Night Owl Cards

   I will start this by saying that I realize that I have cycled out of both of the major marketing demographics desired by companies that sell products. I am no longer 18-34, nor even 35-50.   I am also aware that there is probably no one my age working at Topps, unless it's at the highest-level office. I come from a different era -- a Gen-Xer who is satisfied fairly easily.   The most interesting changes in cards for me as a youngster and even through my teenage years was that the design changed each year. I also liked seeing players with their new teams. That's all it took to make me happy ... and I was happy with just that for many years.   I didn't need constant change, which seems to be a staple requirement for many in younger generations. But that's my personality, too. I have never been "on to the next." I'd rather collect cards like I did in the '70s.   This is why I don't understand Topps' constant tinkering.   The latest puzzling dev...

While I was out getting some cards at Rite Aid yesterday, I also swung by Target and purchased Topps' National League team set that it puts out every year. There is almost no point to this set -- and the accompanying American League team set -- and it's getting more and more pointless by the year. The only thing that made it stand out each year was the placement of the NL or AL logo on each card so you could distinguish it from the flagship card with the same photo. Well, there's no NL or AL logo this year. Apparently there wasn't one last year either (I didn't bother getting the set). So to separate these cards in your brain from the other cards that look almost exactly the same, you'll have to turn the card over and check out the card number. This may seem like a trivial topic for a blog post, but it gets a bit frustrating deciphering the cards available these days. Topps doesn't exactly go to acceptable lengths to get the word out. A couple of we...

One of my missions with the latest COMC shipment was trying to finally ... finally ... finally, for the love of Hiram Bocachica, finish off my main 2015 collecting goals. One of those main goals was completing the Set of the Year, 2015 Stadium Club. I was seven cards away from reaching my goal before I received the shipment. I was able to find six of the cards that I needed. The Yu Darvish card was one of them. Here are the others: After receiving the cards, I then went through the stack of Stadium Club cards I owned to confirm that I needed just one card more to complete the set. Because you know how much a set collector's math can be off when it comes down to finishing a set. And I confirmed it. I still need just the one card to complete the set. This is the one card I need. Isn't that funny? Imagine that. The last card I need is the Kris Bryant rookie card. Wacky, right? What a coincidence! Except it's not a coincidence. I could have a...

About a week ago, the king of the Supertraders, Wes of Jaybarkerfan's Junk, announced that he wasn't interested in being the Braves supertrader anymore. With the Braves flailing through another season, collecting the team didn't interest him that much. That's not something I ever see myself doing, no matter how long the Dodgers go without returning to the World Series. But I do reach my smaller breaking points. This is one of them. I never expected the Dodgers to be a World Series or even playoff-contending team this season. I said that on this blog near the start of the season. But I did expect them to play with some degree of intelligence, meaning you beat the eternally bumbling teams of Major League Baseball that we all know -- particularly the Padres. The Dodgers can't even do that now. Thanks to a meager offense, which has basically been an issue for the team since Gary Sheffield and Shawn Green left, and a horrific bullpen in the seventh and eighth ...

The checklist for 2015 Topps Heritage came out yesterday and, like always, I search out the Dodgers as well as which ones are short prints. I'm not too enthused about Heritage this year because the 1966 design is another one of the '60s borefests. The yellow-on-red used with the Dodgers (and the Yankees) makes it seem more of a food-issue card than a Topps card ... hey, wait ... maybe the design isn't so bad after all. But I'm also not looking forward to chasing another round of Dodgers short prints. For the fourth straight year, the Dodgers have three or more SPs in Heritage. This year, it's four. I went through the checklist and counted up the SP totals for each team. Here is what I found: American League Baltimore Orioles - 1; Boston Red Sox - 4; Chicago White Sox - 3; Cleveland Indians - 3; Detroit Tigers - 6; Houston Astros - 2; Kansas City Royals - 4; Los Angeles Angels - 4; Oakland A's - 1; Seattle Mariners - 5; Tampa Bay Rays - 1; Texas Ran...

As a member of the media, I am trained to recognize BS when it's walking toward me. Coaches lie to us. Colleges spin us. Businesses try to use us. It's an on-going battle against crap. Because of this, I am ever sensitive to the waves of hooey that come at us from every direction. I have little tolerance for pitches, commercials, sales drives, even the cute girl at the phone kiosk in the mall. If you're not saying something with meaning/truth, I ain't buying. Because of this, Twitter is best avoided during the first half of the day. I swear every card business in the world spends the morning shilling whatever they have to shill under the guise that it's THE GREATEST THING EVER on Twitter. It makes Crazy Eddie seem like he had Low T. But there is a lot of other BS -- what I like to sugar-coat as "pointlessness" -- on Twitter, which I still wade through because I like to stay informed and it's a great way to do that. Among the pointlessness of r...