Night Owl Cards

  Hey, guys! I've joined Trading Card Database!   I know, you never thought you'd see the day. I was the same way.   I wasn't eager to add another card thing in my life, especially not one that involved more filing of my collection as well as interacting with even more people on the interwebs.   The fact that certain collectors were pushing it like Amway members didn't help. Nor did the memory of other online card database systems disappearing forever.   But I decided to join anyway. Ever since my desktop computer died a couple of months ago, and my ancient spreadsheet that inventoried my collection along with it, I haven't had a good way to keep tabs on my entire collection.   I do keep track of certain key totals on the blog. I know the total number of cards I have and I know which players are represented the most in my collection. I'm good with knowing the amount of cards I have for maybe the top 200 or so guys.   But if you were to ask me "how many...

  I know a lot of collectors don't care for mini cards. I can see their point. Even myself, a known mini lover, comes across mini cards that simply puzzle me. What am I supposed to do with these? I own pages for mini cards, but those pages are reserved for the mini cards that I want in my collection. The others? Can't store 'em in a box, they'll likely get lost or dinged. So what happens to them? I stack them high on a shelf, lonely by themselves, in hopes that one of them will fit someone's collection ... someday. When people send me mini cards, usually the A&G kind, targeted for my A&G frankenset binder, only a select few make the binder. And then the rest become instantly useless. To the stack on the shelf they go. Sorry, fellas, no one wants you. Which is why the frankenset binder is such a great idea. Minis with a purpose! I haven't felt this way about minis since I was completing the 1975 Topps mini set (but I'm not putting A&G minis in the...

We're in the final month of 2020 and already I'm sick of the "hang on, one more month" online memes and sentiments. I'm not against encouragement, but has it ever rang so hollow?   It's just numbers, you guys. It don't mean anything. That big, electric ball they drop in Times Square each year (well, most years) just moves the fourth digit up one. We'll still be dealing with the same crap in January 2021.   Actually, I've had worse years. It's all relative, of course. But if you asked me to choose between 2020 and 2019, I would say, "can't it be something other than those two years?" And then I'd say, "2020." 2019 was a disaster for me. That's the closest I've come to a nervous breakdown. I never want to go back to 2019.   And, in 2020, my favorite team won the world championship. That's a place I get to go when someone says, "find something happy in 2020 to talk about." The Dodgers won the Worl...

I received a nice card in the mail a week or two ago from a reader who wanted to send me some cards on the occasion of the Dodgers' World Series victory.   Dana has sent me cards before and the notes are always nice. He's had a chance to do something I never have -- visit Dodger Stadium and play the National Anthem there with his school band!   The cards he sent were all recent Stadium Club Dodgers, including the last two that I needed to complete the team set for this year.     The elusive Max Muncy -- I thought I had it already but that was the hard-to-see black parallel -- and the super stylin' Mookie Betts.    He also sent the black parallel of the Jackie Robinson card from last year's Stadium Club.   With the 2020 team set now complete, it's time to look back through those Dodger cards and declare something that I always knew: Sandy Koufax is still mowing them down. Koufax has appeared in six of the seven Stadium Club sets since Topps rebooted SC ...

    I don't discuss night cards or publish weekly Awesome Night Card posts much anymore. One of the few mini-collections that I have is more of an under-the-radar card habit for me these days. But the night card binder is still going, maybe not as strongly but I still pull it out periodically to see what slots I can fill. It really is pretty when you open it up and look at the gleaming lights beaming from the pages. Recently, Max from the Starting Nine blog sent an assortment of cards catered to my interests and two of them were fantastically constructed night cards from this year's Stadium Club. Look at that Shed Long card above. Joy in prime time right there. Very cool. And I barely know who Shed Long is. So, you know the frankenset drill. I turn over the Shed Long card to see what number it is and see if it can fill a slot, or bump the other card out. Long is card No. 198 in 2020 Stadium Club. But there's someone in the way: Sorry, Shed, you're not going to unseat P...