Night Owl Cards

  I'm still plugging away at the 1993 Upper Deck blog despite readership in the tiny numbers.   I still haven't figured out how to get it to update on my blog roll, and I know that's keeping people from finding it (though now that the thumbnails have reappeared maybe I should try again. EDIT: Tried again and it works! It's A MIRACLE). But I'll stay on course as long as I have the energy.   There will be another post up on there in a couple of days. I like reliving that year as it's one of those ones from the past that is epic to me. I'm sure we all have some of those. I have more than one. 1983 is a big one. So is 1987. So is 1998.    1993 is special for me because of the Upper Deck card set, of course, but it's also the year that the light bulb went on over my head in my chosen profession and I started to have some direction. It's also one of the great music years in my life.   Turning away from radio fodder, with the help of a few co-workers, I fo...

  My post titles have been terribly generic lately, I must be in a funk, or more likely, too busy. I'll snap out of it, but it may not be til January. By the end of next month they'll all say "got some cards." Anyway, I got some cards -- from a couple of veteran bloggers. The blog-to-blog swap is getting rare. and even rarer, I've already sent return packages to both of them, they just went out in the mail yesterday!   The first cards are from Jeremy of Topps Cards That Never Were . He was asking me about my 2023 Topps Heritage want list. This is super-appreciated because even though I'm steadily picking off high-numbers, I'm not sure if I'm going to meet my goal of getting it completed by the end of the year. People need their holiday gifts, you know.   Jeremy sent me these two key highs -- seems like Kelly is always in the high numbers -- but that wasn't all. (Yes, those Angels cards will appear on my year-end post, in the "Topps screw-ups...

  There's been a minor bit of grumbling about no news on the design for 2024 Topps flagship. In the last decade or so, Topps has teased to its design for the following year usually the summer prior. This has given me an easy blog post in which to comment on the upcoming design.   But there hasn't been a peep this year. My guess is it's part of Fanatics' many new ways of doing business since its takeover of Topps. I don't mind. For years and years, I didn't know what the new cards looked like until I opened my first pack.   That's been the way it was since 1975, when I peeled open that first wax pack and saw one of the most colorful designs Topps has ever made. I've been hooked on the '75 set ever since and keep coming up with different ways to write about it. This is the latest way, the massive set countdown. We're headed toward the midway point, not quite there yet. Let's see the next 20.     380. Sonny Siebert (card 328)   This is Siebert...

Email malfunctioning is forcing me to write and publish this on my phone. Let's see how this goes. About a week ago I completed the 1990 Swell set thanks to an envelope from Jeff at Cardboard Catastrophes . He had the last 9 cards I needed. That's eight, I know, the 9th is the Mickey Lolich. This set of 135 cards was pretty easy to finish, and as I mentioned in a previous post, these are much easier to land than the '89 or '91 Swell cards ... at least they're offered up a lot more often in TCDB swaps. This is also probably the first set completion that I can attribute greatly to TCDB deals. I know before I was trading on there, I didn't think I needed TCDB's trade function. I can still manage without it, but TCDB trades seem ideal for low-hanging fruit like '90 Swell. That's gonna be the theme of 2023 as far as set completion, finishing off those low-hangers, because all the big-boy bill-flashers are keeping the vintage sets I...