Night Owl Cards

  Card bloggers who have been at it for a dozen years or more are aware of Dave from Tribe Cards and his seemingly never-ending giveaways. I've mentioned a few times now that he was my introduction to how wonderful card blogging could be. People sent you cards just because you asked. For free. And good stuff, too. The first stuffed box I received not even two months into my blogging career contained a 1950 Bowman card. I had arrived in the blogging world just to write about cards -- isn't that wonderful that you could do that? -- and now this?!?   So when Dave announced almost four years ago that he was launching another giveaway -- a return to the 12 Days of Cardmas Giveaway, even though it wasn't Christmas -- I signed right up, very enthusiastically.   Years went by and I forgot about the whole thing until Dave reappeared last month to announce he was sending stuff out. The original call for sign-ups provided a sign-up "sheet," requesting our top three choices...

  The majority of my card-sends these days are via the once-shunned, plain, white envelope. The size of the packages are smaller, and now that we've dispelled with that long-held fallacy that you're asking for trouble sending cards in a PWE, it's the more logical, and cheaper, option. I still do send out larger stuff in sturdier envelopes and I receive cards in those yellow 5-by-7s or 7-by-9s, too. But those padded envelopes are no guarantee because just last week ... ... the dreaded bullet hole again. That's some distasteful arrival, especially for 5 dollars and 30-something cents. The last time this happened to me was almost 10 years ago now (wow, I've been doing this too long). So I guess I can handle once-every-10-years, but it's still a shock when it happens. It makes me not want to send another PWE ever.   This envelope also arrived with the corner torn -- and the innards sticking out! Just not a good sign for the contents within.   But I'm pleased to...

Tony Taylor here is a survivor, as are all the other cards that arrived in a package from mr. haverkamp yesterday. They withstood the shocking damage inflicted by the U.S. Postal Service.  I am now a veteran of damaged packages arriving in my mailbox, most enclosed in the USPS's courtesy body bag of regret. Fortunately, it is still such a rare occasion that I feel the need to document it each time. And I have . But this was on another level. The following is what greeted me on Monday when I went to get the mail. It was sandwiched between two other unharmed card packages: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you care. I've read it all before. Also, I can't read it because I'm rather distracted by what appears to be a BULLET HOLE. Let's have a closer look, shall we? Oh, this is not good. Here is the front of the package: That is disturbing. The other damaged packages that I have received in the past arrived in plain, white envelopes. This is the first ti...