Night Owl Cards

It occurred to me that I haven't done one of those giant trade posts that everyone loves so much in quite awhile. It also occurred to me that I am on vacation this week. Why on earth have I not realized that vacation is the perfect time for a giant trade post? Well, other than the fact that Mother's Day is approaching and wrapping presents takes me about two days, the lawn mower is busted and I'm trying to get a new one operational, the cable is acting zooey and tech support even zooier, I've got a half dozen home projects that aren't getting done because I don't have the cash/know-how, my diet/exercise program eats up a tremendous amount of free time ... other than that, I guess I just never thought about it before. So, let me squeeze in an epic trade post. It'll take my mind of the fact that the guy next door is beautifying his lawn for the second time this week while I'm walking through knee-high grass. The first cards are from Nathan at Cana...

I see someone else has posted on the 15th anniversary of the Dodgers' last no-hitter. I had planned to do the same, since I had missed Nomo's birthday anniversary (I couldn't do what I did before anyway). Plus, I had just received a couple of Nomo relics from Rhubarb_Runner and this seemed the appropriate day to feature them. Nomo's no-hitter is one of the more remarkable in history. It was performed at Coors Field, which in 1996 was known as the place where batted balls went into space. I should know. My fantasy baseball teams at the time were dependent upon Rockies hitters like Dante Bichette, Vinny Castilla and Larry Walker. Nomo struck out eight batters and walked four en route to the first of his two major league no-hitters. I wasn't aware of his feat until morning because it took place at night, out west, and I must have turned in a little bit early that evening. Nomo is an interesting phenomenon. He had all that success in Japan, produced a terri...

Remember, you have only until Wednesday night to enter my contest for a bunch of relic cards. You can either attempt to win six relics by merely saying "hey" on this post , or you can add five more key cards to the other six if you crack the code in that post, and are chosen the random winner. So far there has been one ... well, one-and-a-half ... attempts to crack the code. If I'm going to have a real chance at giving away those five other cards, more people will have to take a shot. So, come on folks. That's what lunch breaks are for. I thank everyone for entering. One of the cool things about contests is that you are reminded that there are more people out there reading the blog than just other bloggers. It's easy to be lulled into thinking that you're writing only for the very rabid collector who is so obsessed that they also write about cards on a daily or weekly basis. Then when a contest appears, an unknown voice pops up in the comments and you r...

I received these two gold parallel Upper Deck Documentary cards from Rhubarb_Runner over at e rayhahn, rayhahn the other day (got to look up the spelling on that name every time). I have two primary questions with this package. The first is: did Upper Deck dump all the Documentary cards in a pile in Missouri somewhere? Does Rhubarb merely have to walk out his back door, pluck a few cards from the enormous stack and ship them off? He seems to have unending stock of Documentary. The second question is: who attempts to collect the entire parallel set of Documentary? The parallel aspect of this hobby jumped, jived and wailed over the shark a long time ago, as any number of folks, including me, have mentioned. But, unlike some rather collectible parallels, like Upper Deck Masterpieces or Baseball Heroes, or even Topps' gold parallels, there are parallels of unpopular sets like Documentary that I can't see anyone collecting. It's not just because the set proved to ...

Those who have read this blog for awhile know that I get to four card shows a year. That's all there is around here. Three of those shows are in the same place. Three times a year, the Syracuse fairgrounds hosts a sports memorabilia show that is billed as the largest show in the state. For six years I have tried to make the trip there every January, April and October. Sometimes it's been difficult, other times impossible, but I have been a faithful customer. I gas up the vehicle, drop the disinterested at the mall, and I have my fun. I have gone through this routine so many times that I instinctively know when the next show is coming. Sure, I check for updates, but it's just a formality. The show is always those three months and always at the end of the month. Usually the last or second-to-last weekend of the month. This gives me the opportunity to plan, save my money, and most importantly, save my money. A couple of months ago, I checked the date for the next show...