Night Owl Cards

  Here we are: One of the years of my past that is lost in the black hole of time and continuing memory loss. 1996 will be known to me for two things: the year I bought a house and the year the most hated boss of my life left town. Aside from a few assorted song favorites (Oasis, Garbage, Smashing Pumpkins, you know the ones), that's all I can recall. But what about the baseball cards? Yeah, about that. 1996 was also the first year I did not buy a single card since the time I knew what a baseball card was more than 20 years prior. So, how am I supposed to evaluate the cards from this year? I sure don't feel qualified. I've said this for the last couple of editions for this series. The enthusiasm is low. And in typical '90s fashion, the cards make it difficult. How do I trim it down into something manageable and coherent? For 1995, I limited the sets I was reviewing to only those that could muster 500 cards in their set. But in 1996, Topps pulled a fast one and issued a ...

Greetings from my living room, which is now cluttered with cardboard. This is my annual Dodgers dupes box organization. And I'm about two months late with it, too. My mission with this annual activity is to incorporate all the dupes I've accumulated in the past year into the main dupes box. But there are two other missions within that main mission: 1) To get rid of some cards. 2) To find cards I need. Those are polar opposite mini-missions. The first is sad and the second is happy. And I'm pleased to say I'm succeeding with both. I am hell bent on getting rid of cards I simply don't need. I have no problem keeping a few dupes of each card because you never know when you'll require one on demand or someone will need one. But where once I would have no problem with having 10-or-more of any card, I've since cut that down to five of each, and now it's down to three. Sometimes it's less than that (sometimes it's more for certain key cards)...

The January card show has been a pain in my ass since 2008. Finally able to attend after being MIA the last two years, I was determined to enjoy it even with very little cash. But then something happened ... I scrounged up some more money. I don't know how I did it. I think I have to forgo lunch and haircuts for the next two months. But I managed to go to the card show with more than 20 bucks in my pocket. It still wasn't as much as I usually bring and the card stack was lower than normal. Plus, I got off to a horribly late start. I arrived at the show two hours before shutdown time. And you know what some dealers do one hour before shutdown time. They fold up their tables. I hate that. Dealers who don't fold up their tables one hour before shutdown time get business from me. But that was one of the few things that I noticed because I was too busy rushing around in a near panic trying to cover as much as I could within the limited window. A few key things that did ...

Over the course of the last week or two, I have informally "named" a few more sets. After much reflection (i.e. none), I decided to go ahead and formally name those sets in the "Define the Design" page of the blog. You can see the new names along with all the other set names selected so far, on the aforementioned page . But I better go through the details here, just in case anyone accuses me of trying to sneak in undeserving names on this very, very serious subject. The 1958 Topps set is being called "the scrapbook set." As mentioned before, it really looks like the old scrapbooks in which people pasted images and letters onto colored construction paper. I can practically see the dried glue stains. The 1996 Topps set is now called "the cyborg set," thanks to the squished head image that is on almost every player's card in the set. It reminds me of John Connor shape-shifting his way through the Terminator movies. A very strange choice ...