Night Owl Cards

If blogging was around when I was a teenager, I don't think I could have done it. As I've mentioned before, when I was a kid -- before the teenage years hit -- I'd set out to write my own fictional novel. One time, I got up to about 70 or 80 loose leaf pages full of pencil-scrawled writing before I gave up. Then the teenaged years hit and writing became work -- essays and outlines and literary analysis. Who wanted to write during their free time? Plus there is having the guts to put myself out in the public like one must do when blogging. I couldn't have handled that as a teenager. I had a difficult enough time raising my hand in class. But I've come across several teens and pre-college card bloggers over the years. Sometimes I don't even know they're that young. Sure, I know they're younger than me because of some of their references, but often times I'm surprised when I find it's an 18- or 19-year-old who wants to be involved this hobb...

I'm going to try something here and it's probably the first and last time that I am going to do it. I am going to write a post without any accompanying photos. Don't groan. You'll all live. I'll try to make it interesting even without the pretty pictures. So ... There are a lot of people out there who read blogs and don't have a blog of their own. Some of them probably think that blogging isn't that tough. What's the big deal, right? You just click on the computer, open up a page, and write. Anybody can do it, stupid. Well, yeah, Stupid is here, admitting that anybody can do it. And just about anybody has. But not just anybody can stick with it. There are endless examples of bloggers, or wanna-be-bloggers, quitting after 2 years, 1 year, 6 months, 3 months, one month, even one week. Blogging, more than anything, takes dedication. If you're not dedicated, if it's a problem for you, you're not going to be a successful blogger. Take ...

Every once in awhile there is mention about which blog was the first to relay their unimportant-yet-fascinating thoughts about baseball cards to the world at large. Was it Stale Gum? Was it the Baseball Card Blog? Was it Cardboard Gods? Was it some forgotten blogger who was really first but through a series of cutthroat secret collector meetings was forced from his mother's basement into a life of productivity and riches? It's silly and pointless talk. It doesn't matter who was first. What matters is that collectors are enjoying commentary and insight from a variety of points of view every 24 hours or so. I've been gleaning insight for almost four years now and not once did I wonder who was first. Besides, I already know who was first. And it wasn't a blog at all. This is the first card blog. And I'm not the first person to say that. I received this book from my wife for Christmas. I have wanted it since there was an explosion of references to it on...

Marisa is going to be my accomplice in an experiment here. I am rather fascinated with Blogger's addition of the stats feature to its dashboard. I'm all for gaining any knowledge I can on who reads my stuff and why. I know I'm not making any money off this thing, but it's still interesting. While I mostly write this blog for myself, I do like to find topics that interest other people. After taking a tour through the stats, I have determined that people who come to my blog are interested in three primary things: 1. Pictures of super expensive baseball cards. 2. Pictures of pretty girls. 3. Pictures of anything involving pop culture. In other words, I could write the following: sadfjaleruelaufald adflajfld aouou;'a'av tlajdlafjald alj aldj. eerogpipsis;kfs. eoudaljadlfjadl alau. zcoul caouohp loujssl. adoauf aoulj. ;ks;gispix;k;sk adpia;k;aeo ouad ewerouwoeu oozzuzuzz. And if I put a picture of beautiful Marisa with it, it would draw some "read...