Night Owl Cards

I received a few Nebulous 9 needs from Brian of cardnomics recently. They are much appreciated and I can't wait to add some more cards to that list. This Ivan DeJesus diamond sparkle card from a couple of years ago brought me down to one Dodger card left to complete that parallel set. But as I pulled this card from the package, it occurred to me how "old news" diamond parallels are. Since the time in 2011 when these things were all the rage and collectors vowed to complete an entire set of them, new parallels have replaced them. First there were cognac parallels, also known as liquorfractors, that arrived a few months after the diamond parallels. Then came the gold sparkle cards -- I still don't know the formal name of those -- in 2012 Topps. Those were replaced by the emerald parallels -- what I like to call the "rain forest" parallels -- of 2013 Topps. Each time collectors oohed and aahed about the new parallel and the previous one was alm...

There was some bit of nonsense about a Topps Heritage High Numbers checklist bubbling on the twitters earlier today. I didn't pay much attention, because the thing is still 100 bucks for 100 cards. Topps decided to show one of the autographs from the set. As you know each box of 100 cards comes with an autograph. This particular autograph that Topps showed was Bryce Harper. Of course. You were expecting Edinson Volquez? I promptly turned my attention to the stacks of baseball cards on my card desk and picked up some cards I received from Brian at Cardnomics . He had opened a bunch of Update, was just as unimpressed as I was, and sent some Dodgers my way. The Jerry Hairston card interested me in particular because I simply had to figure out what play was on the card. I thought it'd be pretty easy to do. I didn't have a lot of time on my hands and sometimes this photo detective work gets tedious and time-consuming. For some reason, I thought this game was against t...

Not a lot to say about this card, other than that when I see Andre Ethier cards now, I think about how people are writing that Ethier should be platooned next year because he's hit lefties so poorly this season. This seems odd to me given how much money and years the new Dodgers owners invested in Ethier earlier this year. And Ethier struggling against lefties is no surprise. He's had his this issue his whole career. But if the new regime treats money the way it has so far, then maybe the Dodgers are about to feature the most expensive platoon players, pinch-hitters, loogies and concession workers in the history of the game. Anyway, this card and these two others ... ... came from Brian, who has his own baseball card blog. It's called Cardnomics , and it's a very different approach to cards that I could never do. But it's interesting and I'm glad someone is looking at cards in this way. Brian is also a regular user of Listia and the first blog...