Night Owl Cards

  One of the most frustrating things to me is that no matter how much you prepare, research, take advice, it feels like there's no moving forward for very long. It's one step ahead and two steps back.   Maybe this is the point I'm at, actually moving out of middle age, or maybe it's just a period of time that will go away, but I'm dealing with more than a couple firsts in my life that aren't very pleasant.  This is why the hobby means so much to me. There are fun firsts popping off all the time. Every new arrival is a first. I just added the 1969 Topps Gil Hodges and Joe Pepitone to my collection. Welcome newbies! (Actually, this isn't the first time Hodges has been in my collection, I foolishly got rid of my original copy -- don't remember how).   So that's a fun first and I'm eager to recall other fun -- or semi-fun -- firsts to take the edge off of these present-time dumb ol' firsts. So here's the sixth edition of Firsts, where I rand...

The post I wrote the other day got me thinking about holding onto the memories before they disappear. And that caused me to remember the "firsts" posts that I've written. I haven't done one of those in almost three years so it's about time I added to the series . If you've forgotten what those are about (join the club), it's where I go through random "firsts" in my life, usually stuff that happened in my first 20 years because that's when most of the firsts occur.   Here we go:     First All-Star Game that I watched   The first All-Star Game I watched was in 1977, which was played at Yankee Stadium, newly renovated at the time. The National League won that game 7-5. They scored four runs in the top of the first inning.   So that follows that the first All-Star Game home run I saw was by Joe Morgan since he hit one in the first at-bat of the game against Jim Palmer. In a sign of the preference for starters at the time, Palmer stayed in the ga...

  The first Topps cards of the season are scheduled to hit the market a week from Wednesday. I don't know what this means for me. I'd like to acquire a few packs off the retail shelf as has been my tradition for 45 years but we'll see how many hobby hypsters are still out there. Before the month is out I'm guessing you'll see some 2022 cards on this here site. And with that my posting of my very first card of the season. It's been pretty easy to catalog my first card of the season since I started this blog. I've posted it pretty much every year. But what about all those years before? That's a lot tougher. For some years, I know exactly what the first card I pulled was -- it was an epic moment in my history. For other years, I can only guess. Some I have zero idea. For example, the 1976 Topps Steve Carlton I know was one of the first in my collection. That beat-up creased thing was still in my collection decades later until I finally upgraded. But I don...

  Last week or so, one of those crowd-sourcing social media questions made the rounds of Twitter. I didn't answer it, but I did think about it because I had never thought about it before: "What was the first thing you bought after getting your first job?"   I don't know if the question-poser was referring to a first full-time job or just a first job, so I went with my first paying job. Outside of getting money for doing chores around the house, my first paying job was as a newspaper carrier.   I started that job in January of 1981 and I know the first thing I bought, once that week's earnings were dropped off for me in an envelope on the front porch, were the following 45s:   Yes, I still have them. I have just about all of the 45s that I bought back then and it's a lot -- stuff from the '60s, '70s and '80s. Hundreds. Given the way everything related to entertainment has skyrocketed in price, I should really check out what 45s are bringing in.   I ...