Night Owl Cards

  I've been logging my collection on Trading Card Database for four years now and have been trading on the site for around three-plus years.   It's taken me that long to reach 100 trades because I rarely have the time or motivation to make my own offers. But I hit that milestone last week with the largest total number of cards I've received in a single TCDB trade.   It was also the greatest difference in cards received and cards sent-out for one trade. My trade partner, Thebradford16, wanted just three cards (I threw in a handful more). In exchange, I added 167 cards to my collection.   Admittedly, this is a benefit of being a well-known blogger in the hobby. My trade partner was just looking to deal with someone he had read and helped him get back into the hobby. And my reward came in the form of a whole bunch of 1983 Donruss for the collection!     A cross-section from that stack. Love seeing my guys on new-to-me cardboard.      Some more v...

  First off, thanks to those who showed me the way on TCDB for the 1977-79 Sportscaster cards. I received responses via the comments, email and on social media. I agree, it's quite the morass -- way too many variations -- but it's a little more decipherable (at least more readable) than those Donruss back variations.   I tend to excuse variations and such when they are cards connected to my childhood. I increasingly lose patience as the years get closer to the present time.   For example, I just had my first close-up experience with 2022 Topps Chrome Sonic. This set is a bigger quagmire than I thought.   Not that I paid much attention. I've been pretty dismissive of sets from the last four years. Thanks to unavailability and lack of appeal for sets since 2020 or so, I focus solely on a few main sets and the others hover around in the ether. So it took a TCDB trade offer from reader kcjays for me to take note. 2002 Chrome Sonic is really dumb -- I mean, I kind of vagu...

    This is post No. 5500 on the blog. Not that the number means all that much, unless you tell someone outside the hobby that you've written 5,500 blog posts about accumulating cards. That will probably draw some sort of reaction.   To them -- most of them anyway -- it's all just mindless accumulation. It's all stuff for the throw-out man eventually. But to me, and the people who read this -- this blog isn't FOR YOU, people who think cards are dumb -- every card added has meaning. It fits into a specific category that pays tribute to whatever thing -- baseball, player, year, hobby -- that means something to that collector.   There's probably no more appropriate time than to go through some recent pickups -- wildly unconnected -- that have been occupying space on my card desk for too long. Yeah it's another show-off post. I'm 5500 posts in now, I can't change.   This will illustrate exactly how many kinds of cards I think are important and also that I ...

  That's a moment-in-time snapshot of my card table and surrounding other activities in my card room. There's a lot going on in there right now. Not only is it the central hub for cards coming in and cards going out, but there are two large boxes of cards coming in that I'm trying to get myself around. Also, TCDB offers have ramped up again. And, those card stacks off to the left will tell you I'm in the middle of another Dodgers dupes card sort. I try to do this once a year, around September or so. But I skipped it last year so there's even more to do. Also, life has somehow turned what was once a week-long activity into a two-month activity. I don't know how it did that, but it dood. More card stacks. More incoming. There is a lot to do, card-wise. And blog-wise. I have topics in mind that involve research. And little time to do it. When I'm in that kind of crunch, sometimes I dismiss incoming cards for blog posts, thinking that I just can't come up wi...

  I am trying to get to a couple of other posts that I have been planning for a little bit. The ideas and cards have been rolling around in my brain for days, even verging on weeks now. But they're not ready, either I need more information or certain items to arrive. They're still a bit raw ... and not in that gross way that collectors use to describe non-slabbed cards. But I figured each of them would be cooked by now. Still, patience has been the word for at least three years now and I've gotten used to it. I have fall-back options, i.e., cards people sent me. Here is a nice selection of 1990 Swell cards landed in a TCDB trade with nozzlemaster for just a handful of Dodgers. Nearly up to two-thirds of the set completed. I've been cleaning up on Clendenon acquisitions lately. This is one half of the cards I requested in the latest Diamond Jesters Time Travel swap. The other didn't disappear, it's just targeted for another collector and I can't show all my ...

   I wrote last month about how I am collecting three sets that are known for being difficult on collectors -- 1967, 1969 and 1970 Topps. I'm not afraid of difficult sets. I completed '71 and '72 Topps. But the hobby has changed since I finished those sets and just the repeated effort tends to wear on you a little bit as you progress in the hobby. That's why I add little "enjoyment sets" to my completion quests. Stuff like this: All of this 1985 Donruss came in a TCDB transaction with GoldenEagles555. I now have more than 100 cards from the set, which may not seem like much but I have gone more than three decades with having no more than 20 cards from the set, and my brain just started thinking that's the size of the set. No rush on completing this one because it's needed to help balance the madness of '67, '69 and '70. I am "close" on all three of those sets in terms of cards that I've accumulated already -- but we all know ...