Night Owl Cards

Today, I'm told, is the 30th anniversary of the birth of the World Wide Web. What a wonderful invention that was. You wouldn't be reading blog post No. 4,222 of Night Owl Cards without it. Where would I be, where would my collection be, where would my bank account be (that's debatable) without good, old WWW. That said, I'm fully prepared if this all breaks down tomorrow. I'm ready to collect by myself with a notebook and a pen, 1988-style, when somebody pulls the plug on the internet and we can't get it back. I'm prepared because I just plain expect technology to fail. I think many of us are like that. We rely on technology. We think technology is great. We sing its praises. But underneath it all, we're waiting for it to fail. There is a well-known and immensely popular book titled "When Technology Fails," which is one of those lighthearted disaster-survival reads. There are oft-repeated throw-away lines about technology such as, ...

(The days are all blending into each other. That can mean only one thing. I'm spending my summer like a teacher! Only problem is with my job it lasts for only one week. Speaking of defective jobs, here is another one of The Most Defective Sets I Know). 3. TMDSIK: 1996 TOPPS LASER There is a down side to being innovative. Sometimes it doesn't work. The '90s were filled with innovative sets -- some succeeded, some didn't. Topps decided to take the diecut phenomenon of the '90s and take it to the extreme. The Laser set was filled with intricate cuts that were meant to illustrate flames and light fixtures. There were two problems with this. First, the cards were ugly. The flamethrower cards are pretty nice, but that's as far as I'll go. The rest is awful. The primary problem, though, is storing these cards in pages. It is dangerous work. Every time you slide one in or out of a pocket, you're risking damaging the card. And it doesn't mat...

I recently completed another Twitter trade with a fellow Dodger fan named Fernando. (How appropriate is that name?) The deal was mostly Dodgers for Dodgers. Fernando (or @NorCalDodger ) found a few cards from my want list, like this amusing Action Packed item of Todd Hollandsworth, and I sent him some of the bazillion dupes that I own. But amid the want list needs that I received, I was pleasantly surprised by a few extras. See if you can tell what I mean by looking at some of the cards. Did your eyes light up in the middle there? Mine did. And it's not just because the non-Dodgers in that series were unexpected. It was because the non-Dodgers were unexpected VINTAGE. How delightful to receive a random 1966 Topps card and a random subset item from 1973 Topps just because. I have absolutely no connection to the Astros beyond being able to tell you their 1980 starting lineup. I can't even tell you who Chris Zachary is. Does it matter that he isn...

When I started this blog, one of the first people who ever sent me cards -- perhaps the first person who ever sent me cards -- was David from Tribe Cards . I was absolutely elated when he sent them to me. I'm pretty sure it came through in the post. I was practically typing it from the ceiling. YOU GUYS! THIS PERSON I DON'T EVEN KNOW JUST SENT ME A BUNCH OF BASEBALL CARDS THAT I COLLECT !!!! YOU GUYS!!! I DON'T EVEN BELIEVE THIS!!!!!! Dave had one of the first card blogs that I knew, certainly the first that I knew who ran contests where people could win cards. Yes, it was once a novel concept. And he's still at it. He's got a 2013 giveaway going where people can win cards of their favorite player, just by entering. And last year, he opened packs for every day of the baseball season, and gave away the contents. I was the fortunate person who received the Dodgers. I kind of entered the contest with my present been-around-the-block night owl attitude. Yo...

Don't you hate it when a post publishes on the blog before you're ready for it to appear? This has happened to me several times, and it is one of the most irritating things about blogging. It doesn't help that the unintended post appears almost always because I screwed something up, either I set the publishing time wrong or hit the wrong button. Then -- bam! -- something stupid is there on the blog and there's nothing I can do about it. Last week, I published something that wasn't ready and I didn't even realize I did it. I wanted to show off some Dodger cards sent to me by reader Nick, and I was working on a word association angle. But it wasn't working and I thought I had saved it in my drafts so I could rehaul it in the future. Instead, I published it, and who knows how many people read it and went "huh?" When I discovered that it published, I deleted it. But I felt bad because these were cards that someone graciously sent me and now th...

Unless your name was Nancy Kerrigan, Kurt Cobain or O.J. Simpson, 1994 was going along quite nicely until the baseball strike. I moved to a new city in 1994. I didn't know it at the time, but it was one of the smartest decisions I would make. After four years of frustration and upheaval, I began to experience stability in '94. I've lived in the same city since and what I know about my current life now began 17 years ago. In the baseball world, the Dodgers were on the upswing. Their catcher and first basemen were the two most recent Rookies of the Year. And the right fielder was about to win the next one. The pitching staff was pretty good, even though they had just traded away someone named Pedro Martinez. In Triple A resided touted prospects like Todd Hollandworth, Billy Ashley, Roger Cedeno and Ron Coomer. At the time that the major league season came to a halt, the Dodgers were 58-56, but in first place in the National League West. When baseball resumed, the D...