Night Owl Cards

  I picked up some manager cards last month in a Twitter sale (I've decided I'm going to call that site "Twitter" until it dies). They were all from a period when I was not collecting, 2001 and 2002.   The 2001 ones are above, if you're as clueless about cards as I was then.   Here are the ones from 2002:   These are all very nice and most are brand-spanking new to me -- if I ever want to collect a set where every card is new-and-fascinating, well 2002 Topps is a good place to start. This period beginning in 2001, I believe, is the start of the third manager card invasion, which lasted until Topps booted managers to Heritage about 10 years ago and now they've whitewashed the job off of cards altogether, except for sporadic appearances in A&G and such.   But speaking of "manager card invasions," this made me remember the post I wrote about the "second manager card invasion," which was the 1980s (and into the early part of the '90s)....

  OK, I'm steering this blog away from Dodger cards for a post or two. I'm already getting complaints. 😒 I was running a couple of errands before work yesterday when I stopped at Walgreen's to grab some cookies for someone who has been very good. As I turned away from the shelf, I looked down the aisle and noticed a middle-aged man staring at the toy area, right where the baseball card repacks normally hang. Could there be baseball cards? I had heard a month or two ago that even Walgreen's repacks were being raided by the flippers so I didn't even consider finding cards when I walked in, but what was this guy looking at? As he moved on to something else, I moved in. I was surprised to see three Fairfield repacks hanging on the metal rack. I immediately noticed something skimpy about the box but grabbed the first one (probably should've grabbed the second or third after seeing what was in the first). Now, the reason that the box was so skinny is that these repac...

I want to address two different card package arrivals that don't have much in common other than that one thing that every arriving card package has in common, which is: How will I store these? It comes down to three ways: binder, top loader or box. These means of packaging, storing and presenting are not the same. Ideally, every last card in my collection would be living in a binder. That's my favorite storage method. They're accessible. The cards are presented nicely within. They're very good for categorizing and we card collectors sure do love to categorize. They look good visually when entering the room and when opening the binder. But I don't have the room for a binder for every card. I can't even process what they would look like. Some edition of "Hoarders," I'm sure. So the cards that are not deemed "worthy" of a binder -- and, yes, I hate that we're prioritizing like this -- go in a box. Boxes are for sets that I...