Night Owl Cards

   Yesterday, I wrapped up another triumphant dupes box update ... well, it's two dupes boxes now. I've mentioned that I try to go through my giant Dodgers dupes boxes once a year to organize, adding the new dupes that have been piling up. It's tedious, but feels great when it's finished, and I always find a few cards in there that aren't actually dupes. That's the greatest feeling of all. It had been two years since I had conducted this dupes box ritual. The cards were really piling up (but not as much as if I had gone two years between updates, say, seven years ago). The best card that I found that wasn't actually a dupe was the 2020 Topps Holiday Cody Bellinger. It was the last card I needed to complete that team set and had been sitting on my Nebulous 9 list for months! I apparently have no idea what I have in my collection. Here are the other cards I found from the box that actually weren't dupes: The 1989 Fernando Valenzuela is the Tiffany version....

I've failed you and did not take a picture of my reorganization of my giant Dodgers box of dupes -- and accompanying satellite boxes of dupes. It took three days to finish and was conducted entirely while sitting on a hardwood floor. Needless to say, breaks were mandatory. I normally conduct this exercise once a year, in September. But life got busy and the dupes piled up and I finally found a little time last week. Normally I use the dining room table, but there were too many people about for that. So I commandeered the spare bedroom and started piling stacks of cards by decade that needed to join the rest of the dupes. Some may wonder why I go through such a tedious routine for cards that are duplicates. Why do I organize stacks, then ad those stacks to the box, then pull out more cards from the box, and join more cards from the stacks to the more cards from the box, and repeat the process over and over to a mind-numbing degree, more mind-numbing than reading this paragraph...

Greetings from my living room, which is now cluttered with cardboard. This is my annual Dodgers dupes box organization. And I'm about two months late with it, too. My mission with this annual activity is to incorporate all the dupes I've accumulated in the past year into the main dupes box. But there are two other missions within that main mission: 1) To get rid of some cards. 2) To find cards I need. Those are polar opposite mini-missions. The first is sad and the second is happy. And I'm pleased to say I'm succeeding with both. I am hell bent on getting rid of cards I simply don't need. I have no problem keeping a few dupes of each card because you never know when you'll require one on demand or someone will need one. But where once I would have no problem with having 10-or-more of any card, I've since cut that down to five of each, and now it's down to three. Sometimes it's less than that (sometimes it's more for certain key cards)...

I missed the National Sports Card Convention again this year. Honestly, the show isn't exactly convenient for those with families, unless it's in your backyard, and, of course, Chicago is nowhere near me. One day I will make it a priority, schedule a budget (I have a difficult time with "spending a lot of money to spend a lot of money"), and hit the road. Atlantic City is unlikely next year, but Cleveland looks real good in 2018. So what did I do while a bunch of collectors were at the National? Well, I windowshopped from afar, as usual. I really enjoy the videos that people put together while either out on the floor or back in the hotel as they show off their wares. And I also settled down with the giant box of Dodger dupes that you see there and started organizing. I know, it sounds pretty pathetic when you know that there are people a thousand miles away marveling at 36 graded Michael Jordan rookie cards all in one place or unearthing that card from 1923...