Night Owl Cards

  Have you seen the latest installment of the 1975 Topps worst-to-best countdown? My goodness, five episodes in and I guess everyone's bored to death of it. Probably an overreaction on my part, but after averaging 280 views on this series it was suddenly down to 135 yesterday! I know it's just a bunch of head shots, but check it out if you haven't.   OK, sorry, blogger's lament there. Moving on.   One of the craziest transformations in cards over a period of time has got to be the evolution of the Pacific brand. A lot of what I hear about Pacific is related to cards that look like the one above, stuff that came out in the second half of the 1990s.   Or stuff like this:   I can handle that kind of Pacific in small doses. Not many of their primary sets do much for me. Too much pointless bling. But I'll enjoy a crazy insert or parallel or two.   Something that's more my speed is earlier Pacific, when it was known as Pacific Legends.   I received all of t...

Oof, yesterday was a rough one. A longtime and well-loved former co-worker passed away over the weekend. I worked closely with him for a number of years and I'm almost the last one around from when he was working there, so I wrote the remembrance for him in the paper.   It was a long day and wore me out. But I appreciate the opportunity, although the rest of the week won't be any easier.   It's also another road block in my attempt to do card things and nothing but card things, so the 5,000-post/card giveaway encountered a little hiccup. But it's still in motion!   I had started out sending packages in the order of how winners commented on the giveaway although there was no real order set out. Then in the middle of packaging the repack giveaways, I got an envelope from Jeff of Wax Pack Wonders . He sent a note saying he was sending a few return cards before he forgot in anticipation of receiving his giveaway package. And, just like that, I instinctively started filling ...

  (How much you wanna bet Pete is checking on the ponies?)   I have been trying to update my want lists on the blog for three years now.   It's slow going because it's super tedious and not in the "fun tedious" way like updating a binder.   Mostly what I need to update are Dodgers team set wants. I've been working my way backwards and I'm at the tail end of finishing the 2002 wants with Upper Deck and a few randoms to go. Working on these sets makes me realize how many evil sets were created while I wasn't collecting in the first part of this century. There are so many sets where half the team set is short-printed, rookies you never heard of are short-printed, just really annoying stuff. Do I even have the energy to track down an SP'd card of someone named Rick Roberts? Those are the things that go through my head when I'm updating these lists, and then I get deflated, lie on the ground and groan and stop.   I still have 2000 and 2001 to go and the...

    The past year has forced me to expand my means of obtaining baseball cards. While purchasing cards at the store or on COMC has vastly decreased, buying on ebay and Sportlots has increased.   Consider it a trend for 2020. There have been many other hobby-related card trends this year (check out my end-of-the-year post for those), some of which I've participated in a little. But one of the blog crazes of late -- trading on Trading Card Database -- I've avoided so far.   Unlike hoarding toilet paper or plundering card aisles, I'm down with trading on TCDB if that's what you want. It makes sense for certain traders. But I'm not one of them. Yet.   First, to trade successfully on TCDB, you have to upload your collection on the site. I'm sure you don't have to upload the whole thing, but the thought of listing out even one-seventh of my 100,000-plus cards makes me want to crawl into a corner. Second, I like to keep my trading outlets to one or two avenues. If ...

I am not a dedicated player collector because it doesn't fit into how I view baseball and how my collection reflects the history of baseball. Set collecting and team collecting, I believe, do a better job of telling you what's going on in the sport in any given year. And that's important to me. During my less kind moments, I consider player collecting "stalker-ish," but I do see the value in gathering cards of specific players. I do it myself, but it's a low-key pursuit. There is no drive behind it and no real goals. The fact is, I do admire certain players instinctively or subconsciously, players who never played for my favorite team. So, when Jeff of Wax Pack Wonders offered one of his latest giveaways, presented in a very player-collector friendly format, I actually took part, and I didn't pick exclusively Dodgers either. (Confession time: I didn't pick exclusively Dodgers because my Dodgers collection is a bit, shall we say, "advan...