Night Owl Cards

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Mark it on the calendar (exotic to me, part 3)

This card showed up in a package from Sportscards From The Dollar Store on Oct. 24, I think. I'm not positive on that date, but I know it was close to the weekend and it wasn't last weekend. The date is important to me because of the date on this card. It's the first time I owned a card that notes a famous moment that occurred on my birthday. And it took receiving this card to realize that Apollo 11 -- well-known for the first moon landing -- rocketed into space on my fourth birthday! Mark it on the calendar! I've always known that the moon landing was on July 20th, close to my birthday but I never tracked back to the blast-off date. So that's a pretty cool card to have. It's from a five-card set commemorating the 25th anniversary of Apollo 11, issued by Citgo gas stations in 1994. Thanks to buckstorecards I've accumulated several cards of athletes who share my birthday but never an event that shares my birthday. I've finally dedicated a couple...

Match the song title: Breakfast in America

I am a member of Generation X. Known for being independent, cynical, loyal and less career-oriented, that mostly describes me. But I often feel out-of-kilter with those in my generation. Many times Gen X memes focus on growing up with '80s and '90s music, 1980s movies and late '80s/early '90s TV shows. That's not me. While I generally enjoy the grunge era of music from the '90s, it's not my preferred listening and I grew up with '70s variety shows on the TV. I like 1980s cards a lot. But I prefer the '70s. That might be explained by being an older Gen X guy, just one year away from being a "boomer". But I don't relate to them either from a pop culture standpoint. I don't think Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd are the be-all of rock music. I have never liked progressive music, that meandering, way-too-damn-long style. I gravitated instead to short, sharp, new wave tunes. Even today I prefer that. Any song from a new album that cross...

Stuck on this topic (also, exotic to me, part 2)

I have written several times about my love for the vintage-era Wacky Packages stickers to relatively limited response. I get it. They are not sports cards, which is the main reason people visit this blog. Also, they are from an era that fewer collectors remember when compared to, say, the 1980s and Garbage Pail Kids. So that's a double whammy if I'm looking for "hey I remember those!" and "they were the best!" But I can't help it. I have to collect them. And I have to write about them. Wacky Packages stickers were right there, dead-center, at the start of my collecting enthusiasm. I bought them along with 1975 Topps baseball cards. You know how much I love '75 baseball cards. I put packs of both baseball and Wacky stickers on the counter at the same time and tore into each when I got home. Naturally, I bought more baseball but, those stickers, I connected to those. They were quirky. They made light of common products I saw every day in my h...

Brother, those are repacks

Last weekend, my wife went on a girls weekend to her hometown of Buffalo, showing the north country locals around and all there is to do when you're in an actual city. They checked out the new stadium and a couple great restaurants (Buffalo has an endless supply) and several female-centric shops that make my eyes sleepy. On their way back home they stopped at Viddler's, a well-known retro 5-and-dime store outside of the city. My dearest likes to find me something on her trips without me and this time it actually involved cards, which doesn't happen much at all. She brought back four of these packs, which I had never seen in my life. I didn't have any idea what was inside. My abilities of perception continue to decrease as I get older so I didn't even see the "modern & vintage" reference on the packs and my mind raced about what weirdness was inside -- Disney characters or odd knock-off dinosaur cards -- OK, I'm making that sound more inte...

A giveaway realization

It's time to give away some more cards that no longer fit in my collection. I haven't done one of these since July. But it's almost been a year since I started these giveaways, so there's at least one more before I see if I want to continue this. My purpose in giving these cards away is to free up some space on the two shelves that house most of my binders. That's shelf one. There are five binders that are lying flat (not counting the top shelf) that I'd like to move into a vertical position with the rest of them. But it's proving to be a tougher task than I thought. I think I just have too many cards that I'd like to keep in binders -- forever. I could put some binders on the top shelf but I don't want to stress out that top shelf any more, it's an old unit and there's some bowing. If I leave it the way it is, it should be OK. This is the other, sturdier shelf. There is one binder lying flat -- the 2024 Heritage binder -- that I...