Night Owl Cards

I consider myself a pretty average card collector. There are certain things that distinguish me from other collectors, but nothing about my collecting habits are unique. I'll even assume there's another collector out there who accumulates night cards. He probably started long before me, too. But there are ways of collecting -- or in this case, ways of talking about collecting -- that I don't resemble or even understand. One phrase that's used all the time by certain collectors is something I've never said in my life: "My personal collection." I hear this all the time. From bloggers. From guys at card shows. "That's going in my personal collection." "I have that card in my personal collection." And every time I think, as I smile blankly, "what does that MEAN?" I envision a box or a binder with words scrawled in marker that say, "My Personal Collection." Maybe it's a safe deposit box, or the card...

A couple of days ago, I wrote about how my decision not to collect any 2012 set would be fairly easy if it wasn't for this summer and Allen & Ginter . Today, with the help of some cards from madding at Cards on Cards , I am going in the opposite direction. There is a card brand that I am positively giddy about avoiding. I can't wait to avoid it. I do a good job of avoiding it now. But now I get to COMPLETELY avoid it. Forever. Yeah, I think it might be forever. I may never buy another pack of Bowman ever again. The only reason I've picked up packs of Bowman in the past was to see what the hysteria was about. Every year there was some prospect everyone was going bat-poo over. I figured I'd check it out. But with the exception of Strasmania , I always struck out. Bowman packs left me cold. Card after card of players I had never heard of and probably would never hear of again. This was no way to collect. The designs rarely impressed (yikes, I didn...