Night Owl Cards

I've collected cards for a long time now. But because I go at my own pace and don't attempt to grab everything from the latest and greatest, I've missed out on some things that are almost regular occurrences for other collectors. For example: This is my first rip card. I didn't pull it -- I don't really buy boxes anymore. It was sent to me by Jeroen, The Dutch Card Guy . Since it's my first rip card, you must now be submitted to my very outdated and antiquated views on rip cards. And those are: I can appreciate the intrigue created by a card like this, but I have a fundamental problem with voluntarily ripping up a baseball card. Just putting aside the philosophical argument of turning a card into a wrapper, I don't know if I like the idea of ripping up my own baseball cards ... in my own home ... where there are people who don't understand the whole accumulation of baseball cards thing ... and giving them IDEAS . One simple tear in front of th...

A little while ago, The Dutch Card Guy held a contest with the top prize being a super fancy tricked-out Clayton Kershaw card. To boost your chances of winning you could comment on as many posts on the blog as you wanted. I'm kind of known for being a collector of Kershaws and I once commented on Play At The Plate's blog for a similar such contest around 140 times in one weekend (I was a little bored). So I thought it was the perfect marriage -- obtaining a card of my favorite player through something that had won me cards one other time. I signed up. And started commenting ... only to realize: A) I was too busy to do this. B) Other people were commenting a lot more than I was There are so many more Kershaw collectors out there than there were when I first started collecting him five years ago. So, I gave up and assumed that was a lost cause. But I was only partly right. Sure, getting the Kershaw card didn't happen. But I finished second or third (I don...

When I first started trading, my circle was very small. Just my brother and I. He was the only one I knew who collected baseball cards. He was the only one who had something that I wanted. So in the spring and summer of 1975, we made a few exchanges. Some trades were silly. I didn't like the look on some player's face, or my brother didn't, and we swapped so we wouldn't be tormented by Gene Locklear or Don Hahn ever again. You know kids. The few "serious" trades that were made involved our favorite teams. Red Sox for Dodgers. And vice versa. These trades became automatic, so much so that they weren't even trades. If he pulled a Dodger that I didn't have, he handed it over to me, and I did the same with any Red Sox. A couple of years later, my youngest brother became old enough to have an interest in baseball and cards, and Orioles were added to the trade agreement. Meanwhile, a few friends collected cards, and during those first ...

I expect this post to receive an ungodly number of hits. It's not because I'm showing a photo of the gold medal-winning Netherlands field hockey team, the consensus "best-looking team in the Olympics," as determined last July by about 462 different online publications, all of whose employees are apparently not getting their -- ahem -- needs met. It's because I included the words "Netherlands" and "field hockey team" together with the words "trade" and "post" in the blog title. The web bots love the word "post," and I'm suspicious that they like the word "trade," too. Throw in guys who love gals in tight outfits and sports bras, as well as those who have a thing about mismatched shoes, and, well, I can kiss the November readership blahs goodbye. I'm going for the record here. Welcome to another post where content is meaningless in the eyes of blogging stats. The real reason I trotted o...

Throw the word "Holland" and "baseball" at me and my only thought for decades was "Bert Blyleven." Blyleven's place of birth was one those early trivia nuggets that I used to throw out to impress the girls, long before ESPN's Berman started labeling him with his supremely unfunny nicknames. As a youngster, I used to enjoy pronouncing Blyleven's Holland hometown, "Zeist," relentlessly. "Zeeeest! Zeeeeeeeeeeest!!!" I didn't care that I wasn't pronouncing it correctly (it's pronounced "Zest," like the soap brand). But fortunately, thanks to card blogs, I have another answer for when people come up to me on the street and yell, "Quick, what's the first thing that comes to your mind when I say, 'baseball' and 'Holland'?" I will yell in response: "The Dutch Card Guy!!!!!" And we'll all have a good laugh. I completed my first transaction of any kind with...