Night Owl Cards

   I hardly ever play Immaculate Grid anymore. During its early days -- about a couple of years ago now -- I played fairly frequently. I enjoyed coming up with team combos for long-forgotten or hardly known players. Team combos were my thing.   At the time, the categories were mostly team combos and awards, which I could tackle fairly well. Then, about 100 days into IG, numbers categories started popping up. My brain doesn't retain numbers nearly as well as which player played on which team. Also, numbers remind me of homework, and, yes, the game started to feel like that.   So I mostly only play now when I see that one of the rows or columns is the Dodgers. I can find really obscure players in that category. Trying to get a low rarity score was always an objective for me when I played -- I can be the competitive sort -- so I like the obscure guys.    My ears perked up when a couple of Immaculate Grid users recently mentioned Jim Hutto. Hutto is a 1970...

   Somehow, I've managed to land nearly 75 percent of the 2025 Topps flagship set. TCDB says I have 516 of the 700 cards.   This is despite making exactly one retail purchase of 2025 Topps the entire year. I bought a blaster back in February when it came out. Nothing since. I've done very well with cutting back on spending for new sets that are merely "meh" to me.   But thanks to a great send of almost the full Series 1 checklist and gifts of hanger boxes and random packs from loved ones, I still have accumulated enough that I'm battling the "go ahead and complete it" whispers in my brain.   But, no, right now I'm treating 2025 Topps like I do all flagship sets that don't inspire me enough -- just get that Dodger team set.   I finished that off with an online purchase that arrived recently. I needed only six Series 2 cards so I've got some dupes to repurpose. Here are those six:   I hate it when the Mookie Betts card is elusive, so that'...

  For the first five years of this blog, there was nothing more mind-blowing to me than communicating and trading with collectors from around the world, specifically overseas.   England, France, Australia, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, I couldn't believe the reach of the blog and how many different people collected baseball cards! I connected with many of them and traded multiple times with some.   Then, slowly, each of them disappeared from the blog space, often without a trace, until it's now just me and some of my Canadian friends.   One collector, though, has turned back the clock, at least for now, by moving from the States back to Japan. Kenny, a.k.a., Zippy Zappy , has been downsizing and refocusing his collection and sending out cards to folks who could use them more than he can.   I received an envelope from Japan a few weeks ago with some cards, and then yesterday a big, fat package from Japan Post was deposited on a chair on my porch. Well, well, t...

  Five years ago I gave a photo tour of my then-new card room. The room made its debut in mid-2019 and by spring of 2020 it looked as I know it now.   I thought it'd be a good time to show another update, five years later. I've long thought of doing a video tour of my card room, but:   a) I am woefully inept when it comes to uploading video, etc. b) I say all the time that I have no time for hobby videos, what makes me think anyone has time to see mine?   So another photo tour it is. And I'm saying right now that the photos aren't great -- too much sunlight in the room and I take the most basic pictures possible (no patience). So here we go!     The bookshelf just inside the entrance. This shelf is a holdover from my childhood bedroom, probably once painted red or blue in that usual mid-70s tribute to the Bicentennial.   This houses most of my boxes for Topps cards -- for sets I haven't completed or aren't attempting to complete. Near the bottom are a ...

  This blog is full of laments about the increasingly fast-paced world and my inability to keep up.   I look back on my moaning about this topic from 10-15 years ago and smile to myself, "you have no idea, younger-than-you-think night owl". I also mention how old I am in those long-ago posts. But now, it's really the truth. I am old. By virtually any definition  (Unless you're 80 and reading this).   I can't keep up in whatever aspect of life we are addressing. And any moment it's time to learn something new -- usually related to some gadget -- I want to crawl under the covers and sing '70s songs softly to myself.   This feeling of falling increasingly behind is with me almost every day. Baseball isn't helping either. The amount of transactions seem to be multiplying every year. I came across some transaction list recently that absolutely illustrated the quickening rate at which players move now, but in typical old-person fashion, I can't remember ...