Night Owl Cards

  The cards I am showing here are the polar opposite from the ones I showed on the last post, and that's the theme here. I'm conflicted. I've written many times how I enjoy all kinds of cards and I prefer having a somewhat-open mind toward cards. I don't want to be an old crank who shuns the shiny, and I don't want to be a modern magpie, attracted only to cards of the last 20, 30 years. I try to find things I like in most cards. However, I admit: the cards they're putting out these days? It's so much easier for me to find stuff wrong with those ones. This is the conflict. Why am I collecting cards where the flaws jump out at me? Why not collect cards that make me feel warm-and-fuzzy at all times and always? I battle with my desire to remain updated on the players on the field, especially on my favorite team, and the best way to do that for me -- it's always been this way -- is to collect their cards. So I put on a good front, but actually I'm really ...

  I have barely acquired any cards this year. Adding the grand total of my three 2022 purchases it comes to around 36 bucks and $16 of that was that stupid 2021 Optic rack pack I bought that I should return because of false advertising that there were actual baseball cards inside.   Money just isn't there right now for cards, which is why I'm grateful for every envelope that comes to my door, from bloggers or just plain readers. I'm lucky in that I seldom have to trade to generate card flow. I do need to do that sometimes, but not often enough where I need to depend on something like TCDB's trading function.   Today I received a whale of a gift mail day -- from four different people. I'll show that off some other time, but right now I have a couple envelopes from two different readers. ... Well, it's actually four envelopes from two different readers. You see, each of them sent an envelope and then after a few days, each of them sent another one!   Am I seeing d...

Waiting is even more of a part of life than it used to be, which doesn't seem possible considering how much waiting I did pre-pandemic, but yet there is sooo much moooore waiting. A lot of it I can understand, even if it doesn't make me happy and I'm plain disgusted about it some of the time. Then there is just the dumb kind of waiting. For example, this: I waited almost an entire year to get this card, but it's not because there were no Heritage cards on store shelves or I was pulling nothing but Marlins and Twins. Walker Buehler should have been in the regular Heritage set, issued last March. He's a regular part of the rotation, was a regular part of the rotation in 2020. There's no reason to skip him. Yet Topps put Buehler in Heritage High Numbers, like it did for several notable players who did not change teams and should've been in the main portion of the set (Buster Posey, Manny Machado, Stephen Strasburg, Rafael Devers). I've read that Topps did t...

  One of the big complaints about Topps, and I've seen it even more now that Fanatics has extended the Topps brand with its purchase, is Topps' love for recycling its own designs.   It's gotten to be an addiction. Topps can't quit, and they're getting worse. It's comical. The 2021 Topps set put out 1986 design tributes, under its suspect recognition of its 35th anniversary of the design. Then it added random "redux" design tributes to 1952, which morphed into 1965 with Series 2, and then 1992 with the Update set. Then it produced another insert set recognizing its 70th anniversary because, heck, let's remember two anniversaries at once -- we can pat ourselves on the back with both hands! I don't even know how many designs are covered in the 70th anniversary thing. A bunch.   Oh, and Topps is going to trot out the 1987 design again this coming flagship set because it's never done that before.   It's a sickness. Topps needs an interventio...

  I received a selection of glorious upgrades, from Bo of Baseball Cards Come To Life, from one of the more elegant sets in the Topps catalog, 1978 Topps. It's wonderful stuff. They look just like what I pulled out of packs in '78.    I like '78 Topps a lot as it's one of the sets that came out when I was a kid. As I've mentioned before, it's the first set I saw complete, all 726 cards in one shot, and, yes, 726 cards was a stunning number to me.   It's iconic, instantly recognizable, one of the few to employ script-writing. I don't know how you can't enjoy it.   But it's obvious someone doesn't enjoy it. For example, Topps.   That's the only conclusion I can make -- either Topps doesn't like its own past set or it's afraid to duplicate it, one or the other. Because, outside of some one-off online projects, it has avoided reproducing it in its retro projects, particularly in Topps Archives.   2021 Archives just came out and for t...