Night Owl Cards

This post was originally going to be called "stuff I discovered on the internet," but I figured that would leave too much to the imagination. Before the internet came along, I discovered cards and card sets mostly through advertisements in the Sporting News or Baseball Digest, or through hobby catalogs that came to my house, like TCMA or Fritsch Cards. Later, I subscribed to Baseball Cards Magazine and found new-to-me sets in articles in that magazine. But I missed so much through those methods. Outside of what was selling in wax or cello packs at the drug or grocery store, that was all I knew. It wasn't until years and years later, when I ended up online like everyone else, that I discovered how much that I had missed. Once I became aware of card blogs, the door was open wider than ever. There were so many sets -- so many sets and cards that often had been issued right under my nose -- that I never knew existed. For example: I had no idea there were so many box sets fro...

I was in the midst of attempting to put together a convoluted night card post when I realized that it was never going to work, and I really should go with what worked best when I was nine years old: Study the hell out of the tiny little thing in front of you. I don't do that enough. The other day I was pulling some pennies out of my pocket and got a glimpse of one that didn't feature the usual Lincoln Memorial. I thought about how coins now feature a variety of items on them that they never did before -- and I have no idea what they are. I barely look at my coins. But when I was young, I studied my coins vigorously. I checked the date on every penny and memorized them. My dissection habits didn't end with coins. I would sit on the ground and examine the ants crawling along the sidewalk, building homes in the cracks that broke your mother's back. I would scour the backyard for just one, solitary four-leaf clover, but instead turn up hundreds upon hundreds of thr...

I believe my anguish over trade posts has officially reached the final stage in "The Five Stages of Grief." You don't believe me? OK, I'll map it out for you: 1. Denial: "Everything's cool. So what if I have eight trades waiting to post? I'll just combine three or four in one post and everything will be fine." 2. Anger: "People don't realize what I have to deal with here! I have so many trades to post! I HAVE to combine them! Screw them. I don't care." 3. Bargaining: "If I make the card packages that I send in return really, really wonderful, then they won't be able to complain about me combining trade posts. All right, now, how much is that rookie Pujols card going for these days ..." 4. Depression: "I just can't deal with posting these trades one post at a time. Why go on? Maybe I'll just scrap trade posts altogether. Thorzul will be happy." 5. Acceptance: OK, I'll make an attem...

It is appropriate that I am posting this after midnight because I received an ominous package in the mail earlier today. It was my Trick-or-Treat mailing from Dave of Tribe Cards . I'm sure you've seen other tricky Tribe packages popping up on various blogs lately. Frightening stuff. Checklists. Ugly heavy metal singers. Andruw Jones cards (*shiver*). The horror. But amid the gruesome carnage I noticed that a few good guys emerged unscathed: Harmon Killebrew , Greg Maddux . Guys like that. Maybe, just maybe, something unzombie-like would fall out of my package. I just prayed that whatever it was, it wasn't a Yankee. All hope is lost when one of those arrives in your mailbox. I carefully placed the envelope on the table, you know, so as to not upset it. But my daughter tipped me off that something might not be right. She pointed to the written return address and said, "that person needs to take care of that." I swear she said that. It pretty much creeped me out...