Night Owl Cards

   It just doesn't seem possible that I'm still reaping the benefits of this blog, a means of communication and expression that is at least a decade beyond its peak.   I expect the perks to disappear eventually, I mean the days of receiving 3-5 random card packages a day in the mail are long gone, which is why I will value each benefit that still comes along.   A little over a week ago, I was in the grocery store getting some supplies for the new mini-fridge in my office at work. I steered over to the magazine display as I often do and spotted the most recent Beckett Vintage Collector -- just one -- staring at me.   I opened the edition to my story and snapped a picture. I still get a kick out of that. That's not the perk I wanted to write about. But we're moving in that direction.   For the last six years, writing magazine articles about cards has helped me obtain cards that in most cases I never would have been able to add to my collection. Baseball cards...

  I started Night Owl Cards 13 years ago today and have been churning out copy since. Much has changed about blogging and collecting since I've started and while my blog has undergone some changes, they've been on a much smaller scale. I myself am pretty much the same. Here, let me show you a paragraph about myself that I wrote on the one-year anniversary of this blog: "In many ways, this blog is my personality. I try not to get too deep with it -- this is about baseball, after all -- and by nature I am easygoing and have a sense of humor. But I also have a strong sense of right and wrong, can be direct and abrupt at times, and have always been introspective. It sounds strange, but I am a quiet, thoughtful, humorous guy, who can get loud once in a great while." That's still me, working amid a changed hobby world. Things have gotten bigger for me, particularly in the last year. I've been guesting on a few podcasts (unrelated to the blog, but related to the Tomm...

Last week I finished off an article about my Dodgers collection for the main Beckett Baseball magazine. I'm really not up on the main magazine -- the Vintage Collector magazine is more my speed -- but I believe Beckett Baseball has a regular series where they take a look at contributing writers' collections. I hope I'm not putting words in anyone else's mouth who has written a story like that for Beckett, but that's the easiest article in the world to write. The only problem for me was not prattling on for pages and pages. I was limited to a 1,000 words, but initially what I wrote was three times that (and could've been 10 times that). Fortunately, I edit for a living, so I cut it down to a tidy 995 relatively easily, even though I was writing about my babies. The surprising thing for me is that a lot of what was left in the article was about Ron Cey. I like to think I'm an equal-opportunity collector when it comes to the Dodgers -- sure, Ismael Valdez, I...

  Ever since I've been writing magazine articles for Beckett, it's been a goal of mine for one of those stories to make the cover. I guess I'm never satisfied. It should be blessing enough to get paid to write about baseball cards and see those writings show up on store racks all over the country. But you've got to have goals, right? I shipped off my article on 1991 Topps to Beckett's editorial director and Mike mentioned it would likely be going into the main Beckett baseball magazine, not the Vintage magazine where most of my articles appear. I've had one other story appear in the main baseball issue but that was a reprint of my 1975 Topps mini Vintage magazine story. A couple of months later, Mike emailed me back, mentioned he liked the article and said it would make a good cover story. Score! The cover was mine. But, of course, I had to see it in person -- none of this digital-only crap for me. So, the publication arrived yesterday and there was young Chippe...

I think the August-September edition of Beckett Vintage Collector magazine has been on store shelves for three weeks now and I'm just getting around to mentioning it here. My third article for Beckett Vintage is in the latest edition.  As usual, I had to have other collectors inform me of this. And then because there isn't an adequate bookstore within an hour of me, it took a few weeks to see the article in print for myself. I just picked up a copy yesterday while on a road trip. I'm getting a little tired of this. If I'm going to be IN the magazine, I should be the one letting people know I'm in there, right? I'm terrible at this pimping stuff. So in the next week or so -- when there's money -- I'll finally get a subscription to Beckett Vintage so it will arrive at my mailbox before someone can notify ol' clueless that he has another article in the issue. (Pro tip: the editors don't really tell you when your article is going to show)....

I've spent the last few days driving back and forth from the hospital where my dad is. He has a host of health issues, many of which were ignored for years, that basically came to the surface once my mom had passed. The news isn't good and, really, after all that's gone on, I've accepted that. I don't want to dwell on that here though. Even though just about every holiday since Labor Day has come and gone with very little meaning or ritual, I did find a small amount of joy yesterday on Memorial Day (of all days, right?). After leaving the hospital, I took a trip to the main shopping drag in the Southern Tier to hit the Barnes & Noble. I was looking for the June/July issue of Beckett Vintage Collector, which contains my article on the 1975 Topps mini set. I didn't expect to find it because I've had more success finding the magazine at the B&N's in Syracuse. But after some pained scanning of the large magazine display, I suddenly saw it,...

I'm probably making a bigger deal about my appearance in Beckett's vintage magazine than some feel it warrants. Who cares, right? Nobody reads magazines anymore. It's not like it's Time or Sports Illustrated. Some old set from the '70s? You just have yourself that little party, old man. OK, I will. For me, from an early age, the folks whose names appeared as the bylines in magazines were even more fascinating and mysterious than the people they were chronicling. I saw pictures of the people being featured. I read their thoughts and learned their backgrounds. I knew stuff about them. The person writing it? I didn't know one thing about them. I read a lot of magazines as a youngster and into my teenage years and then in college. Time. Sports Illustrated. Inside Sports. Baseball Digest. Baseball Magazine. Life. Newsweek. The New Yorker. Mad. Cracked. Rolling Stone. Spin. National Geographic. Ranger Rick. Sesame Street Magazine. People. Us. TV Guide. Reader...