Night Owl Cards

If you are tempted to skip this post because it's a single-card post, or it's a player you don't know, or it's "just some old card," perhaps this bit of trivia will keep you here:

In terms of every player to play in major league baseball, listed alphabetically, George Zuverink is the third-to-last name on that list. According to baseball-reference, you would have to read 19,687 names before finally arriving at:

19,688. George Zuverink
19,689. Dutch Zwilling
19,690. Tony Zych

Until Tony Zych came along in 2015 (Zych pitched in 70 games for the Mariners, you can find him mostly in prospect sets and Team USA sets), Zuverink was the penultimate name on the MLB list with only Dutch Zwilling, who played from 1910-16, holding down the rear.

Let's delve a little more into the Z's of Major League Baseball since you have told me by reading to this point that you are fascinated by this topic. So am I! Let's go!

Just 96 players with a last name beginning wit…

I want to address two different card package arrivals that don't have much in common other than that one thing that every arriving card package has in common, which is:

How will I store these?

It comes down to three ways: binder, top loader or box.

These means of packaging, storing and presenting are not the same. Ideally, every last card in my collection would be living in a binder. That's my favorite storage method. They're accessible. The cards are presented nicely within. They're very good for categorizing and we card collectors sure do love to categorize. They look good visually when entering the room and when opening the binder.

But I don't have the room for a binder for every card. I can't even process what they would look like. Some edition of "Hoarders," I'm sure.

So the cards that are not deemed "worthy" of a binder -- and, yes, I hate that we're prioritizing like this -- go in a box.

Boxes are for sets that I'm not co…

This isn't really a complaint, just something interesting that I've been noticing.

I'm working on wrapping up a couple of '70s-centric sets right now, getting down to those last 10-20-30 cards, and the usual candidates are being evasive.

I wish I could pick up all the stars early in my set-building quests so the end of the build isn't quite so painful but it never ends up that way. The best of the best usually take the most effort. But I expect that.

What always surprises me is some of the other players that end up being the final few.

Take, for instance, the 1977 Kellogg's set that I'm now trying to complete. I picked up three more cards from that set from Sportlots. The Jose "Cheo" Cruz card was one of them.



The other two were Dodgers, already in my Dodger binders but that doesn't help me complete the set now, does it?

I would've liked to add more with this most recent order but most of the other wants simply weren't available. Here…