Night Owl Cards

  I've been logging my collection on Trading Card Database for four years now and have been trading on the site for around three-plus years.   It's taken me that long to reach 100 trades because I rarely have the time or motivation to make my own offers. But I hit that milestone last week with the largest total number of cards I've received in a single TCDB trade.   It was also the greatest difference in cards received and cards sent-out for one trade. My trade partner, Thebradford16, wanted just three cards (I threw in a handful more). In exchange, I added 167 cards to my collection.   Admittedly, this is a benefit of being a well-known blogger in the hobby. My trade partner was just looking to deal with someone he had read and helped him get back into the hobby. And my reward came in the form of a whole bunch of 1983 Donruss for the collection!     A cross-section from that stack. Love seeing my guys on new-to-me cardboard.      Some more v...

  Apologies for the negative self-talk in the blog title here. This isn't about you, it's all me, and I need to work on that. But I thought if I wrote things out I'd finally get myself into gear. I've needed a few binders and the pages that go with them for several months now. The completed -- or about to be completed -- sets are piling up. I don't like stashing complete sets in boxes, that's a terrible fate for something so carefully crafted. So they are stacked and waiting all around the card room, and, yes, a couple are in boxes as a last resort. In stacks are my complete 2024 Heritage set and my soon-to-be-complete 2024 Topps flagship set. Another stack contains what I have for 1987 Fleer. It's a long way from completion, but it's there, quietly telling me that a binder is needed for that, too. Two sets that should be in binders are now in boxes -- the almost complete 2024 Heritage minis set and the getting-there 1985 Donruss set. These guys need to ...

  I've been sitting on this post for awhile in anticipation of something arriving in the mail. It hasn't arrived yet, it's usually here by now, but I'll get to that later. The point is I'm sick of waiting, so this is the post. It's actually worked out in a way because the delay has helped me add some 1970 Topps cards to this post that just arrived from mr haverkamp. He was digging around for some stuff at a card show and came across a few high-number needs of mine! There's that rascal Jose Pagan, always residing in the high numbers , making things difficult. Pretty pleased I don't have to chase this one down. Don Money's a great name from my childhood, I loved pulling his cards (although I remember him exclusively as a Milwaukee Brewer). This '70s version is well-worn and miscut but that monster rookie trophy helps balance things off nicely. Here's a grinning Bob Johnson. Generic name, generic playing position. At least his hat isn't airb...

  After an initial rush of trades on TCDB, what were my first dozen-or-so deals on the site, the offers dried up for several weeks. I could have jumped-started some trades myself by making some offers finally, but I find that part very time-consuming and I've got limited time already. That's why I'll never whine about no TCDB trades because I know it's a two-way street. But I don't have to deal with that particular issue right now because it's like someone flipped a switch, all of a sudden the offers are pouring in again. This time several of the offers were from people I've dealt with a long time through the blogs, either they have their own blog or they've been a frequent commenter. As often is the case with my blog buddies, these trades are much less formal, even on TCDB, and we side-stepped some of the rules that are in place for when I transact with people on that site that I only know as a collection of letters and numbers. But before I get to thos...

  This isn't a milestone or anything. I don't know what to call it, but I just entered double digits in TCDB trades. I completed trades 10 and 11 in the last few days. I still haven't proposed a trade myself and I'm getting real lazy about that. It's difficult to take the next step when everything is still going so well. I received these five very welcome 1979 Topps football needs for a couple of late '80s baseball cards and one Dodger dupe from last year. Please tell me it's going to be like this forever. These cards came from Mccammon44. I'm a bit torn about whether Joe Ferguson goes in the '79 football set binder or the Bills binder but not as much as if Joe Ferguson was the other Joe Ferguson and it was the Dodgers binder.   These are the results of trade #11, from bearsbaseballcards. I sent him six cards that ranged from the early '80s to this year for these Pacific/Swell gems. I just can't get enough of these. It will be sad when I'...

  It looks like I'll be going to a card show this weekend after all. It took a couple of extra hours at work Wednesday, Thursday and today to make it happen. I'm no longer convinced that it's a coincidence that work often ramps up around fun, recreational activities on my off-time. I now know it's a cosmic plot against me.   But I've gotten good at stamping out those conspiracies, although not without some damage. There's no way I'll be able to compose a list prior to the card show (sure, I could make a list instead of writing this blog post, but then what would you read?). Show lists are my motivation. They keep me focused and ready to hunt. It prevents me from wandering and being suckered into something shiny I don't really want. Instead I'm relying on a couple of card envelopes I just received for that motivation. If, at the show, I pick up nothing but the kinds of cards I landed in these mailings, I'll get exactly what I want. The cards come ...

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...