Night Owl Cards

  All these years doing this blog thing and the hobby still hasn't figured out how to work around my schedule.   I've got a couple of items to catch up to because I was too busy earlier in the week (doesn't Topps know I'm running a giveaway contest ?).   First, NOC was named "Favorite Blog" during TCDB's site awards Sunday.   It's the sixth straight year at the top for NOC and the seventh time in eight years. Maybe it's time to retire me out of the category? But I won't say no to continued winnings. I'm still a sucker for awards.   Second, Topps revealed the design for 2026 flagship on Monday.     I wasn't going to mention anything on the blog about it until it was time to open packs, mostly because it's not that inspiring to me. But I've pondered it a little more and I think this is a design that will look better in hand.   That was somewhat the case with 2025 Topps but I think this one will fare better. Let's go quickly t...

  This is the giveaway post featuring the extras from my winnings from The Diamond King vintage giveaway on his blog last month.   I'll reveal the cards I'm giving away and the entry instructions at the end of the post, so you greedy grubbies can scroll right to the end if you like.   But I wanted to mention that DK's giveaway also encouraged participants to send cards out themselves. This is something I still do, even after 18 years, though not as often the last 5 or 6 years (still there are cards on my desk right now that are waiting for packaging and sending, as it's always been). But Kevin seemed to strike a nerve as I was the beneficiary of three separate card sends that I believe were related to The Diamond King's request.   First let's see some cards I received from gcrl from cards as I see them . Neither of us needs instructions for sending out cards, especially to fellow Dodger fans, but we'll take any excuse!   Goodies of the parallel kind. Will g...

   It's January, so it's time for a football-centric post.   Football these days is full of fret and consternation. There's a big Bills game today that will have me all uptight (I'm writing this beforehand so either "Go Bills" or "the Jaguars have ugly uniforms"). And that's the way it's been for decades, lots of good vs. evil and plenty of disappointment.   But it wasn't always that way. For example, I picked up this 1976 Topps football card of Patriots quarterback Jim Plunkett recently while ordering a Dodger card and looking for something else to help out with shipping. This jumped right out at me, I love that set and Plunkett brings up good vibes despite my view of the Patriots these days. In fact, I don't remember him with the Patriots at all, nor with the 49ers --just with the Raiders when he led them to a Super Bowl title and all the talk was about this "old guy" that Oakland picked up off the scrap heap (Plunkett was...

   I had planned to publish my giveaway contest post of the extra goodies I received from The Diamond King's giveaway today. A nice festive post to kick off the weekend.   But that's been weather-delayed. My backyard helps tell part of the story as it converts into a pond for the second time this winter. A warming trend, complete with howling winds to keep everyone up at night, came through just as I got off of work last night. I'm on no sleep and the gloomy, doomy sky is not ideal for taking pics and a photo-heavy post.   I had planned to display all the card goodies I'm giving away but also a bunch of recent cards I had received from people who had been spurred on by DK's original giveaway. But I can't show dark pictures on such a cheerful post! (This should be exactly the kind of spark that gets me to spring for scanner number 4 or 5).    So that post is pushed back, hopefully to Monday. The sun better be out -- or at least there better be snow on the gr...

  I did one of these last year, on the exact same date, in fact. It's a nice numbers-driven look at the performance of the blog in the past year. It was inspired by Diamond Jesters, who evaluated his blog in the same way last year.   I know I just did a year-end review a week ago, but that was a lot of words and this involves waaaaaaaay less picture-taking. I need more breathers these days.   So let's look at the numbers:   Blog overview: I am in my 18th year of running this blog. I also run the 1993 Upper Deck blog (very casually, if I may add). This is my 5,876th post on NOC. If I continue to write even an average number of posts I will hit post 6,000 this year.   Team-set goals: I continue to collect the Dodgers base sets for the major sets that come out. I'm less enthusiastic about stuff like Chrome but I will eventually get those team sets done, too. As for inserts and parallels and online issues, I only add what appeals to me, and I'm doing it less and le...

  Take a look at this 1977 Topps Bobby Murcer card. Notice anything different?   Sure you do. The card face is cloth, not cardboard.   This fascinated me as a young collector. I was around 12 or 13 when I saw 1977 Topps cloth stickers advertised, probably in our subscription to Baseball Digest magazine. I couldn't conceive of how they could make a card sticker out of cloth. The fact that they were the same size as a regular Topps card and showed the same photos (in most cases) as the regular set made me want them even more.   But I never ordered them, didn't have the money at the time and then later when I got back into chasing cards from my youth, the set was just a little bit cost prohibitive for me. Still, I put them on the "someday" list where they waited for years upon years.   Fast forward to Christmas week 2025. For someone who didn't receive any cards as presents this year, it's been a productive holiday as far as the hobby. The day after Christmas I p...