Night Owl Cards

  My collection storage system is built around binders. Boxes are secondary. In a perfect world, all my cards would be in binders and there would be no boxes. But boxes are easier to store than binders. Binders take up more space. That's a trade-off I've been willing to make, for having a much more pleasing card-room display (shelves of just boxes just doesn't cut it for me). But it means I'm always in space conservation mode. For example, a couple of weeks ago, Kenny/ZippyZappy asked me if I could use any binders, he had received some regulation-size ones from his father. Always mindful of space issues -- I am almost all out of rows on my two sizable shelving units -- I said maybe one or two. That's not "one or two." That's six. Actually, he sent seven -- one is out of the box for some mid-1980s Fleer repurposing. So, yeah, I don't know where the heck those are going. Right now the box is in the attic, waiting for when I need them, or I carve out...

The other day, Shoebox Legends featured a $20 repack box that contained a fair amount of fun and interesting for the money. I don't spend $20 in one shot on current cards much anymore. If I'm buying repacks, I prefer the hanging rack packs for under 10 bucks. If I spend $20 on cards, I'd rather go online and get something I know I want. But Shoebox's repack box offered a red signature autograph and few other things that made me find one myself the other day and open it up. I did it so eagerly that I can't show you the packs in the box window like Shane did so expertly. This is all I've got: So, you'll need to know the 20 packs I opened just in case you want to do the same. Here they are in boring old list form: -- 3 packs of 2012 Panini Triple Play -- 1 pack of 2013 Topps Opening Day -- 1 pack of 2013 Topps Update -- 2 six-card packs of 2013 Allen & Ginter -- 3 packs of 2013 Bowman Platinum -- 6 packs of 2014 Topps (Series 1 and Ser...

Slowly, ever so slowly, I am becoming a smarter card consumer. Although I would never look down on anyone who buys cards from the card aisle or tries to complete sets that way, I am attempting more and more not to do that. Random pack purchases are down and, as you know, attempting to complete a current set is WAY down. But Topps still finds a way to get me, even when I'm being good. You might remember a couple of months ago when I bought a blaster of 2012 Allen and Ginter from my friendly neighborhood Walmart just because I assumed something sitting on a shelf for almost two years couldn't possibly be full price. It didn't end well . Well, this time I was at Walmart again in desperation mode thanks to another Hallmark holiday. There in the card aisle, I discovered marked down blasters. And one of them was not 2012 A&G but 2013 A&G! Weeeeee! Now this was smart shopping. Only $11.99 and I still needed 34 cards to complete the set. Granted, most of them a...

How was your 2010? Was it better than 2009? For me, it was. It wasn't the greatest year in the world, but it was a whole lot better than what I went through in '09. As for cards, I think most of us will agree that the opposite was true. The year 2009 was a pretty good one for cards. But 2010 was mediocre. In separating the best cards of 2010, I found a lot of mediocrity. Much of that is due to the disappearance of Upper Deck early in the year. Looking at Topps card after Topps card gets tedious. I'm sure my eyes glazed over and I missed a cool card or two. I don't find these cards as inspiring as 2009. My favorite card of 2009, the Topps David Murphy card shown here, is tremendous. But, I'll continue with a 2010 countdown anyway. It's the end of the year and I love my end-of-the-year wrap-up shows. Let's see what I thought was the best of what I pulled/acquired in 2010. As mentioned before, hits and parallels are eliminated from competition because ...