Night Owl Cards

  This time of year is ideal for looking back -- something I do a lot no matter what time of year it is. In fact, I am preparing for my end-of-the-year spectacular, which I hope you'll see tomorrow. But a couple of folks on Twitter the other day were looking farther back than just last year. They were reminiscing about the golden era of blogging, specifically when card blogs started popping up. The first of those card blogs, I think, were around 2005 or 2006. It gets a little murky and people start arguing about who was first, and really, who cares -- people are writing about baseball cards!!! There were just a handful of blogs before 2008, no more than 20. Then 2008 arrived and that was the year of The Card Blog Boom. It's also the year I started blogging, although I had no idea I was joining what was "the thing to do" in the hobby at the time. Twitter folks were remembering that time and how few card bloggers there were then, but exactly how many were there? The gu...

  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...