Night Owl Cards

I collect cards for my own amusement. It's been that way for 40 years. There is nothing to this hobby besides accumulation for me. Except for a few fits and starts, I have rarely considered selling cards because I think this hobby should be as free of real world problems as possible. The formula should be simple: Have a little extra cash for cards? Buy cards. Enjoy cards. Repeat. But after 40 years, that formula becomes less and less practical. I have lots of cards, but the space for them is shrinking by the year. I also have lots of cards that are practically useless to me. They don't fit in my collection and they're not easy to trade. And, of course, any kind of extra money would be helpful. So, I'm considering again selling cards. Only a bit more seriously this time. There has to be someone out there who is a Rays collector or a David DeJesus collector. If the blogs won't take care of my excess parallels then maybe ebay or COMC will. I have resist...

Usually when I do these baseball card cartoon posts, I whine about how cartoons need to return to the backs of baseball cards, how I actually learned things off the backs of baseball cards, how if one of the 14 kids in the United States left collecting baseball cards had cartoons to read on the backs then maybe we wouldn't be finishing 110th -- just behind Slovenia -- in the ability to repeat semi-relevant baseball trivia to our co-workers. But I'm not going to do that. Instead, it will be merely implied. I was just going to mention that I have known by heart the number of times that Babe Ruth walked in his career ever since I pulled Ellie Rodriguez's card out of a rack pack in 1977. It was the first card I pulled, it was a Dodger, and I know that caricature Babe Ruth scowl anywhere. But not all of the cartoons on the backs of baseball cards were meant to give you knowledge about the game. Sometimes the drawings helped you get to know the players. For example, R...

Next week is a big one for card collectors. The first Topps baseball cards of the season are scheduled to arrive, and no matter how hardened and cynical you have become, this news will always produce a thrill in your cold, unfeeling bones. I already know that I will not be attempting to complete the set for a fifth straight year. But that won't stop me from taking more trips next week to Walmart and Target than I would normally make in an entire year. Every year, it's the same. I have to get my hands on the first few packs of the season. I'll do it again next week, or whenever the hell the cards finally arrive in this frozen tundra. But, regardless, I'm sure I'll do it again. And you'll do it again, too. We'll all do it again. This has been ritual for me for 40 years. With only a few exceptions in the late '90s and early 2000s, I've sought out packs at the start of the year, getting those first glimpses of cardboard goodness. To prepare myse...

Well, I butchered that Dr. Seuss quote, didn't I? That right there is a stack of 135 cards from 1981 Donruss. The No. 1 defining trait of '81 Donruss is its supermodel-thin card stock. And I do wonder whether 135 cards made of much sturdier stock would look more impressive next to this stack. But I've just scanned a bunch of '81 Donruss and have no time for science projects. Instead, let's list some of the other traits for which '81 Donruss is well-known: 1. It's wafer-thin. But I mentioned that already. 2. It's plagued with errors. Every third card has something wrong with it. 3. Virtually all of the photos were taken in Chicago. That may seem repetitive, but after so many Topps cards in Yankee Stadium it was actually a relief. 4. Full names on the back. Toby Harrah is Colbert Dale Harrah. 5. Multiple cards of star players. Reggie Jackson, I believe, has 74 cards in this set. 6. Miscut cards, diamond cut cards, ragged edges. 7. Blurry pho...

I was reading another one of those articles the other day about how if you spend all of your time sitting, you're going to die much earlier. These articles didn't used to bother me as I sat in front of the TV or my computer at work. But after experiencing a health scare three years ago, I now do some form of exercise almost every day and I am relieved that I do. I still spend a lot of time sitting at work (I'm now one of those annoying people who thinks it's a good idea to have everybody stand at work instead of sit). And I still do a lot of sitting writing this blog. But thank goodness I'm exerting myself at other times so I'm not so guilt-ridden when one of those articles appears again. But I started thinking, how did we get so sedentary? TV, for sure. Processed food, definitely. The ability to be entertained by a tiny screen, currently. But I'm also going to go out on a limb (no, that's not one of my forms of exercise) and blame Fleer. Ye...