Night Owl Cards

  The 2024 Topps Holiday design appealed to me right away. I've enjoyed most over-the-top designs -- as long as they have a fun streak -- and these cards have that. It was the first Holiday set I found appealing since 2019, when I went a little nuts and completed the whole thing that holiday season. Since that year, the designs were pretty blah and I started to think Topps should hang it up with this set. So good for Topps going splashy this year ... er, last year. Yeah, why am I writing about this now? The holidays are long gone, replaced by ... crap is that another lake-effect storm? Well, I'm just staying in the spirit of the current situation. In case you haven't noticed the last four or five years, everything is late. Almost nobody shows up at work on time anymore in my experience, packages are constantly delayed, work orders delayed, events pushed back. Topps is just as late as everything else. Archives is just coming out now. Stadium Club was way late again. Allen ...

That early bird is an idiot. Who needs worms? Late is great. At least it is when it comes to cards. While everyone is hyperventilating over the newest card product, driving up prices on all the newness, being late has its advantages. But first the backstory: I am not anywhere near completing my 2015 Allen & Ginter set. I still haven't finished 2014 A&G yet (*grumble, grumble, shortprints, grumble, grumble*). But when I started seeing signs of 2016 A&G appearing in stores, I knew I had to do my own tour. I hadn't planned on doing it. But then Stale Gum posted on Twitter that he spotted 2016 A&G in Plattsburgh, of all places, with photographic evidence . Plattsburgh is about three hours from me and even more remote than where I live. If '16 A&G was in Plattsburgh, it had to be here. We headed out to dinner and to do a little shopping afterward. I asked my daughter whether we'd find A&G in Target or Walmart. She immediately said, "...