Night Owl Cards

  I received an email yesterday from Bob of the best bubble , informing me that my other Beckett magazine article is out. This one is about my Dodgers fanhood and is in the latest Beckett baseball magazine. I don't have a subscription to that, so I'll have to wait until I have time to find a Barnes & Noble or grocery store that's carrying it. I need the extra time anyway because I haven't even devoted a post yet to my article that is in Beckett Vintage Collector this month. So with two magazine articles out now, and writing almost every day on this blog, and an actual job that involves -- guess what? -- writing, it's obvious that writing is what I do. What I like to do. What I need to do. Who I am, basically. But how did I get here? You'd have to go back to when I was a kid with a flourishing and overwhelming need to read. I read as a child a lot. From Sesame Street books to the Hardy Boys to The Bronx Zoo. By the time I was about 10, just about the only thi

    As card-lovers, and general whiners about everything that Topps does, there are plenty of moments we can cite as reasons why Topps is losing its license with MLB.   Lots of people have serious thoughts on this matter. I'm not that serious. But I do think, in some way, the little things that irritate me about modern Topps products all added up to something important. For example, one of the flat-out mindless things that Topps did recently is issue parallels of its already embarrassing 2021 flagship design, by blatantly copying a competitor. An inferior competitor, IMHO. And it's one of the dumber things that competitor has done (among many). Topps released different versions of its 2021 factory set that includes different kinds of parallels. I haven't looked into it more than that because I haven't been interested in buying a factory set since the mid-1980s. One of those parallels required throwing gold stars along the borders. If that doesn't make you think of P

  The other day on Twitter a collector mentioned that he was attempting to trade with someone from every state in the U.S. That immediately caused me to remember the trade map. Perhaps if you were around in 2012 -- I mean on the blogs -- you would remember the trade map, too. That's the last time I featured it. And the time before that was all the way back in 2010! You see, I too was trying to trade with someone from every state. Then crushing apathy killed the dream, so definitively that I haven't thought about the trade map for years. When I last showed it, I had just cleared Delaware and Nevada off my state trade list. That's the map I showed on Sept. 28, 2012. The blue states all include trade buddies. I had traded with collectors in 40 states at that point. That's when I stopped paying attention. But when the other 50-state chaser mentioned his quest on Twitter, I pulled out this old map and mentioned how close I had gotten. That caused others to say, "Hey! I&

  I completed the 1980 Kellogg's set a few days ago by simply ordering the whole thing online. That's the way to do it when it's cheap enough. Oddball sets from this time aren't exactly easy to pull together piece by piece, although that's my preferred method.   The 1980 Kellogg's set doesn't get a ton of respect, probably because it's not a Kellogg's set from the '70s but also because it's the second set after Kellogg's decided to downsize the width of its cards, which set off all kinds of alarm bells among kids from that time. "Is Kellogg's trying to swindle us? I think it's trying to swindle us! "  I've come around on those '79 and '80 sets (and '83, too). They don't look too bad with those dimensions and those sets seem to be able to avoid cracking as often as the wider sets. 1980 in particular seems to be almost immune from major cracking -- or at least not cracking by someone just looking at it.

  I love the 1980s.  The '80s had the best music. Maybe the albums couldn't match up with decades like the '70s and '90s, but the songs on the radio were magic. Three or four minutes of pop perfection. 1980s new wave/alternative is probably my favorite music genre of all. Go through my record albums -- yes, I still have them -- and there is more '80s stuff there, by far, than anything else. Same with the '45s (still have those, too). I never had more fun watching TV in the '80s. The only time I've sat and watched entire blocks of programming, show after show after show, was the 1980s. I can still name all those shows and in what order they appeared on a given night. And MTV was born in the '80s. Can't forget that. The '80s was the first time I went to a bar or a nightclub. It's when I graduated from high school and from college. It's when I learned to drive, talked to my first girlfriends, found my eventual wife and worked my first ne

I am one of those old baseball fan dudes who appreciates defunct teams. I don't go full crotchety and wear only Kansas City A's jerseys combined with Pilots caps when I go to the ballgame. And I'm not knowledgeable enough to tell you all the Federal League teams and where you can find merchandise for those long-ago squads. But I will like a thoughtful Expos reference or picture and secretly appreciate a fan spotted wearing a Cleveland Naps hat. I am not prone to collect cards of those teams, although I do find myself unwilling to let go of any retro Expos. But not long ago Cards On Cards was giving away surplus cards by team and offered up each team on a first-come, first-serve basis. The Cards On Cards proprietor and I have traded A LOT over the years. Cardinals for Dodgers at least 60, 70 times or more. I'm almost certain that except for a few Cardinals tied up in sets, he has all the Cardinals in my collection. And I assume the same situation exists with his Dodgers