Night Owl Cards

I haven't written a "Legends of Cardboard" post in almost three years. That's because it's taken me that long to get this card. Who knew a card of someone who barely registered on a major league roster, from 1993, would be so elusive? Yet, every time I searched for the famed Oscar Azocar "bat-hugging" Stadium Club card on COMC, it would be sold out. A few times (such as now), it's available on that site for almost 6 bucks. No thanks. I ended up finding it on Sportlots for 18 cents. And, how about this for a development? It arrived today from someone who lives in my town. Heck, he could have driven over and dropped it in my mailbox. Finally, it's mine. I wanted to hug it like Azocar is doing to his bat. Azocar is the latest Legend of Cardboard -- keep in mind Legends of Cardboard are those players who didn't necessarily excel on the field but certainly excelled on cardboard. He is a Legend of Cardboard because he not only produ...

First, because people might have missed it because I haven't been in the habit of posting on this blog overnight lately, I am hoarding Steve Garvey cards . I apparently have a thing about fallen heroes. I look at my first year of blogging with the same nostalgic haze usually reserved for bad '70s music and '80s neon. It was a fascinating time full of new cards, new collecting partners and newly discovered blogs. Not only was I finding already established blogs, but new ones seemed to appear every week. The blogging giddiness has disappeared over the years for me and, it appears, for others. Lots of blogs established during 2008 and 2009 aren't around anymore, or are stuck on some distant date in the past, frozen in time. Every once in awhile, though, a blog reappears and I love it when that happens. A few weeks ago, I received an email from someone who was blogging during that first year I was, who had returned to blogging. The blog -- Project Phillies -- ha...

(On my last post, I sang the praises of the want list. I would be remiss if I didn't include a link to a website devoted entirely to the want list. Got It. Got It. Need It. is a storing house for bloggers' want lists. All you need to do is leave a comment about your wants and they will be listed on the site! It's also a great place to go if you want to get that hard-to-buy for collector something special. So here's to appreciating Got It. Got It. Need It. Got it? This is Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 116th in a series): When it comes to the junk wax era, I'm not one to wax poetic. I know a lot of people spent their formative years collecting cards during the era of overproduction. I did not. By the time the 90s hit, I was a grown adult, trying to find my way in a confusing adult world. I did purchase a lot of cards during this time, but it was very sporadic. I bought almost none in '90, a lot in '91, a ton in '92, a moderate amount in '93...

Have you checked out the new "stats" feature on blogger yet? You can find out all kinds of odd-ball things about who looks at what posts and how they get to your blog and other great stuff. Aside from it alerting you to the fact that the world is filled with strange people who happen to be looking at your blog, there are some enlightening items there. For instance, some posts that I wrote long ago are still popular in terms of views. One of those posts was the first one that I did on the dollar store near me that sells cards. I'm not sure why people are still looking at that thing from a year-and-a-half ago, but they is. Back then, the store was packed with old cards from the '80s and '90s. Since then, it's been up and down, but mostly down. I still manage to find some adequate stuff for next to nothing, but there's less of it. A few days ago I headed there because at this time of the year I'm poor. I needed to buy cards and be cheap about it...

I'm not much for surprises. I think we can all agree that the bad kind of surprises aren't good for anyone. But I'm not a fan of the good kind either -- parties, roller coasters, winning free fries in the McDonald's Monopoly game, whatever. I like routine. I like sameness. I like boring. At least that's what I let others believe. And then they're all stunned when I squeal like a dog toy because the mailbox is stuffed full of golden, rectangular envelopes. On the very day of my birthday, there were three such envelopes in the mailbox. I promptly dubbed them birthday gifts. I don't care if none of the senders could have known it was my birthday or that the packages would arrive on my birthday. I sung "happy birthday to me" as I opened them and soon everyone was annoyed except for me. Which is how most birthdays around here end. So, shall we see what Joe L., Johngy and dayf got for my birthday? Yes we shall. Joe L. found something very a...