Night Owl Cards

Happy Canada Day, once again, to my Canadian readers. This is getting to be a bit of a tradition now that I've referenced Canada Day on the actual day the last three years. Tell me, non-Canadians, what's the first thing you think of when someone mentions "Canada"? If you didn't respond with "hockey," you need to try again. Hockey is such a Canadian institution that if someone were to tell me that a famous athlete from Canada never played hockey, I'd be more surprised by that than just about anything. Even professional baseball players from Canada played hockey before they made baseball their career choice. Larry Walker, one of the greatest baseball players to ever come out of Canada, wanted to be a goalie in the NHL when he was growing up. One of his childhood friends was Boston Bruins great Cam Neely. Walker never played professional hockey. But there are several MLB players who were drafted by an NHL team, played in pro hockey leagues an...

Don't excited. I'm not about to praise Bowman Chrome. I'm just saying that buying a pack of this stuff is easier to justify to my wallet than buying a box of Heritage High Numbers, even though both break down to a dollar per card. So, yesterday, Mr. Big Spender bought a pack of Bowman Chrome -- just to show he can spend a dollar on a base card that isn't from 1975 or earlier. But, of course, that doesn't mean I have to like it. Each year I buy a single pack of Bowman Chrome and that's it. I will never understand Bowman Chrome's point. It costs too much. It's the same cards that are in the regular Bowman set. It's basically Topps Chrome, except more expensive and with a bunch of players nobody knows. But obviously someone out there gets it because Topps keeps issuing it. I think that's the reason why I pick up a pack each year. I think maybe one of these years, I'll understand it. So let's see what three cards came out of th...

I received this card in the mail on Monday. It came from hiflew who runs Cards From the Quarry . It's the 349th card that I have obtained in the 350-card 2011 Allen & Ginter set. Ever since I declared my frustration with the set, that I have had a more difficult time completing the set than in past years and that I didn't know whether I would try to complete it for a fifth straight year when 2012 A&G came out, I have received what can only be described as an outpouring of assistance in helping me finish off the 2011 set. Most of the credit can go to Brian at Play at the Plate . In one quickly sent package, he knocked off 17 of my needs from the set. There's the first group of them. I have a new scanner and there are infinite things that I don't know about it, including how to get nine cards on a scanner bed. So you're going to have to live with things like borders being cut off. There's the other group. Whoops ... that card on the b...