Night Owl Cards

  I don't know if you remember "The Break Up of the Phone Company" in the mid-1980s, but it was a huge deal at the time. Until that point, you made a call, wherever you were, and the Bell System took care of it. After the break-up, we became familiar with AT&T and Sprint and MCI. It was weird. I was in college when all this was happening and was happy I didn't have to make any decisions on my "long-distance provider." This all seems like ancient history in the world of a computer in your pocket, but it was my first encounter with the fracturing of a key element of society (Well, actually maybe that was cable TV). Since then, there's been fracturing all over the place. No one gets all their information from one newspaper or one evening news program each day anymore. In the music world, the shared experience of everyone listening to the same new songs on the radio has been fractured beyond repair. It seems like more work to find what you're looking...

  My blog has taken a little bit of a hit due to various life events of late. It's nothing bad. It's just busy. Vacations have played a part. Beckett magazine articles have played a part. I just sent off my second article in two weeks to them and I'm 10 minutes away from filing a bunch of images to them, too. Hopefully with the mag writing completed for now, I can put the focus on the blog. But there is more family visiting ahead that will likely scrap tomorrow's posting. And I've got like two or three work meetings coming up. Plus there are TCDB trades I need to jump on -- in three cases, my fellow traders have already sent envelopes and I haven't even packaged stuff yet! So, know that the posts appearing less often is not part of a new, mellow posting schedule (though that does sound nice). It's just stoopid life.   There are also the usual trade packages to get to, so let's get to one of those.   I received another package from Sportscards From The D...

    I've been sitting on quite the variety of packages from the past week. It's so much that I'm a little confused about what to show next and how. I brought down three different packages/envelopes for today's intended post and then returned two of them to the card desk. Then I returned the third one to the card desk and brought down a different one -- mostly because there was so much indecision that I am now running out of time. So, what I have for you is my latest prize winning from Johnny's Trading Spot , and, yes, I will be counting down my favorites. Don't roll your eyes, go watch hockey if you're not interested, just do everything in your power to make sure the game ends in regulation. All right, Johnny did very well with this shipment. Out of the nine items he sent, seven were new to me. 9. 2003 Topps Julio Urias, foil parallel I have three of these now. I don't know why. Are they double-printing foil parallels? 8. 2022 Topps Archives Mookie Betts...