Night Owl Cards

  Set collectors know that it takes a long time to get to the completion finish line. For example, I'm very close to finishing off a set (probably in the next couple days) that has taken seven years to finish -- and it took even longer if you count those random cards from the set I had as a youth. But, yeah, seven years is nothing in the set-collecting world. I admit, I don't think about the length of time much. I probably wouldn't collect sets as avidly if I focused on the duration all the time. I do, however, note mini-milestones along the way to completion. I need those little celebrations and it provides a boost to keep going. For example, the card above is the final card I needed from the non-SP portion of the 2024 Topps Heritage set. Yay, mini-milestone! It arrived from the Shlabotnik Report . (I think that may be the first time I've received cards from him, which is wild). The same card also arrived again today, which I'll get to. Isn't that always the wa...

  Over recent years, I've often seen online people joking, or being serious, about moving to Canada, due to various reasons related to the government or politics.   I have no desire to move to Canada, even the thought of one day when I retire moving elsewhere within the state sounds overwhelming. Besides, the most desirable time to move to Canada would have been when I was a youngster, during the '70s and '80s, when O-Pee-Chee issued its very best baseball cards on store shelves and counter tops throughout that massive country.   I would have loved to open OPC packs, say in 1979. But not if Topps packs weren't also available, then I'd just be pining to live in the U.S.   No, the easiest way to experience Canada for me, outside of Tim Horton's, is letting the country come to me by obtaining those OPC cards.   Recently I landed a few extras from Bo of Baseball Cards Come to Life! He had just what I'm looking for.   It was just six cards and three of them wer...

  Happy Canada Day to my north-of-the-border readers! It's tradition around here to try to acknowledge this day -- since I practically live in Canada according to some downstaters. I've been running out of topics the past few years, but fortunately this year the most recent set I've completed happens to be Canadian! Charlie Hough was the last card I needed to finish the 1979 O-Pee-Chee Dodgers set. It arrived Monday, just in time for Canada Day festivities. (Someone who actually lives in Canada will have to fill me in on what those are). Here is the card with a wider crop so you can see the trademark ragged edges. This is the third '70s Dodgers OPC set I've completed after 1977 and 1978. But '79 is a landmark OPC baseball set as it's the first one that tells you on every single card front -- not just the ones where a player has recently changed teams -- that the card is O-Pee-Chee and not Topps. Of course, the most fun part of OPC, and the reason I look out ...

  Yesterday was Ron Cey's 73rd birthday and, don't you worry, I took care of acknowledging it. It didn't show up on the blog but it did appear on Twitter. That isn't even all of autographs in the collection. You can fit only so much in the frame. But the rate of me accumulating Cey cards, autographed or otherwise, has slowed dramatically. There haven't been many new Cey cards recently (Topps has mostly ditched its retro-appreciation of '70s/'80s players for, ugh, steroid-era '90s players). And all that's around for me to collect are a few autograph cards I don't own or a bunch of parallels. I've mentioned this the last few Cey birthday posts, and I was starting to get sick of hearing myself repeat this lament. But then one day, while pondering cards to obtain, I looked to the ceiling and that's when it struck me: Of course, north! Go north! O-Pee-Chee!!! I don't know why I never thought of that before. I have OPC Ron Cey cards in my c...

When you've been doing this for as long as I have -- collecting, trading, blogging -- you tend to activate your automatic filter when going through a package of cards in the mail. This is especially true if it's a larger envelope with plenty of cards. Your brain automatically switches to "GOT THESE" mode when a familiar design comes into view. It's more of a time-saving device than anything. Let's get the unnecessaries out of the way so we can focus on the good stuff. So, for example, a selection of 1991 Score Dodgers appear in the team bag and I start filtering, without even thinking: "Got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it." My brain flips past the cards as quickly as my fingers. These cards, that set, is well-tread territory. No need for these. And so it goes for a veteran team collector, trader and blogger. 1994 Topps? Got it, got it, got it, got it, got it. 2009 Upper Deck? Got it, got it, got it, got it, got ...