Night Owl Cards

I received this autographed card of Ricky Nolasco from Matthew of Bob Walk the Plank . It's a terrifically designed card made all the more powerful by Nolasco's hard-signed signature. Ricky Nolasco didn't exactly have a long and proud history with the Dodgers, but the card is so nice that I'm very happy to own it. I was so impressed with it, in fact, that I asked myself this question: "Why do I have sticker autographs in my collection?" It seemed like a reasonable question. I'm not really an autograph collector. I don't seek out autograph cards. I view them as a perk, but not the basis of a collection. And if I'm treating them as a perk, shouldn't I accumulate only the autographed cards that look the best to me? The on-card, hard-signed cards? I've also started thinking about possibly selling some of my cards online. Possibly COMC or, shudder the thought, ebay. Sending off some of those sticker autographs would be a sensible firs...

November is a terrible time for buying cards. It's even worse than December because in December you've either already purchased all your holiday gifts and are ready to treat yourself with the leftover final pennies, or you've given up hope and are waving the credit card at every checkout clerk who even glances your way. But in November, there is A Plan. You're going to focus on buying for other people. You have lists and a budget and are a Very Careful Shopper. This is important for someone like me with a job like mine. Cards enter my head only fleetingly and then are dismissed as sinful. Be gone, card thoughts! I'm shopping for OTHERS. This is also the time that I stop looking on ebay or COMC or anywhere else for cards. Collecting goals are on hold until the day after December 25th. When I do pick up some cards, it's always from a retail store, it's always during a trip when I'm Christmas shopping, and it's always something cheap. Thus, t...

Ever since photoshopping became commonplace, Topps has been going to town, putting players into their new team's uniforms, putting fences in front of bat boys on team cards, removing umpires out of photographs, you know, basically playing God with photographs. You would think I would have a huge issue with this given that my job includes discussions about The Journalistic Integrity of Photographs. And it's true, I actually have a difficult time with certain Topps photoshopping, mostly erasing people from the photo or moving an entire crowd of fans into a different stadium. But I don't have an issue with altering the uniforms. Topps has been doing this for decades -- back when it was called airbrushing -- and it doesn't bother me, probably because I've been seeing it since I was 9. Even though I mentioned in the last post the photos that were photoshopped from the cards out of my blaster of Opening Day, it was only for informational purposes. It wasn't bec...