Night Owl Cards

    As a veteran blogger, I know that post titles will decide how many views you get. Sometimes it's a catchy phrase or something that sounds controversial or confrontational in nature. Maybe it's a word that sets off the bots, like the other day when I accidentally wrote "Cardboard Appreciation" instead of "C.A." and created a frenzy of clicks (Bots love the word "cardboard"). My last post about the glorious vintage I got to wander through didn't get the views but did get the comments. That's how you know you're getting the right people to your post. Just put "assessment" in your post title and find out who isn't scared easily. With that in mind, I changed today's post title from "minor league Sunday" to "a minor achievement," just to grab a few who might automatically ignore someone writing about minor league cards, which I'm about to right now (although maybe you got the hint by the card ima...

  I shelled out for an off-condition card of the interestingly named John O'Rear to get me within one of completing the 1980 TCMA Albuquerque Dukes set that I have loved since I was a young teen. I'm in a bit of card buying freeze right now but I'm fortunate in that my tastes aren't that expensive. All that's left to finish the set is Don Crow. Yeah, not Scioscia or Stewart. Don Crow. But that doesn't matter for this post. Neither Crow nor O'Rear were in the back of the book that I cared about when it came to upcoming Dodgers prospects. Before Bowman became a prospects thing, I figured out who the hot prospects were in the Dodgers' organization by turning to the back pages of the team yearbook that I had ordered. Here is the first prospects page in the first Dodgers yearbook I ever bought, the 1977 issue. Here are the next two pages. In my mind back then, those were all of the Dodgers prospects. And I wanted all of them to make the major leagues and kick...

  For the first time in exactly a year, I received a shipment of cards from COMC last week. I wouldn't say COMC is truly back back. I did pay extra for the express shipping so I wouldn't have to wait however long we're waiting for COMC shipments these days. But the cards arrived in short fashion and it was nice to see something in the mailbox from my preferred online card site for over a decade until last year. I had waited a year to order what was in my cart. I didn't want to be one of those people who paid and then waited nine months for shipment. I mean, what if I ordered them and COMC went under? Those were the kind of questions that were floating in my head last year.   That meant that I did lose a couple of items out of my cart, but no big deal. Nothing in there was anything highly sought-after and I merely replaced whatever I lost with a new version or something else I liked. Many of my collecting interests are not high on anyone's radar, especially 2020 fli...

Release date for 2020 Heritage is tomorrow. I always considered March as being "Heritage month" but apparently Topps has moved it up because nobody can buy packs of any new release for more than a couple weeks without being distracted anymore. My warning to anyone contemplating completing Heritage this year is the Felipe Lopez card right here. I bought this Lopez card, which arrived at my home yesterday, in my continuing attempt to get out from under that contract I signed with Topps 12 years ago to complete the 2008 Heritage set. It's one of the many blasted short-prints in the set and I've been buying like two a year for the last 10 years because I'm cheap and annoyed and indignant and all those things that Heritage has made me. Oh, and Lopez stopped playing in the majors nine years ago. So, bang-up job, night owl, on timely completion of that set. Because I still need seven more short-prints to finish the set. I've mentioned several times that my...