Night Owl Cards

I can safely say that last month's trip out of state in which I stumbled across a card show I knew nothing about and landed a handful of high-numbered 1970s wants will be my triumphant hobby moment of the year. Nothing will top it. And nothing should top it. But when you get to my age, absolutely nothing is perfect. Everything has a down side. Everything. Take the card above. It's a semi-high number from 1972 that was one of the cards I landed for a mere 80 cents at that surprise show. But I already owned it. Here you go: Granted, I upgraded while not knowing I was upgrading, but still the objective here is not to spend money on dupes unless that is the plan. It turns out this was a simple clerical error. I typed in No. 526 on my want list at some point when I meant No. 527. So I actually needed Dave Leonhard of the Orioles (still do, in fact) and not Bailey. All it takes apparently is a simple typo for me to lose all memory of owning a card. As usual, I...

While waiting and waiting for last night's post to appear on everyone's blog rolls -- the post was inexplicably delayed by Blogger for three hours -- I went through the cards that I had featured, cataloged them, filed them ... and discovered I had five of them already. Heh. Then it hit me. No matter how well you prepare and research, something's going to go wrong. You're going to acquire a card you already had. Blogger's not going to publish the post at the time you scheduled. Despite your best efforts, you're screwed. Planning and preparation merely ensures that there are fewer issues, not no issues. This brings me to my long-ago announced Best 100 Cards of the 1970s countdown. Since I decided I was going to do this, I've kind of lost focus and I still don't know when I'm going to pull this off. But at least there are small spurts of effort interspersed with all of the uncaring. For example, I have researched the cards from one of the s...

Recently, I received some 1976 Topps cards from Carl Crawford Cards , a blog that has been known to feature a '76 card or two. I am trying to finish off the set, as it's one of the main sets from my childhood. But finishing off the set also means upgrading the set, because I absolutely kicked that set's ass when I was a kid. It just so happens that almost all of the cards that I received were upgrade cards. Crawford Cards had no way of knowing this as I simply list my wants in almost all cases. I don't differentiate between cards that I need and cards that I simply need to upgrade. So it was kind of neat that I could upgrade several out of one package. Mr. Crawford (actually I believe his name is Paul) said he wasn't too hung up on condition, so the cards weren't perfect. And the cards I received were probably in "very good" shape according to the condition guide put out by a certain (*ahem*) publication. "Very good" is not as good as...