Night Owl Cards

I've been the recipient of several "out of the blue" card packages lately. It's quite an honor when someone pulls a card and automatically thinks, "the dude over at Night Owl Cards would like this card." That is apparently what happened when Paul of Paul's Random Stuff pulled this black-bordered O-Pee-Chee card of Clayton Kershaw. It arrived in a happy little envelope today. "I thought you might not have this one," the note said. Paul, you thought correctly. Another Kershaw for the collection. This card is awfully similar to one of the Timeline Kershaw cards from last year, and possibly one of the Documentary cards. There is a fine post on Wrigley Wax about this. It's a good reason to stick with collecting just one set per card company, especially when it comes to Upper Deck. Because the company obviously doesn't have enough photos to go around. (But I've also addressed the repetition with Topps and Bowman, too). Speaking of Topps...

I haven't lost my job. Not yet. It's just that I heard news today that no employee wants to hear from their company. It makes workers skittish. To make matters worse, I heard it on my day off. That completely killed the enjoyment of a day I had waited for all week. Everyone knows that newspapers are going through some tough times. Some of them are disappearing. I'm not sure where all this will lead. A lot of people think this is merely the progression of people receiving their news from other outlets, in other forms. I believe it's more than that. And, losing the printed word in its newsprint form -- if it ever comes to that -- will have ramifications for generations to come. And a lot of them won't be good. But that's a post for another time. I was in the mood for a pick-me-up today for another reason. My daughter was sick and missed four days of school this week. Our week had been turned upside down caring for her. Today, we were finally getting b...

When I first started this blog, I stepped into the trading scene somewhat cautiously. My main intent with the blog was simply to write about baseball cards, whatever came into my head. I'm a writer, first and foremost. Trading sounded cool, but it wasn't my main objective. My, how things have changed in just over two months. I'm in deep when it comes to trades, and it's all very excellent. Meanwhile, some new blogs have started up recently, and the proprietor of one, The Easy Life , certainly didn't follow my lead. Steve is a trading machine. I see news of his trades all over Blogtopia even though his blog isn't even a month old. That's great. And what's even better are the cards that Steve sends in trades. Not only did he give me the final two cards for my Allen & Ginter set, but the card pile he sent me contained more inserts, parallels and jersey cards than I've seen in such a trade to date. This is definitely a case of quality over quantity....

How about that? On the very day that I announced myself as a set collector for the Blog Bat Around, I completed my first 2008 set. The last two cards I needed to wrap up the wonderful Topps Allen and Ginter set arrived in the mail today from Stephen of The Easy Life. He heard my call for the Harriet Beecher Stowe card and the Wily Mo Pena card and sent them to me, along with some other absolutely terrific stuff that I will post about hopefully soon (seriously, it's going to take a concerted effort to produce an adequate stack of cards in return for Steve. But the wheels are in motion!). Actually, two other bloggers are either preparing to send or have already sent those two cards to me as well. Steve just happens to be closer or work faster or both. Never fear, folks. I'll be more than happy to take your Stowes and Penas and send some cards your way. You are all too kind. Meanwhile, I am very satisfied that Stowe is safely in the bottom left corner of sheet #18a in my A...