Night Owl Cards

  I often take a vacation around the same time that the National is taking place, yet my vacation never involves going to the National. Why is that? Well, I've explained it several times already but my thoughts are always worth updating on this thing.   Since the vacation and the National often coincide, I usually have some extra time to follow along with what's going on at the National. I do enjoy seeing pictures of all the card displays and the cards that people pick up. And, this time, I really appreciated people like TheWalkingDeadSaga (aka, Eric) and Batboy Glidden (aka, Matthew) displaying their magnificent card acquisitions (like 1952 Mantle kind of magnificent) on Twitter.   I especially appreciated it because as a collector that's what I want to see, spectacular cards I'd never see anywhere else and to share in the joy of fellow collectors' acquisitions. And that's what it seems like I'm seeing less and less of every year. As far as Twitter folks

(Woo-boy, I haven't done one of these since April??? I need to pick up the pace or we're never going to get anybody else in the Cardboard Appreciation Hall of Fame and people will start showing up at my home with pitchforks. It's finally time for Cardboard Appreciation again. This is the 322nd in a series).  In an earlier post, I mentioned that post-career Steve Garvey cards can be a little tricky to acquire and I was determined to make sure that the latest readily available one would not elude me for too long. So I landed this Heritage insert before I even finished the Dodgers Heritage team set (last card on its way to me as I write), which is not the usual way. It's a great card and now that Heritage is covering the 1970s, suddenly all these Baseball Flashbacks are like the most interesting part of Heritage for me. I usually pay them almost no mind -- now I want them ALL!   But one card at a time. This magnificent picture shows Garvey accepting his All-Star Game MVP t

  I resolved to do this post about a month ago when Dime Boxes listed some of what he considers the worst of the junk wax era. I ranked my least favorite from this time way back in the blog's early days, so this time I wanted to list what my favorites from 1987-93 are. You probably already know most of them -- I'm not exactly quiet on my card favorites -- but this post is also to counter all the praise for traditional favorites like 1987 Topps and 1989 Upper Deck. I can be contrarian and those two sets were never my favorites when I was buying packs during that time. (Didn't even see '89 UD).   So I'm listing seven of my faves for posterity. Why seven? Because I consider the junk wax era to have lasted seven years, 1987-93. I can't comfortably squeeze 1986 and 1994 into that span, based on my experience of that time. Here is a very quick run through. 1. 1993 Upper Deck: You should know this by now. I'm writing a blog about it and everything . I don't kn

   I wrote last month about how I am collecting three sets that are known for being difficult on collectors -- 1967, 1969 and 1970 Topps. I'm not afraid of difficult sets. I completed '71 and '72 Topps. But the hobby has changed since I finished those sets and just the repeated effort tends to wear on you a little bit as you progress in the hobby. That's why I add little "enjoyment sets" to my completion quests. Stuff like this: All of this 1985 Donruss came in a TCDB transaction with GoldenEagles555. I now have more than 100 cards from the set, which may not seem like much but I have gone more than three decades with having no more than 20 cards from the set, and my brain just started thinking that's the size of the set. No rush on completing this one because it's needed to help balance the madness of '67, '69 and '70. I am "close" on all three of those sets in terms of cards that I've accumulated already -- but we all know

  Hall of Fame induction ceremony time is/was today. I may catch the highlights later, but I'm not really too interested. I see this happening more frequently as more '90s players are inducted into the Hall. Scott Rolen, I think, is the first HOFer to make his solo Topps card debut when I was on my card-collecting hiatus. OK, that's not right. There was Vlad Guerrero Jr. in there and Ortiz, too. It gets hazy for me in the mid-1990s. I don't have anything against '90s guys making the Hall. Rolen's admittance is fine with me, you don't need me to give my approval anyway. But I don't have much of an attachment. That's why I promised I'd do another one of these Most Hall of Famer posts when the BBWA made their decision a few months ago and then forgot to do it. Well, that and these posts are long-and-tedious to do.   So with the most joy I got out of this post happening in the previous three paragraphs, let's get to it! I didn't break the oth