Night Owl Cards

Note to card companies: Buying this ... ... and ending up with this ... ... is not the way to win over consumers. This was my comment on the "Trading Cards, TCGs and Me" blog, a site that is well worth your time, by the way. But I am among a group of collectors who are not happy with the original plan of attack by Topps, according to Nate of "Trading Cards," which was to release the "Topps Dark" cards in April but not let consumers know which cards they were getting (the regular '09 issue or the dark cards). I commented, "you don't go to the grocery store to buy tomato sauce, get home, open it up, pour out peaches and say, 'awesome, peaches! I'll buy more!'" Thank goodness, Chris of Nachos Grande wrote to Topps and Topps had sense enough to inform customers as to what they were buying. The "tomato sauce/peaches" analogy is an exaggeration for effect. I realize it's not quite the best representation of what Topps...

So, the cool kids have been excavating up a storm the last two days, finding packs of 2009 Heritage, unearthing whole blasters of black parallel cards, setting off on searches for gray-back parallels and discovering '09 Upper Deck fat packs. Even though I can't play with the cool kids -- the area where I live doesn't allow it -- I get all giddy watching others find the snazzy stuff. I can't help but hit the few, scattered places that sell cards even though they disappoint me time and again. Hobby shop? Too expensive. Big box store #1? Topps blasters I've seen before. Big box store #2? Loose packs. And some weird-shaped $9.99 boxes of 2007 Topps. Huh? Big box store #3? Topps '09 cereal boxes. But the cereal boxes are news around here, even if it's a week or two later than everyone else has seen them. So I picked one up. Ted Williams of course. I can't choose Ruth or Mantle over Teddy Ballgame. I'd get disowned. The boxes are pretty cool and I got...

ME: So, I was leafing through my ... YOU: Hey, didn't you just do one of those night card things? ME: Yeah, I did. YOU: So how come you're doing another one so soon? ME: Just go with me on this, will ya? YOU: Your blog. ME: Yes. It is. ... So, I was leafing through my complete set of 1952 Topps the other day. YOU: Wait a minute. You have a COMPLETE set of 1952 Topps? ME: Yeah. YOU: You never told me anything about a complete set of '52 Topps. I didn't even know you had any 1952 Topps. ME: Well, there are a lot of things I haven't told you. I'm a complex and multi-faceted individual. YOU: Bleepin' loser. I don't know why I read your crap. ME: ANYway. I was leafing through my complete set of '52 Topps and I suddenly found this Satchel Paige night card that I had never seen before! YOU: What? Satchel Paige?!! Night card? There weren't any night cards in '52! ME: Yeah there was. This one. The first night card ever made. YO...

I saw on Cardboard Junkie the list of all of dayf's 2009 Braves so far. I figured it wasn't fair that the Braves hog all the bloggery time. So I'm showing the '09 Dodgers I've collected so far. I'll stick with Topps because Upper Deck still isn't thrilling me, and I don't have many of the UD Dodgers. I'm sure I'll track down the UDers some time, but right now it's all Topps. The other reason for this list is to make sure that I've accounted for all the Dodgers in Series 1. I don't have all the checklist cards yet and Topps' Web site is a maze of mirrors, so if anyone spots a missing Dodger, let me know. Right now, I know I need #67 Andruw Jones and #179 Rafael Furcal. Two ex-Braves as it happens. And one ex-Dodger, too, thankfully. On with the list: #123 - Casey Blake. Blake, in the words of MLB.com, "felt a groin muscle tighten as he was doing outfield sprints" today. Ouch. According to Joe Torre, Blake's OK, and, ...

I'm featuring a night card of Hong-Chih Kuo today because he could be the difference between the Dodgers owning a steady bullpen and a bullpen in which they're constantly rotating pitchers in and out in an attempt to find something that works. I thought of Kuo yesterday after viewing the boxscore of the Dodgers' first spring training game, a 5-3 loss to the Cubs. Reliever Ramon Troncoso got lit up for a homer and four runs in 1-plus innings. The Dodgers don't really know whether Troncoso is a starter or a reliever so maybe he's working some things out. I'm still recuperating from the events of yesterday. There was a lot to absorb. Aside from the first spring training game, the Dodgers made another offer to Manny Ramirez. It's a lot like the old offer back in November with some slight adjustments. It really seems like Ramirez is about to sign. If not, than Boras is even more evil than I think he is. Also, on the card front, aside from the first blaster of 2...

I went and bought myself a 2009 Topps blaster today. Don't worry, I didn't go to Wal-Mart. Nothing but white-bordered cards for me. As God intended them to be. I landed a bunch of regular old cards that I needed in my bid to complete Series 1, as well as one of these patchy thingies that come with every blaster this year. I have mentioned this a couple of times, but not on this particular blog: I do not understand patch cards. I know some collectors eat this stuff up. And some other collectors who don't eat this stuff up like these particular ones because they're replicas of logos from actual events, in this case the 1985 All-Star Game in Minneapolis (the only All-Star Game to take place on my birthday, by the way). And I will say that they're better than those inexplicable letter patch cards in which you can spell out names or sayings or curse words or whatever the heck people do with them. I don't have anything against patch cards. Their appearance is...

2009 Heritage is pushed back to Friday ! (EDIT: Uh, maybe . I don't believe anything anymore). No good, rotten, schemin', short-printin', gimmickin' bunch of back stabbers. Oh well, I have plenty to do today anyway, so that's one less thing on the list. It's hard to fit Heritage hunting into a day that already includes the start of spring training games. So that's what I'm going to do with this post: look on the bright side. First off, a thank you to the people who read my spittle. Sometimes I don't know why you do. Yesterday was a record for me in both visits and page views, and I haven't the foggiest why. But thanks. Secondly, it still boggles my mind how easily it is to obtain cards like the Hermanski card here since I've started blogging. I'll say it again: great, great people out there. And before I get too back-logged, there are people I need to thank for some recent packages. So I better get that out of the way before I have...