Night Owl Cards

  March is dead again, you guys. Oh sure, it will come back to life, but today is a day to celebrate!   I often celebrate my least favorite month's demise with some sort of card order. A COMC or sportlots arrival or something like it. In fact I am welcoming various cards from a sportlots order right now, but they're not all here yet.   I can, however, take one of the cards that showed up and celebrate the completion of set -- because on the very day March took its last breath, I completed 1983 Donruss.     This Ron Jackson card was the last one I needed to finish the set. Jackson comes in three varieties. There's another one with a green border (which all of his Angels teammates have) and another one that reads "A's" in the glove instead of "Angels". I'd like the green border one someday but that's not important right now. What's important is THE SET IS COMPLETE!   Finishing the 1983 Donruss set was key because it's one of the last ma...

(Appointments, responsibilities, work, appointments, responsibilities, work, appointments, responsibilities, work ... oh, hi, here is a blog post that I fit in when life is a driver's seat and a desk  ... appointments, responsibilities, work ... It's time for Cardboard Appreciation, this is the 325th in a series): I have slowly been picking off O-Pee-Chee Dodgers needs the last few months. It's been very methodical, because there's not a lot of cash but there are a lot of cards that I want. So I leave the OPC quest and then come back to it again.   In going through the 1981s that I needed (this is the second straight Cardboard Appreciation on a 1981 card, I'll have to fix that next time), I was a little surprised to see Rick Monday in the set.   I shouldn't have been. Yes, OPC sets were smaller than the Topps version during this time, and, yes, OPC picked and chose what Expos and Blue Jays showed up in the set. But Monday was still a notable player, and, unlike ...

As you can imagine, it took me almost no time to dispatch those Giants autographs that I opened on Christmas morning. The average time for me sending out cards in response to cards I've received is verging on between one and two months these days (March is a particular brutal month for this). But I was shipping out those Giants uggos within a week. I found the perfect victim ... er, recipient in Adam . I sent him almost all of the signed cards I received, with the noted exception of the Bobby Thomson. Despite his history against my team, I can't part with it, although I could be convinced. Adam then passed on some of the signatures to mr. haverkamp, and now you know the only two Giants card collectors that I know in the world. Then, both of them, sent me some Dodgers autographed cards in return! Boy, I think this blogging thing is going to turn out all right. I received seven autographed cards of seven different Dodgers. These days, I'm looking for autographe...

Not long into starting this blog I discovered that people have it together far more than I do. While I'm stumbling through life trying to figure out where I put my snowbrush, how I'm going to pay for any Christmas presents and why I forgot to get a haircut again, others already have the who, what, when, where, why and how marked, targeted and checked off. But I did do one thing right. I started a blog about baseball cards. Because of that, those very together people take time out at this time of year to send me Christmas card packages. I'm in awe of their planning. Christmas card packages mean I will get exactly what I want every Christmas. It balances out the socks and gloves. It adds fun to what can be a humdrum part of the holiday for an adult. It basically means better Christmas gifts than before I had a blog. How do I determine whether it's a Christmas package? Well, they wish me a Merry Christmas, duh. Some are especially together and send a holiday ...

I received some Dodger cards from Spiff of Texas Rangers Cards a couple of weeks ago. Spiff is one of the first bloggers I traded with after starting this blog, so it's always great to get some cards from him. And I hope I have some Rangers left to send him! Among the cards that jumped out at me were two original Donruss cards. Those cards from 1981 always take me back to the excitement and bewilderment of having three sets to chase instead of one. Of course, the lasting trademark of '81 Donruss is the card stock. It is shockingly thin. It is so thin that I barely thought of them as cards when I was collecting that year. I bought fewer Donruss packs than Topps and Fleer that year, and I know it is because of the card stock. I kept holding them up to the light to see if I could see through them. But aside from the card stock, I liked '81 Donruss. The design was basic but original and kind of fun. The photos weren't fantastic, but neither were Fleer's. Th...

Apparently, the Dodgers still believe they're in this thing. I don't necessarily agree, although I applaud their optimism and Ned Colletti's enthusiasm, which was demonstrated in his shocking willingness to cough up once-and-possibly-still key prospects in order to land a relief pitcher. The biggest deal was getting Ted Lilly and Ryan Theriot from the Cubs for Blake DeWitt and a couple of minor leaguers. I don't like the swap at second base of DeWitt for Theriot -- the Dodgers are weaker at that position now. But Lilly I've always liked and wished the Dodgers never gave him up in the Mark Grudzielanek trade way back in 1998. But while every other fan's brain focuses on a mid-season deal in terms of "how will this affect my team now?" I think of it another way. I am always intrigued by the relationships that teams have with each other when it comes time to trading. Most teams go to the same trade partners over and over. The thing that interests...

Sometimes it's best to keep memories repressed. I don't ever want to recall that Orel Hershiser pitched for the Giants, let alone get a cardboard reminder in the mail. However, in one way I am glad that this Hershiser card is featured here. Because that means the trade deadline is over, I can exhale, and this is a harmless baseball card trade post, rather than a "why, oh, why did the Dodgers trade half their team for Roy Halladay " post. Halladay is still spending his Loonies in Toronto. As it should be. (Meanwhile, I just read that the Dodgers were supposedly close to a deal with the Padres in which they would have acquired Adrian Gonzalez and Heath Bell for James Loney , Russell Martin, Blake DeWitt , James McDonald and Ivan DeJesus Jr. Holy Smokey! Do people who run the Dodgers know the team has had the best record in baseball for almost the entire season?) The Hershiser nightmare card came to me from Mark of Stats on the Back . He's been giving...

I'm still trying to get over the fact that I got socks for Christmas. SOCKS. Not Red Sox. Not White Sox. Socks. Fabric. And not even of the game-used variety (or at least I hope they aren't). I got socks from two different relatives. I got socks even though I already have way more than I need. I got socks even though the letters "s" "o" "c" and "k" did not appear anywhere together on the entire, very detailed, very specific, very helpful, very "ask me if you have any questions" Christmas list! Fortunately, another blogger -- this time Zach from Autographed Cards -- was there in my time of need. He sent me some Dodgers and they arrived at my door the day after Christmas. Still in a state of "sock shock," I eagerly opened the envelope. Here is what fell out: Two of my 1992 Donruss Dodger needs, Tim Belcher and Bobby Ojeda. I forget that Belcher pitched all the way to the 2000 season. Ojeda, meanwhile, I can't t...

OK, I'll make this quick. We've all seen A&G blaster breaks, right? We're pretty sick of them, right? But I have a point. I do not live in a big city. I do not live near a big city. The closest hobby store to me is a three-hour round trip. Visits to eBay fill the gaps, but my allotted computer fun time is very limited. So for me, retail blasters are the way to go. They're relatively easy to find, you get the cards immediately, and I've changed my mind from a previous post : unless you're 10 cards or less away from completing a set, a blaster is always satisfying. So, what follows is what I got today. I'm only listing the cards I needed, because scanning, or even listing, duplicates, bores me like a walk through the Yarn Barn. For the sake of brevity, I will keep my comment about each card to one sentence. If I write more than one sentence, as my punishment, I will write something nice about the Cubs (gulp!). Here we go: No. 199, Daric Barton. I swear yo...