Night Owl Cards

    My blog reaches around the world and I'm pretty proud of that, but really the most important area for it to reach, as far as my collection, is Southern California.   Thanks to people from across the nation knowing me as a Dodger fan, I've been able to obtain items that usually would be off-limits to me, a lifelong Northeast resident living in a small, remote city. I've received lots of Dodgers items sold exclusively at Dodger Stadium, a place I've only seen in pictures and video screens.   A couple of weeks ago, my all-time favorite player, Ron Cey, was honored as a "Legend of Dodger Baseball," a fairly recent award the organization has presented to former players who have made an impact on the team but are not in the Baseball Hall of Fame.   Due to time constraints -- and nearly 3,000 miles between me and the event -- I couldn't be there in person to bestow my thanks. I knew that the team would be handing out a Cey bobblehead to fans. No matter, I...

  I picked up this card on Friday. Ryne Sandberg passed away Monday.   I was not a kid when Sandberg was starring for the Cubs. I was a senior in high school when his rookie card showed up, and I'm pretty sure I didn't know who he was when I pulled it. That was the last year of dedicated card collecting for me for the next six years. That's a lot of Sandberg cards I didn't see.   I'm also not a Cubs fan, and it feels odd writing a tribute. So I'm going to wander through topics while discussing Sandberg cards, too.   The Sandberg diecut card came from a collection I am assessing for a co-worker. She helps run a thrift shop through her church. The cards are the former collection of her neighbor. The collector's mom made the cards, and everything else in their garage, available to the shop.   It's apparent that the kid collected somewhere around 2005-15. There are also cards going back to 2001 (and some football cards from the late '80s but that was bef...

  A couple weeks ago, I noticed yet another downturn in card blogging, and I went through my blog reading list to determine how many card bloggers posted at least once a week for the previous week.   It was around 40. That seemed like an all-time low ... or at least since the early days of my blog when I'm sure there weren't even 40 card blogs.   I just checked again, and the numbers were still low, but better this time at just over 50 posting at least once a week.   I'm grateful for anyone who writes about cards at least once a week. Reading card blogs has been a daily ritual for me for more than 17 years and I would hate to move on from that. I don't know how the people who used to regularly read card blogs stopped, frankly. Don't they feel like there's a hole in their day every day?   The amount of card bloggers who write at least once a week and trade through the mail regularly is even less. Much less. But two who still do both just sent me some cards. That ...

    Back in January, when we knew the five former players who were going to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame for 2025, I wrote a post on those five players, mentioning how many cards I had of each of them.   I went back to that post to see if I had gained any cards of Dick Allen, Dave Parker, CC Sabathia, Ichiro Suzuki or Bobby  Billy Wagner since.   I did. None for Sabathia or Wagner, but one each for Allen and Suzuki and five for Dave Parker. That makes sense, since Parker is from my era and I always want his cards. But I was surprised I had gathered a whole five and I didn't know which ones those were (the one above is one of them though). The key thing to know is it gave me more than 100 Parker cards as in January the total stood at 99.   Dave Parker's induction was the one I was looking forward to most. Unfortunately, he passed away last month and now the induction ceremony is a lot less interesting to me as both Parker and Allen are gone. ...

  A couple of months ago I ran a Dodgers card giveaway in hopes that collectors would both relieve me of some of my many, many dupes and also enjoy what I was sending.   There wasn't much of a response. Four or five folks. Blogging giveaways aren't what they once were. Plus there are all those deluded Yankees and Giants fans who have yet to come to grips with the one true team 😃. What I did send made somewhat of a dent, but there is so much left.   Meanwhile, the collectors who took me up on the offer were appreciative. One collector, Jeremy, even sent something back. He didn't have to. But it's nice to know that he really liked the cards. In fact, his two kids did, too, and sent a couple of drawings.   It's great seeing young Dodger fans. They're so rare around here.   The goodies in the box mostly came from Dodger Stadium giveaways, I think. Those drinking cups at the top recognize the Dodgers' World Series title, appearance in the postseason and Opening ...

(*music fans, go to the end) The National is this coming next week and I know several collectors who are attending. Many of them attend every year or close to it.   I'll be in my usual spot, spending much less money and happy not to deal with crowds. Meanwhile, I have some cards here from someone who is planning to go to the big show in Chicago, or maybe is already on the way to digging in discount boxes.   Some of you have also recently received cards from Stuart at S.R. '75 Cards . So this is my turn to decipher what he sent, because a lot of it was from that black hole collecting period of the early 2000s. As an example, I had neatly separated the envelope into cards I needed and cards I didn't. Per usual, I turned the duplicate cards over to signal to my future self that I had them.   One card on its reverse side at the top of the stack caught my eye.     Card-creating gentlemen, this is why you always serial-number your cards in gold foil. I was looking at ...