Night Owl Cards

The farther I get away from the age 18-49 demographic, the more the players that dominated the sports scene for seemingly forever fade out of the conversation.   You could have never convinced me in the 1970s and 1980s that guys like Reggie Jackson would slowly disappear, that their names would cease to be on everyone's lips, on every magazine cover, in every card set, in every sports column and TV broadcast.   Fewer and fewer sports fans can relate to the significant players and moments of the '70s and '80s and, yes, that means I have less to discuss on social media sites and the like. There are more modern players and moments that get all the attention and I sit on the sidelines either puzzled or with nothing to say.   One of those notables of the past who has become less and less significant with each passing year is Steve Garvey. I know a lot of people my age don't want to acknowledge that, but it's true. If someone isn't a Dodgers (or even Padres) fan and d...

   What would you say collectors who aren't bloggers think of us collecting bloggers, if they think about us at all?   Would they think we're wildly dedicated to the hobby? Probably not. But we are.   Would they think we're wasting our time, writing a bunch of words nobody has time to read anymore? Maybe.   Would they think we're stodgy, focused only on old cardboard (defined as anything before the '90s) and traditional ways of collecting -- buying packs, holding on to base cards. Some would, I think.   But I happen to think that card bloggers have the most varied and interesting collections. Sure, there's a bit of pack rat in all of us collecting bloggers, but those hoarded stacks of cards are so damn fascinating. In this world of specialization -- just take a look at what the grading aspect of the hobby focuses on -- I'm glad my collection is eclectic. It's not as eclectic as some but it's more eclectic than most.   All I need to do is look through...

  For the first five years of this blog, there was nothing more mind-blowing to me than communicating and trading with collectors from around the world, specifically overseas.   England, France, Australia, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, I couldn't believe the reach of the blog and how many different people collected baseball cards! I connected with many of them and traded multiple times with some.   Then, slowly, each of them disappeared from the blog space, often without a trace, until it's now just me and some of my Canadian friends.   One collector, though, has turned back the clock, at least for now, by moving from the States back to Japan. Kenny, a.k.a., Zippy Zappy , has been downsizing and refocusing his collection and sending out cards to folks who could use them more than he can.   I received an envelope from Japan a few weeks ago with some cards, and then yesterday a big, fat package from Japan Post was deposited on a chair on my porch. Well, well, t...

  Yesterday my vehicle received four brand-new tires. It was long overdue. I hadn't changed them since I bought it four years ago, and it had been hovering over my head for awhile now.   You know how it goes. Tires are expensive -- everything is. And people who aren't made of cash are always pushing it. But I don't like the chaos in my brain of the multitude of unfinished tasks, and when something is accomplished -- even something as mundane as new tires -- I feel that endorphin rush, that rush of "Done!" Finally, something I can cross of The Massive List.   This is something that translates easily to the hobby, especially if you are some sort of completist, as I am. I like finishing sets, large flagship sets in particular, but also team sets, and sometimes a mini insert set, when I need a fix fast.   There is no better feeling in the hobby for me than finishing a set, yelling "Done!" in the privacy of my own home as I slip the final card into the binder...

  A pretty crappy month-plus-one-more-week turned around for me in the last couple days, fortunately.   This is all relative, of course, with the state of things lately, but it was nice to be bubbly for a day. To briefly recap, in the last couple of days I learned that my retirement is not a pipe dream, my daughter who was laid off by AI last month landed a job with a salary significantly larger than her last position, and someone at work agreed to write a story instead of me writing it on top of my too many job responsibilities. Happy dance!   In there somewhere -- Friday, I think -- I received three card packages in the mail. This never happens like it used to on the blogs. Where once I could get three mailings from other bloggers around 4-5 times a week, if I want that kind of incoming now, I have to buy the things myself.   So that was nice. And probably the nicest surprise came from Kenny of Torren' Up Cards , who sent me a single pack all the way from his place...

  I got a card envelope from Japan last week.   I've received card envelopes from all over the world -- England, Australia, France, the Netherlands, probably places I'm forgetting -- but it hasn't happened for a good while. So it's very cool when the return address says "Tokyo".   It was sent by Zippy Zappy, of Torren' Up Cards . As you might know, he now lives in Japan. He used to live in the same state I did, now he's real far away. But the cards are still coming.   He sent me my first Roki Sasaki card, the card you see here. It's from the 2021 BBM set, I'm assuming "Cross Torrent" is some sort of insert? Sasaki's Japanese rookie cards appear to be from 2020, this card came out in his first year in the Japan Pacific League. He pitched for the Chiba Lotte Marines for five years before coming to the Dodgers. He's been a regular starter for really just the last three years, and his thing is he strikes batters out a lot . This c...

  I don't know if you remember "The Break Up of the Phone Company" in the mid-1980s, but it was a huge deal at the time. Until that point, you made a call, wherever you were, and the Bell System took care of it. After the break-up, we became familiar with AT&T and Sprint and MCI. It was weird. I was in college when all this was happening and was happy I didn't have to make any decisions on my "long-distance provider." This all seems like ancient history in the world of a computer in your pocket, but it was my first encounter with the fracturing of a key element of society (Well, actually maybe that was cable TV). Since then, there's been fracturing all over the place. No one gets all their information from one newspaper or one evening news program each day anymore. In the music world, the shared experience of everyone listening to the same new songs on the radio has been fractured beyond repair. It seems like more work to find what you're looking...