Night Owl Cards

If you've been following this blog since the beginning, you may have noticed a pattern through the years. On Night Owl Cards, the spring/summer is a happy time of baseball viewing and baseball card buying. The early fall is a time of fretting over my favorite team. The late fall is a time of being broke. And March is a time of having no time to do a damn thing. In other words, I repeat myself. A lot. So, while I'm in this endless time loop, I might as well do what the time loop says to do and tell you how far behind I am. I'm way behind in getting cards together for certain people. Nachos Grande, Cardboard Collections, All Your Base Cards Belong To Us, My Past Time ... I Love It, Mark's Ephemera, and several others, your cards are in assembly and whenever I get a chance to hit the store, I'll grab some packaging material. Then, another waiting period will commence until I can get to a post office. I'm way behind in figuring out if I have trade materia...

Most card collectors I know are "good eggs." Sure, there are rotten people in every line of work, but somehow collecting pictures of ballplayers -- especially baseball players -- draws folks that I consider "likable." They're my kind of people. This presents an interesting situation, because if you haven't noticed, there are a great deal of athletes who are definitely not good eggs. They are horrid, putrid eggs that emit a foul odor in every direction. Why we are collecting cards of these people I haven't a clue. Whenever I think about that, it gets disheartening. If there ever occurs a time when I stop collecting cards, it won't be because of card company shenanigans. It will be because I believe that there is not one professional player worth admiring, and consequently not worth collecting. Fortunately, that hasn't happened yet. The example that I'm getting at is Clayton Kershaw. There have been a few articles written lately about ...

I won myself an unopened wax pack and some Dodger cards just for answering a simple question over at Closet Full of Cardboard . I'll show the Dodgers some other time when the mood strikes, but I need to open the pack now, because it's something I've never done before. I know. This is a pack of 1988 Fleer. I can hear you groaning already. But you can't assume that everyone was 10 and opened garbage cans full of cards in '88. I was 22, on the verge of college graduation, and had met my future wife only five months earlier. I spent '88 mostly in the company of my girlfriend, and I promise you the topic of baseball cards never came up once during that year. Twenty-three years later, the secret is out. My wife is all too aware of my obsession with baseball players on cardboard. I open packs right in front of her without shame or remorse. She's even bought some cards for me when she's feeling brave and daring. Things are a lot more comfortable now...

Mannywood is back! Yes, you have the female-fertility-drug-abusing, flaky- rastafarian -hair-wearing, puzzling- where'd -my-batting-eye-go slugger to kick around again in 2010. But just remember: you had Barry first. The return of Ramirez means I don't have to endure another offseason crapfest of agony like last year. With the offense relatively intact for next year, the Dodgers can now focus on finding pitching and a second baseman. And I can focus on stuff like posting trades, which always seem to slip through the cracks around here. This trade was pulled off two or three weeks ago and Jeff of Closet Full of Cardboard already posted the cards I sent him eons ago. It's about time I do the same. Ready for some Dodgers? No? Well, that's not the right answer. The right answer is: "you always know what we want Night Owl." OK, on with the goodies: A nice super-thick 2001 Fleer EX card. When I was a baby, I would chew on those Rubbermaid stirring sticks, the...