Night Owl Cards

The dreaded month of all months has begun. And this time it's not wasting time in hassling me. "Hi there," March announced on Thursday. "Deal with this ." Three days later, I'm happy to be alive with most bodily organs intact. There is 24 hours to recuperate (no more than that, mister!) and then back into the furnace. While I'm recovering, I thought I'd carve out a few moments for a post. GCA of The Collective Mind sent some cards recently (I don't remember when, the days are a blur). They were all exactly what I needed. One of the last six cards left in my 1988 Fleer quest. Everyone is expecting big things from Jay Bell. A foil parallel of Clayton Kershaw's 2018 flagship card. I'm ready for the foil parallel craze to end. It outlived its usefulness about three years ago (yeah, I know that's when it started). Two '87-themed inserts from 2017 Topps. Time marches on, yet there are always inserts on the want ...

It looks like I won't have the ability to put together the usual Night Owl Cards end-of-the-year festivities this year. Too much making merry, I guess. That kind of sucks because I do love to tie a bow on the past year. So maybe you'll see it even when we're a few days into 2016. Meanwhile, I thought I'd quickly wrap up one project from 2015, and that's wallet card. Wallet card began at the start of the year over at Baseball Card Breakdown and everyone was enthusiastic about it, including me. But only a few people kept up that enthusiasm, especially after Junior Junkie ran away with the contest portion of wallet card about 15 days into the thing. My enthusiasm started strong then weakened quickly . My mission, unlike those who used wallet card as a travelogue, was to study the wear-and-tear on a card residing 365 days in one's wallet. I didn't even fully succeed there because I changed my wallet card in early March. Let's face it, my heart ...

I'm changing my wallet card. I'm assuming I am now disqualified from the wallet card competition, but that doesn't matter to me. When I chose my wallet card, I didn't have much of an interest in featuring it in various locations. Not only can I not compete with Mardi Gras or New York City, but everyone around here has been hibernating for three months. Repeated pictures of cards in front of snowbanks gets pretty monotonous. No, my wallet card was being used to conduct an experiment in how badly a card could deteriorate in a 12 month period. And I chose a Chrome card because Chrome prides itself on being immaculate and beautiful, and I wanted to see one that wasn't those things. Well, I found out that the above image is about as ugly as Chrome gets. It wasn't terribly bright of me not to draw the conclusion that all of the cards that are meant to be in a wallet - driver's license, credit cards, insurance cards, etc., are glossy and laminated for a ...

I am confident enough in my collecting personality to know that I will never be this kind of collector. There is nothing wrong with that kind of collecting -- I'll always defend the "collect how you wanna collect" philosophy. I just can't bring cards into my collection that have been intentionally defaced, whether through cigarette burn holes, or an attempt to give a card more than four corners, or good, old fashioned doodling. Cards that have been altered through normal effects of time and handling -- scuffing, creases, paper loss, rounded corners -- are a different matter, especially for older cards. I'll take those every time. They are cards with character that have been allowed to age gracefully. But defacing is usually a no-no to my sensitive sensibilities. Or so I thought. While reading through this  Dime Box post from yesterday , I came across a comment from beefman, who runs Baseball Cards in Oz . He said that he bought a 1989 Bowman Dodgers te...

Merry Christmas all! Can you see me on this card? I'm standing on the red present there. I hope everyone has a pleasant holiday, receives all the cards that they desire, and I promise not to get jealous if you do. I thought that today on this festive occasion, I'd show some cards sent to me that either arrived today, on Christmas Eve, or that showed up with season's greetings. As usual, you people are so much more on top of things than I am. I have cards that I meant to mail a week-and-a-half ago still sitting in the same spot I placed them with the greatest of intentions. But still, even with my pokey habits, I can provide some helpful hints about sending cards at Christmas. So let's see some of them: 1. DO: Send cards with an actual Christmas card. That's what Duff of Bleedin' Brown and Gold  did. He sent the Christmas card you see up top. I didn't expect anything from him at all. He was planning to send some of those Surf team books to me ...

I've been operating in a haze the last three days. Work is hectic and regular life is busy, too. The city's working on the sidewalks a block away and guess what time they like to make their ungodly noise? Yup, right around 8 a.m. When night owl is cozy in his nest. Bastards. Multiply that by a certain Cuban phenom blowing up in Dodgerdom. Normally, I'm used to following the Dodgers from three time zones away. My job helps make that easy. But with Yasiel Puig doing what he's been doing, not only do I have to follow the games, but I have to re-follow them on the highlights, and then I have to calm myself down from the buzz that only a two home run game in a player's second career game can produce. Next thing I know, someone is holding a jackhammer up to my ear saying, "wakey, wakey!" I'm so tired. I was tempted not to post today, but I didn't want to do that. I'm already withholding packages from people until I get the budget under...