Night Owl Cards

  There is really no explanation for me suddenly being able to make such swift progress on the 1956 Topps set other than that "the stars aligned." For decades, the total number of '56 Topps cards in my collection sat at around 120, each one obtained on a single, glorious early 1980s evening, a gift from my dad's co-worker, someone I had never seen and I still don't know his name. Those were the cards that ignited the spark, that this was indeed one of the greatest sets ever made and would be amazing to complete ... you know, in another dimension, where objectives that were obviously impossible became possible. Sure, I now owned one-third of the set. But outside of the Newcombe, Erskine and Slaughter cards, I had no big stars. None of the cards were Yankees, the team of choice of whoever gave us the cards. Then the rest of the 1980s happened and cards became "an investment." The prices for those '56 cards, especially the stars, shot up. As the years m...

I received an email a little while ago from Scott of Sports Cards Ate My Brain . He said he had a bunch of 2015 Stadium Club off my wants that he was going to send. "Cool," I said. I like that set a lot. It's about time I got close to finishing it. Scott didn't lie. He did have a lot of Stadium Club off my wants. Here they are: Still very cool. But, wait, that's not all of it. OK, there we go. Thanks to that, I'm less than 10 cards away from the complete set. Time to stop buying SC packs for the one card I need and get the rest online. But Scott didn't stop with the Stadium Club. He also sent a bunch of 2015 Series 2 needs: And a bunch of 2015 Update needs: This is how I was able to complete the Series 2 set at the card show the other day, and how I was able to come within one of completing the Update set. But that wasn't even half of what Scott sent. In a totally unexpected development, I saw oodles of other want...

I went to a card show today. You'll see what I landed in the next post, but I wanted to write today about something I heard there. I was at my usual table, hunting vintage cards while in set-completing mode. Since this dealer caters to set collectors, he has binders and binders of different vintage sets everywhere. And he attracts slightly older customers, because as much as I don't want to admit it: a) I'm old b) set collectors are old Those are relative statements, of course, but there was no mistaking the gray-haired gentlemen paging through cards along with me. There was one man talking to the dealer mainly. It was a high-level discussion: T206s and Honus Wagner and running into trimmed tobacco cards. It's stuff I'll probably never worry about in my life. Another gray-haired man joined the conversation and the discussion turned to removing stains from cards, and soaking cards, something that both the dealer and the gray-haired man had apparently do...

An ice storm warning is up for our area from tonight through Sunday. I've lived through two significant ice storms. In January 1998, we lost power for an entire week. Ever since then, the entire region panics whenever the word "ice" is mentioned in the forecast. Some were so scarred by that storm that if the power should go out for any reason for even 5 minutes, they'll start up the generator. I'm not looking forward to the weekend. There's a sick person in the house and if the power goes out that's one thing on top of another and there's already a whole lot not getting done four days before the big holiday. This also could be the last time I'm writing here for a few days (you'll know what happened if the blog suddenly goes silent). Yep, things could get ugly. So let's keep it light. How could cards be useful in the midst of a power outage? Let's consider the possibilities: 1. Duh, they're cards. You don...

Dick Williams is remembered as the manager who led the Impossible Dream Red Sox to the World Series title and the Swingin' A's to back-to-back championships in 1972-73. He's remembered for his hell-raising, do-what-I-say leadership style that worked with the Expos and Padres, too. But Williams was a Bum first. He was a Boy of Summer who hit .309 in 36 games for that Dodger team in 1952. He is immortalized in Roger Kahn's book as a single, free-spirit who joined Kahn in a night of ogling dancing girls during the sportswriter's year of covering the team. Williams, as you know, died Thursday at age 82. The Hall of Famer is the latest of several Brooklyn Dodgers from that period to pass away in the last year. Duke Snider. Clyde King. Billy Loes. Ken Lehman went before him. And, of course, Jackie, Furillo and Hodges are long gone. Each time a Bum leaves this earth, you'll hear or read baseball fans say, with a note of resignation, "that's too bad. T...