Night Owl Cards

  I spent a couple of days away to visit folks in the Buffalo area.   I've mentioned many times how much I love that city. Not only is it full of nostalgia -- it's where I spent my college years, where I met my wife, etc. -- but it is much more "me" than the place I live currently, where I've lived more than 30 years, a.k.a., not the most civilized place in the world.   For example: The hobby of sports card collecting.   My life of collecting cards where I live is mostly buying online, waiting for a card show to appear every month or so, and taking a gander at the card aisle whenever I happen to be in a big box (which is a lot less often than it was 5-10 years ago) and finding it barren.   Those are my options living where I do. Admittedly, they're not too bad and better in some ways than they once were, I mean I never heard of a monthly card show in my neighborhood even two years ago. But if I lived in a city like Buffalo, I could do so much damage.   In t...

  Often over the years I've read blog posts or, more likely, those on social media that invite a discussion on graded cards.   My standard response -- if I do respond -- is I don't believe in graded cards in almost all cases and that I have very few graded cards in my collection. Then I feel like I have to explain that -- if I don't believe in graded cards, why do I have some in my collection? And how many do I have? I've never known that part.   So this post is about figuring that out, getting to know my graded cards and why they have the gall to exist in my collection when 99.999998% of the cards in the collection are frolicking free in the breeze as is their constitutional right.   For starters, I have nine graded cards ... well, eight cards and one coin, as you can see here. Any other graded card that has come into my possession, I have broken out. All but two of the cards/coin were sent to me by others, because I have never specifically attempted to buy a graded...

  I stopped at the monthly card show Saturday. It was the second straight weekend card show I had attended. This would have been crazy talk in the first 10 years of my blog, but it's something that could easily happen two or three times a year now -- and if I wanted to do a little more traveling around the state, I might be able to go to a show nearly every week over the next six months.   I'm not quite that obsessed. Two in two weeks is quite amazing enough for me.   So you may remember in the show write-up last week that I said I actually finished the show with cash left over. That means I carried that cash into Saturday's show. I padded it just a little, but I budgeted about half the amount for this show that I did for last week's.   It turned out to be plenty because I left this show with money left over, too!  I'd like to blame the expanding number of tables selling Pokemon and such -- it's getting so pervasive that I'm starting to see a world where the...

    In one day, I will be on a long-awaited vacation.   It's my first vacation since Thanksgiving -- and, yes, I know that's a cue for someone to say they haven't had a vacation in 20 years -- but it seems like a long time to me. Also, this vacation actually ushers in "The Vacation Season," which lasts until the sad, sad final moments of August.   During work week-after-work week I think about the things I'll do on vacation and plot out strategies. These usually have to do with the hobby, but also mundane things like shopping for clothes and visiting that flea market I keep forgetting about. It's amazing what gets lost in the rubble of having a job.   Because it's just one week off -- and some of that involves family obligations -- I won't get to everything. But here are some of the things I hope to get to:   1. Send out those Dodger packages   I've promised mailings of extra Dodgers for several folks. I sent out two earlier this week and I kno...

    Eight years ago now, I wrote a post called " My first Dodger card " in which I listed the first Dodger card I pulled each year I have collected -- or tried to since many years I couldn't remember.   The more recent years were easier because I have a blog and document the first packs I open each year, fortunately there have been Dodgers inside of almost every one.   In that 8-year-old post, I wrote that I planned to update it if I could get my brain to remember the first Dodger I pulled in, say, 1982. I also planned to continue the post for future years.   Well, after eight years of silence, that's what I'm doing now. I haven't bothered to update that post with my fresh memories of what I pulled in 1983 or 1989 or 2007. That requires many minutes of quiet reflection and who has time for that now?   So those years are still blank. But I can update the years since 2017. So I'll do that. I know you don't care, but this is for me, because I've been ...

  Yesterday I attended the big show at the state fairgrounds that goes off twice a year. The last time I was there was in September and I obtained the majority of cards from three dealers who are almost always there and almost always get the majority of my business.   I was so confident that they would be there this time that I didn't bother to update my blog want lists or to finally figure out how to access my TCDB want lists on my phone. I just took my hand-penned want list for 1969 Topps and 1979 Topps football and stuffed them in my pocket. If two of those dealers were there, then that would be sufficient.   Well, neither of the two were there. This was a crisis because they are there so often I automatically thought something was wrong. Then I realized just about all my vintage options were gone. The crumpled list in my pocket was useless.   It was time to regroup, though after I did, I walked the show with a lot more uneasiness than I usually do. Not only were...