Night Owl Cards

It seems there are folks that believe that I love every baseball card mini. That I adore every make and model, that I am an indiscriminate mini-hoarder, welcoming every stray mini into my home as if I'm the cat lady of mini cards. But I'm not. As I mentioned just a few months ago, I have standards . Just because you mini-size a card doesn't mean I'm going to collect it. All minis are cute, true. But at the risk of hating myself after reading this back, here is what I think about some minis: 1. 2012 Topps parallel minis: An online money grab. Slick, soulless and boring. 2. 2012 Topps 1987-style minis: (*shoulder shrug*) 3. Gypsy Queen, Goodwin, Topps 206 minis: Allen & Ginter mini wanna-bes 4. 1980s era Topps/Fleer minis: Arrrggh! They slide all around in the pages! And so ugly! 5. Early '90s Topps micro: Don't be sending me those things. I'll lose them in the floor vent. The truth is I have issues with a lot of minis. They can be cute...

Slightly more than a year ago, we were coming to grips with an odd little Topps offering called "Lineage." It featured a rather boring base set with the most pointless card backs since Upper Deck dared put out a baseball product. But the inserts were nostalgic and fun and basically the whole excuse for the set. I was caught up in Lineage Fever last summer and decided to pursue just one of the insert sets -- the tribute to my first year of collecting -- the Lineage '75 minis set. The set is 200 cards large and I thought it was ridiculous of me to chase an insert set that large. It was something I had never done in all my years of collecting. Well since that time, Topps has moved on, and everyone else has moved on. Lineage has basically become Archives, a set that left me cold. But I stayed firmly entrenched, pursuing those tiny, colorful Lineage parallels to the bitter end. Slightly less than a year after I announced my wild-and-crazy quest , I am very close to ...

A couple of weeks ago, Nachos Grande held a break of 2012 Topps minis and I was conspicuously absent. You'd think a guy like me -- as crazy for minis as I am, as dependent on retail as I am -- would jump at the chance of obtaining mini cards that are only available online. Well, normally, yeah. But I already knew that some of the Dodgers from that set were on their way to me. For free. Reader R.C. busted a box of 2012 minis and wasn't all that enamored with them and offered up the Dodgers he pulled. Ever so grateful, I accepted, and now here I am to say ... I'm not all that enamored with them either. But I'll start with the good stuff first. First of all, I appreciate Topps' effort -- whether it was intentional or not -- to make the 2012 set memorable. Not since 1975 has Topps had a mini parallel set of the base set (I don't count 1987 because it wasn't a parallel and, except for the cards you could cut off the box, didn't look like the ...

Today is my birthday. It really is a great day and I'm looking forward to it for all the usual reasons. And those reasons would be: I'm off. It's the summer. The weather's great. I get presents. I get cash. The chance of receiving cards is excellent. But I'm looking forward to it for something I haven't been so geared up over since I was probably 6 years old. I get to eat cake. Due to my diet cutbacks, I haven't eaten a piece of cake in at least seven months. Probably longer. Cake was never my favorite dessert. I've always been more of a pie-ice cream person. But, now, because it's been so long, I can't believe someone will be making a cake just for little ol' me. I also get to eat ice cream. I've eaten ice cream a little more often since the overhaul went into effect. But I could probably count the times on one hand. So the cake and ice cream part will be the highlight. The other big highlight will be the cards. I don...

This weekend is graduation weekend in these parts. Ceremonies, parties, and pomp and circumstance going off all over the place. My graduation days are long gone, and I don't plan to relive them at any point in the future. I never liked school. I was good at it, but I couldn't wait for it to end. Same with college. I did pretty well, had a tremendous amount of fun, but never having to sit for an hour-long lecture ever again sounded pretty damn good to me. So when I saw people returning for their masters, that was baffling. Why would you want to go back? Now, I know some jobs require a longer period in college than the four years that was my limit, but this is why I chose an occupation that requires only four years. Why would I want to do that to myself? (I know "more money" is the answer. Still not worth it). Outside of watching my younger brothers' graduations, I've never gone back to school for any reason. Not for functions, not for reunions, def...

I don't think I've ever been so relieved to see a month disappear. I always celebrate the end of March with a little party because it's annually the most taxing month of the year. But this month took even more out of me. Had I known what the third month of the year would be like, I would have stayed in college forever. College students seem to be the only people who have fun during March. Maybe I can go back and get a professor to remove a few of my credits. Anyway, since I know March is going to be like this every year, I plan for it. That includes planning the end-of-the-month celebration. This year's end-of-this-god-forsaken-month celebration is highlighted by a special purchase I made a couple of weeks ago in anticipation of beautiful, glorious, what-took-you-so-long March 31st. Yup, I got myself a bunch of minis. Mostly Topps Lineage minis to be exact. I've decided that I better attack this set as quickly as I can before people forget about thes...