Night Owl Cards

 (I didn't go to the card show. The idea of driving an hour away to wait outside the place until they let me in and then feeling a bit uneasy among the assorted people inside, all without enough sleep, didn't sound appealing. There will be others. Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 302nd in a series): This is the latest Japanese card in my collection. It's from the 2008 Upper Deck Kellogg's set, a 10-card set marketed in Japan. That's about all I know about it.   It arrived from Shane , who officially joins the club of people who have sent me Japanese cards over the years. I don't specifically collect cards from Japan (or those issued in Japan) but it's pretty amazing how many I have and how different they are. For example, the '08 Kellogg's one might be the most "American" Japanese card that I have. That's an American company logo on the front of the card and that's mostly a 2008 design from American baseball card company...

  For the first time in exactly a year, I received a shipment of cards from COMC last week. I wouldn't say COMC is truly back back. I did pay extra for the express shipping so I wouldn't have to wait however long we're waiting for COMC shipments these days. But the cards arrived in short fashion and it was nice to see something in the mailbox from my preferred online card site for over a decade until last year. I had waited a year to order what was in my cart. I didn't want to be one of those people who paid and then waited nine months for shipment. I mean, what if I ordered them and COMC went under? Those were the kind of questions that were floating in my head last year.   That meant that I did lose a couple of items out of my cart, but no big deal. Nothing in there was anything highly sought-after and I merely replaced whatever I lost with a new version or something else I liked. Many of my collecting interests are not high on anyone's radar, especially 2020 fli...

It's funny how a World Series can affect you when you have no horse in the race. By "funny" I don't mean "oh, golly gee, this wacky timeless diversion that tugs on our heartstrings that we collectively adore through every delightful morsel, this base and ball of hills and valleys that we relish no matter who the participants. Jolly good show lads, jolly good show." No, by "funny," I mean IS THIS GAME EVER GOING TO ENNNNNNDDDDD SO I CAN GO HOOOOOOOOMME????!!!!!!!! I don't have an interest in the Red Sox or Cardinals. I'm rooting for the Red Sox by default, but by "root" I mean, "oh, so, the Cardinals won that game? What was the score? Has the boxscore come in yet? Where's my story? WHERE'S MY STORY????? ... Oh, damn, the Cardinals won." I have seen only snippets of this series, which is is sort of expected for the job that I hold but not to this extreme. Through a quirk of scheduling, every game that ...

Yikes. Maybe the Dodgers should have started Chad Billingsley tonight . This is awful. And I'm soooo glad I talked up Kuroda . That worked well, didn't it? I hope someone hands him his plate during the postgame spread, because he'll never find it otherwise. While I'm waiting for the Dodgers to mount a monumental comeback in Game 3 (game is now officially on in the background, because I can't stomach watching the Dodgers batters flail away at Cliff Lee), I thought I'd post Part 1 of my card show goodies. The show worked out pretty well. I didn't have quite as much cash to spend, but I came home with just as much stuff. My new habit of looking for deals, possibly combined with dealers looking to move some product, produced a healthy stack of cards for the collection. I don't think I paid more than 10 bucks for any card, which could be the first time I've done that in three years. I'll show the 2009 cards on this post, because there aren't a l...