Night Owl Cards

I am much more partial to blue refractors than any other color refractor that exists in the Topps Chrome parallel menu. Not only is it my favorite color, but it is the color of my favorite sports team. The Dodgers go spectacularly well with blue refractors. I was particularly happy with the blue refractors from 2007-2012 because the deep blue color selected matched the Dodgers' color scheme (they possess the perfect blue -- not too dark and not too light). That is why I favor blues over any color refractor, regardless of rarity. A blue refractor could lack a serial number and a gold refractor could be numbered to /10 and the more desirable refractor for me would be blue all day every day. Because of this, I've tried to accumulate at least one Dodgers blue refractor each year for the last seven or eight years. And I've been thrilled with just about all of them. (I somehow missed a 2012 blue refractor, quite possibly because I was so irked by the desi...

I received a follow-up physical today. They (and I) wanted to see if what they saw last June was just a fluke or whether I'm some kind of freak. How could someone diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in March not have it in June? Well, the results are in, and I still don't have diabetes. I'm a freak. Not only that, the doctor said my blood work numbers are the same as "an 18-year-old who just came in for his athletic physical." He also wanted to know if I wanted to give a clinic to his patients. Needless to say, that made me feel good, and it's definitely a great start to the new year. But let's steer it toward cards again, OK? Another bonus to the new year, for me, has been the return of some bloggers who were absent for a few months. No Relics Pulled , Indianaland Baseball Cards , Uncle Doc's Closet , Carl Crawford Cards  and The Lost Collector  have all emerged in the last couple of weeks. It seems "blog more" was on a lot of resolutio...

Beauty, eh? What is the point of putting any other team on blue refractors? The Dodgers go perfectly with these cards. I suppose you could make a case for the Mets or the Cubs. But there is no "Met blue" or "Cub blue." There is "Dodger blue." I think I might petition Topps to reserve the blue refractors for just the Dodgers. The other teams can have something else. Dig out the 1990 Donruss design for the Reds. The White Sox can take 2007 Topps . This is just my second Topps Chrome blue refractor Dodger. But at least Derek Lowe has company now. The card came from Amy of Project Phillies . I'll give you one guess as to what team she collects. That's right, she collects Diamondbacks. ... OK, I'm kidding. She's a Mariners fan. Anyway, I was pleased to send a bunch of Phillies her way for some key Dodgers, and one stray Twin thrown in. More on that later. It's hard to top the blue refractor card since I drool a puddle onto my scanne...

There's no doubt about it, Topps Chrome blue refractors are pretty cards. The word "pretty" has been used in recent years to describe certain super-fancy cards, and that has made me think: Cards? Pretty? Baseball? Pretty? Guys spitting and swearing and clutching and grabbing and yelling? Pretty? Cards and baseball just don't seem to go with "pretty." Neither does football or hockey or mixed martial arts for that matter. We never used to call cards "pretty." They were cool or sweet or awesome or even "gnarly" for a time. But not "pretty." And I think that's because back then so many of the cards we collected reminded us of our dads. The players looked like our dads. They looked like dad when he taught us to throw, all the while keeping one eye on the football game on the portable black-and-white on the patio. They looked like dad when he gave you that admonishing stare. "Now what did you really feed the dog, Jimmy?...