Night Owl Cards

I should know better than to evaluate a card product based on a couple of samples. Or evaluate it based on scans displayed online. Even though I called Topps' Big League Baseball a "perfectly pleasant card product" and as collectable as anything out on the market, I felt I was a little bit harsh in my initial review. After seeing two Big League Dodger cards sent to me from a fellow collector, I was unimpressed. I thought the cards seemed weirdly small, the photo images weren't doing it for me, and the backs were difficult to read. But this is a product that definitely benefits from evaluating it as a whole -- meaning buying some packs, you big dummy -- rather than reviewing one, solitary card. After snagging a pair of fat packs or hanger packs or whatever these are, I was struck most by the sheer joy of getting a fat stack of cards all at once. After growing accustomed to pulling just 14 cards out of an Allen and Ginter hanger pack and about the same for St...

Do you ever wonder where the phrase "cards that never were" began? The internet and the blogs love the phrase. There are dozens of blogs devoted to "cards that never were" and probably hundreds of separate instances that have been showcased on sports- and collectable-related sites, underlining what the internet does: make something viewable that doesn't exist. The only problem is, I like my cards to exist. A digital picture is nice to look at for a moment. But if I can't touch it, then that digital image is not going to last. I will forget about it. That's why I like "cards that never were" to be printed out as a "real" card. That way, the "never was" becomes an "actually is." My favorite "what-if" "cards" (and in my mind they aren't actually cards until I can hold them in my hands) are the ones that exist outside of my digital screen. So, sorry about that mini-rant, back to my or...

A few days ago, Billy from Cardboard History wrote up a bucket list of achievements he would like to accomplish in the hobby. Now, I've been aware of "bucket lists," since it became a concept but I've never given it much of a thought, in the hobby or in everyday life. I'm not much of a traveler and every person's bucket list seems to contain some version of "see the world." In fact, I'm very much of a realist and wild flights of fancy don't enter my mind too often. Normally, if I was going to devise a hobby bucket list, I might say, "complete all of the Kellogg's 3D sets of the 1970s" or something a little time-consuming, but fairly achievable. But after seeing Billy's list and some of the, shall we say, "ambitious" items on his list, I decided to take my hobby bucket list in that direction. If Billy's goals can include starting a card company and convincing card companies to include a player from every ...

I am currently cataloging the cards from the dime box that I bought at my last card show in April. So it's appropriate that I would receive a surprise package over the weekend from reader Dave with a note that said he was inspired enough by that post about buying an entire dime box to purchase one of his own. Then he said, "All of these cards came from that box. And what a box it was!" After reviewing the contents, I agree. That was some dime box. Far, far, far, far, FAR better than the dime box that I bought. I mean I'm going through card after card of busts from 2014 Bowman in my dime box. But I'm a natural skeptic and it's difficult for me to believe that all of this great stuff from Dave was reduced down to a dime apiece. I'm going to show you the cards and give my own opinion on whether I think they actually came from a dime box and you can play along, too. I'll start with some cards that I'd be surprised if they didn't come...