Night Owl Cards

  I've done a fairly good job of avoiding the blaster purchase over the last four or five years.   Once a standard pick-up, I gradually pulled away due to  blaster-exclusive "manufactured relics," then general unavailability during the pandemic, then a hike in price and the repeated frustration of pulling Marlins and Diamondbacks.   There are really only 3 times out of the year that I respond to the blaster siren call: When the new Topps flagship comes out, when new Heritage comes out, and when I get a gift card for Christmas. (Keep in mind I was regularly buying multiple blasters a week a dozen years ago).   The Target Christmas gift card arrives when I'm at my weakest. Typically at the holiday I haven't received any separate cards as gifts and I've also avoided buying cards during the holiday season so I can purchase gifts for others. The gift card gives me permission because I haven't opened packs in soooooooo long.   So that lengthy intro was intended ...

  All right, you don't care much about 2022 Allen & Ginter anymore. I get it. It should have been released in June like it used to, what's with shoving it into Christmas with everything else we're supposed to be buying? But I still find it a little bit interesting and opening a blaster of this stuff and showing it here is probably better than whatever you've got cooked up tonight. Besides I'm showing you the results of the "What should I buy with my gift cards" post . Don't you want to see what I decided? Yeah, it's that box you just saw. That's it. I chose just an A&G blaster and nothing else. The remaining gift card is sitting there waiting for something that won't be disappointing. But foolish me, I didn't know when I ordered it that Nachos Grande was going to dump just about the whole set on me. Oops. He even sent me a cryptic warning on the "Help Me Decide" post: I know, I know. Everyone has seen enough. Too late....

  Mercy it's cold out today. I don't like it when the furnace switches on in September. I'm surrounded by people who squawk about the heat so much that I equate warm weather with bitching, so I suppose I should be pleased others are now pleased. But, it's too damn cold for right now! Let's light a fire and get things heated.🔥 I bought a blaster of 2022 Topps Fire recently. Well, "bought" isn't exactly right. It was another gift-card purchase, because why would I be buying this set with my own cash? Some folks would prefer an ebay gift card over one from Target where your choices are limited, but here's the thing: I still trade with people. I need cards that they like. Having cards of all Dodgers is great for me, but it's not helping in trades at all (especially since I can think of at least five dormant Dodger blogs). I need inventory. So, even as I've cut way back on new cards the last few years, I still grab stuff like this once in awhil...

  I put the two Target gift cards I received for my birthday to good use. It's always fun to try out some new card content once in awhile. I'll never go cold turkey on that stuff. I ordered these online, which was a pain (Target tried to withdraw from my bank account despite clearly accepting my gift cards), and I blame that mostly on the card hoarders. People try to say that "things are back to normal" in the card world with cards "back on the shelf." But those are still nonexistent at the Walmarts near me and extremely hit-and-miss at the Targets. Hoarders and Topps' inability to distribute cards at multiple locations, which it did for the entirety of my collecting from 1975-94, are to blame for this continued bullshit.   But the card boxes happily arrived on a Sunday, of all days, and it was fun to open them. Both are items I would never buy with my hard-earned cash, but they're fun to look through with someone else's!   I'm going to show ...

I tried a second time to spend my Target gift card from Christmas today. Since I recently won a blaster of 2018 Topps in a contest at Waiting 'Til Next Year, I figured it was pointless to save the gift card for 2018 Topps. A blaster of that stuff is plenty, it should satisfy the craving for the rest of the year. Those of you who store unopened card product in your homes are probably now saying why don't I save the gift card for when Heritage comes out later, or maybe Stadium Club or Allen and Ginter months from now? First of all, there's no way I can keep a gift card for that long. I'm not my parents or other people's parents who can whip out an envelope filled with unused gift cards on call. The point of free money is to spend it and BUST OPEN THAT STASH OF CARDS IN YOUR CLOSET NOW! So, I was going to spend that gift card today, one way or the other. I ended up spending it on "the other." The card aisle at this time of year remains a depressi...