Night Owl Cards

I don't write success as well as I do failure. Failure has a back story. Failure is epic. Failure is comedy and shared human experience. Success is ... well ... every other blog post out there. Look around the card blogs. It's one success after another. "I added this card. I added these cards. Look, it's shiny! Look, it's vintagey!" It's nice. But with everyone doing it, how do I make my success stand out? It's tricky. Making failure stand out is easy. A lot of people are uncomfortable addressing their failures, but I'm not. So by simply writing about it, it stands out. But success? I have to jump through a lot of hoops for success. And I just don't have time most days to jump through hoops. Plus, by virtue of having a card blog and being part of such a generous community like card collectors where crazy good deeds happen daily, success is ... um ... kind of boring. A lot of times there's no story to success. "I emaile...

I like to think of myself as a much more intelligent and discerning card consumer than I was in the early days of this blog. But that doesn't mean I don't do stupid things. I love cards too much to never do anything stupid. One of those stupid things happened yesterday. The Walmart closest to me has an OK card section. It's not as nice as the Target across the street, but Walmart also has things that Target doesn't have (like tools -- come on Target, why don't you put a few more clothes for animals on your shelves?). So I know Walmart's card aisle pretty well. At this present time, it features the usual popular items. There are rack packs, loose packs, hanger packs and blasters of 2014 Topps. There are leftover rack packs of 2013 Topps and 2013 Update. Blasters, too. There is 2013 Allen and Ginter, and a few random rack packs of 2013 Gypsy Queen, and a whole bunch of football and basketball blasters that never seem to change because I don't know ...

OK, I do care. But I don't care RIGHT NOW. This week you will be deluged with reports on 2013 Topps. There will be "golden ticket" alerts across the internet -- 2013 Topps has been spotted in a Target in Raleigh, N.C.!!!!!!! MOVE! MOVE! -- but I will be unfazed. I expect to be in a Target this Friday. I will check then. But even if new cards aren't around yet, it still won't bother me, because I have mah new cards already. I just got back from a card show! The January card show is an "every other year" proposition. There are no guarantees in this winter wonderland. But clear skies led me to more glorious cardboard and I couldn't be happier. The show this time coincided with the Outdoor Expo going on in the same part of the fairgrounds. This annoys me to no end, because parking is a pain, especially with the behemoth vehicles Outdoor Expo types tend to drive. And they're in no hurry either, which doesn't coincide with my "NEED...

A couple of months ago I speculated that I would complete the 2012 Allen and Ginter set earlier than any of the previous four A&G sets that I have completed. Thanks to some beneficial trade packages that took out a bunch of wants late this summer, I was down to a few cards in no time. But, of course, SPs have a way of extending every completion goal into a bloody, death march. It's like the Fear Factor with cards. YOU WILL COMPLETE THIS SET AFTER YOU RUN THROUGH THIS OBSTACLE COURSE LITTERED WITH BEAR TRAPS, HOLD YOUR BREATH FOR 10 MINUTES WHILE SUBMERGED UNDERWATER IN A VW BUG, AND EAT 29 LIVE LARVAE OF THE EASTERN EYED CLICK BEETLE! THEN, and only THEN, can you complete your set! I'm not willing to do any of that. So here I still sit, two cards away from completion. A couple of people took pity on my cowardly ways and at least got me down to those two cards. Jeff from 2 by 3 Heroes sent me Carlos Pena and Buster Posey. Pena is a short-print but Posey i...

I've mentioned several times here that I worked in a department store when I was in college. It was a pretty good gig as far as minimum wage jobs go, but there was one thing that frustrated me in particular. The return desk. I never worked there, and I was always grateful for that. But I would be summoned up to the return desk periodically for a question on an article that someone was returning. Frequently, my response to the question was something related to this: "Don't let them get away with it." I found out quickly that all kinds of schemers frequented the return desk. It wasn't just the people who bought something and then saw that the item they bought went on sale three days later and returned it for the new deal. I could live with them. It was the people who returned stuff that was: A) Broken B) Torn C) Worn frequently D) Not from our store E) Probably not from our country F) Possibly not legal G) Unidentifiable Most of the time, I'...