... OK, speech done. Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 135th in a series). One of the best feelings in collecting is when I discover a card that I never knew existed when I thought I knew everything about the set from which it came. Oh, finding oddball cards from 50 years ago or obse...

I received this card from both A Cardboard Problem and Cardboard Catastrophes within a few days of each other. I noticed immediately that the Chrome version of Jonathan Broxton was different from the Topps base version of Broxton. There's the base version. It was a pleasant surprise, because like many collectors, I enjoy when the Chrome card is not merely a repeat of the base card. I made the unfortunate choice of attempting to collect the 2009 Chrome set, in which the vast majority -- if not all -- of the cards repeat the photo in the '09 base set (rookies exclusive to the Chrome set excluded). I may be forgetting some very few differences, but I don't have the time today to match up every single card. I have noticed a few other examples of this year's Chrome photos differing from the base card photos. I don't know if there are more examples of this happening in this year's set than last year's. I have purchased only a couple rack packs of 2011 Ch...

About three years ago, I embarked on my first blog trades. Those were fun times. I think I spent all my free time sitting on the front step waiting for the mailman while I sang "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." If you go back and look at those first trade posts -- and I'm sure some of them are so sickeningly upbeat that you'll want to throw your laptop in the garbage, incinerate the trash can and truck the ashes to the Yucatan Peninsula -- you'll see me positively flip out over cards like 1992 Fleer and 1989 Upper Deck. I needed a lot of Dodgers back then. An incredible, staggering amount. I was probably very, very easy to deal with as a collector. "This dude needs some '91 Fleer Dodgers? Well, isn't that darling? I've got 3,000 of them around here somewhere ..." But three years and hundreds of trades later, I don't need that many Dodgers. Well, let me rephrase that. I still need a lot of Dodgers. I just don't need as many. Wa...

                                                                                                                                    AP The L.A. Times is reporting that the Dodgers don't have enough money right now to meet team payroll at the end of the month. Considering the worst owner in all of major league baseball took out a loan to meet payroll last month, this is not good news. It's not like Fox is going to throw him another loan. It is believed that if the Dodgers can't meet payroll, then the team will be seized by Major League Baseball, and Dodger fans can all hope that Frank McCourt will finally, in his money-grubbing haze, realize that the jig is u...

For the first time, I am showing more than one night card in one of these ANC posts. That may cause an issue if/when there is another night card tournament, but we can't worry our little heads about the future, can we? I recently received four more of the Stadium Lights insert cards from this year's Opening Day. These two came from Spiff of Texas Rangers Cards . These two came from J.T. at The Writer's Journey . I still think this is the best insert series in all of 2011. It beats the hell out of those Kimball Flimsies. I now have six of the 10 cards in the set. I'm missing #2 Troy "Can We Play the Mets All the Time" Tulowitzki, #3 Robinson "John Sterling Get Off the Radio" Cano, #6 Chase "I'm Going to Miss the Whole @##$&* Phillies Championship Season" Utley and #8 Adrian "I'm Not Really Wearing a Red Sox Uniform" Gonzalez. If you have any of those four, I'm interested. But know that it may take me a...