Night Owl Cards

(Welcome to the last Cardboard Appreciation before the great vote-off to determine the third card that will enter the Cardboard Appreciation Hall of Fame. Beginning next week, I will be asking for your votes and propping up polls on the sidebar. I might have to change the template a little bit to accommodate the polls, but it's the small price to pay for blog votage! (voteage?) And now, one more Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 185th in a series): I am pretty pleased to be working on the 1979 Topps set. It signals my final step in acquiring all of the Topps sets from my childhood (1974-79). What a proud moment that will be when I obtain that last '79 card, whatever it may be. But it will also be a sad moment. The real reason that I am collecting -- the most satisfaction I get out of collecting -- is to unearth those first memories of baseball, captured on cardboard, from the mid-1970s. Sure, my quest will continue with the '82 Topps set and probably '81 and/or...

I am genuinely happy for collectors when they land a key vintage card or a great pull of whatever gimmick is popular these days. Their success is success for the collector in general. It's cool. It's inspirational and a reason why I dial through the blogs every day. Even when my fellow Dodger fans display the great Dodger cards they've acquired, I can't help but be pleased for them. We share a mutual appreciation for the best cards on earth. We should be happy for each other, regardless of whether we have that card or not. But then there are the collectors who are fans of other teams that display their cool Dodger cards. Ooof. I try. I really try to be happy for them. I even rehearse to myself what I'm going to say in the comments: "Great card! Nice pick-up. Oooh! Good for you!" But that's rarely what I write. Sometimes I don't write anything at all. Sometimes I do write something. It goes along these lines: "Wow. You...