Night Owl Cards

I am making enough progress in starting my Greatest 100 Cards of the '80s countdown that I think I can start cutting candidates down to the final 100 fairly soon. It's all a bit muddled now because I've been reviewing the '80s sets in order from the start of the decade to the end of the decade and I'm currently in the middle of an evaluating disaster, also known as the overproduction era. There were just so many cards between 1986-89, almost too many to process in any kind of objective manner. Not that there is any threat of this happening, but I will never do a top 100 cards of the '90s countdown because trying to trim that specific card avalanche to a final 100 would finish me off. I've pretty much gotten through 1986 and 1987 -- again, it's a bit murky -- and am in the middle of 1988, and I am discovering that I am in disagreement with a lot of previous "great 1980s cards" countdowns. It has to do with cards like this: I don...

Happy Canada Day, once again, to my Canadian readers. This is getting to be a bit of a tradition now that I've referenced Canada Day on the actual day the last three years. Tell me, non-Canadians, what's the first thing you think of when someone mentions "Canada"? If you didn't respond with "hockey," you need to try again. Hockey is such a Canadian institution that if someone were to tell me that a famous athlete from Canada never played hockey, I'd be more surprised by that than just about anything. Even professional baseball players from Canada played hockey before they made baseball their career choice. Larry Walker, one of the greatest baseball players to ever come out of Canada, wanted to be a goalie in the NHL when he was growing up. One of his childhood friends was Boston Bruins great Cam Neely. Walker never played professional hockey. But there are several MLB players who were drafted by an NHL team, played in pro hockey leagues an...

I'm succumbing to peer pressure (blogger pressure?) here. Either that or I need a topic. Anyway, the idea folks at Dinged Corners challenged everyone to pull out a binder filled with cards and find six that make them feel warm and tingly. But there is a 30-second time limit on selecting the cards. A few have answered the challenge. And after seeing their results, I did, too. But, as usual, I couldn't quite follow the rules. All of my binders feature sets or Dodgers, so card variety -- which I think is one of the purposes of this exercise -- would not exist if I pulled from binders. So, I went straight for the misfit box. The misfit box is a collection of cards and pseudo-cards that don't exactly fit into my collection. Either they are duplicates, or they're too large or small, or they feature a theme that doesn't go with what I collect. However, they still make me happy. And that's why the 30-second rule isn't a problem for me. I can find happiness in just a...

This is not the first blog to call card collecting an addiction. That it is. That. It. Is. But sometimes you have to be slapped in the face with a few dud packs, as I was tonight upon ripping into my third Allen and Ginter blaster box in three days. Call it a box-a-day habit. One purchased Wednesday, one Thursday and one Friday. I bought the last one despite already blowing my weekly allowance -- the cash left over after feeding the Suburban Monster (bills, groceries, gas, dog). But I needed to get one of the last two boxes at Target, because the closest Wal-Mart to my home --apparently operating under the assumption that only kids buy cards -- removed the card display to put up back-to-school stock (enough frivolity, kids! How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?) The Wedneday and Thursday boxes were semi-productive, fueling my habit. The third box tonight was deflating. With eight ripped packs still on the floor, this is my booty, (excluding the mass quanti...