Night Owl Cards

  What might that be? The Dodgers' second straight World Series title? The Bills' win over the infernal Patriots last weekend? Finally killing off the yellowjacket infestation underneath the siding in August?   Nah.   My biggest win of the year was landing the prize in the vintage giveaway over at The Diamond King a couple of weeks ago. In keeping with the season, DK has been giving away a bunch of cards from his collection. I waited out the numbered and prospect lots and I was rewarded. Vintage! Sweet, sweet vintage.   As a veteran vintage collector, I saw cards in the lot that I already owned, but that didn't stop me from entering because there were several cards I didn't own, including cards on freshly made want lists! Plus, I could always do a giveaway myself with the extras.   There was so much variety in this group that it took me awhile to figure out how to present it here. I'm still not sure that this won't turn out to be rambling without any direction...

  About three weeks ago, Johnny's Trading Spot held a giveaway for his readers, randomizing off 350-plus cards from one of his many, many, many finds.   Most of the cards were of the magazine variety from Baseball Cards Magazine and the like from the late 1980s and early 1990s. I'm very familiar with those, having come across them back in the day and also through adding the Dodgers to my collection.   They are pretty cool though nothing I look to collect (except the ones modeled on the 1975 Topps design). When Johnny displayed what was up for the giveaway, my eyes instead gravitated toward a nine-pocket page that contained a certain oddball from the 1960s.   I didn't think more of it, the chances of getting that page wasn't great, there were 30 different pages offered up!    Well, lo and behold, I ended up landing page #18, the majority of which were 1968 Game cards.     I don't know how but I gamed the system!   Outside of the one Dodger in...

(If you haven't voted for your favorite Bert Campaneris '70s card in the last post, I invite you to do so ). So you've been away for a few years and want everyone to know that you're back. How do you do that? Do what The Diamond King did when he returned to card blogging last month: Bombard readers with contests and giveaways! Well, you've certainly gotten MY attention, sir! I'll start with the giveaways first. Since he returned, the Diamond King has issued multiple "Diamond King 9" giveaways, straight out of the chute and rapid fire in the last month-plus. As I've said before, I am very slow to get to these "first come, first serve" giveaways. I used to think "I spend too much time on the computer" and now I realize "I don't spend enough time on the computer at all!" But I was able to nab two cards out of the many giveaways. I won this key 1981 Fleer Star Sticker of The Hawk. I have since acquir...

It's a good thing that we're in a new golden age of giveaways and contests on the blogs, because trading through this medium has slowed to a dribble. I totally get it. With the post office out as an option the last couple of months, I've relied on PWEs and the mailbox for any transacting. It's actually been a productive alternative, but there are limits and because of them I haven't been able to send cards to certain people. Hopefully, life will be more receptive to trades through the mail in the coming weeks. In the meantime, we have crazy generous contest giveaways like the Cardpocalypse going on right now on the blog ... uh ... Cardpocalypse (do I have that right -- the contest and the blog names are the same?). Tim has been running weekly contest giveaways since his return to blogging. Each giveaway launches on Sunday and is themed. Each week's winner is unable to participate in future giveaways until the Free-For-All (my phrase, not his) in Week ...