Night Owl Cards

I've been told that it's a good idea to take stock once a year. Evaluate your financial situation. Your health situation. Your family situation. All of your situations. For me, that includes examining which teams I like and which teams I don't. You may remember that I did that at this time last year. And before that, I have made a list of the teams I like from the most to the least about every couple of years. I've decided to make this an annual exercise. Because knowing every single year which team is my 14th most favorite team is of the utmost importance. So, this is the updated list. I'll try to keep the commentary short because the last time I did this I went into a lot of detail about why I like certain teams and why I don't. I'm trying not to repeat myself. Also, there's not a lot of change on the list from year-to-year. Maybe next year I'll dig out some of my old lists -- if I can find them -- to show exactly how much some teams ca

After three rather intense days of work, I'm ready for a mindless Sunday. I don't want to spend any more time thinking than I have to, hence the rambling, short nature of this post. And, yes, I did just say, "hence." No, I do not know where that came from. I do not say "hence" when I speak. I would just like to be clear on that. The first rambling concerns the latest Define the Design segment from a couple of days ago. I decided to put up a poll for the name for the 2010 Topps design. The options are the following, based on people's comments: The swoosh set The wave set The tsunami set (very timely, dayf, and a bit scary) The binoculars set The telescope set I am partial to the binoculars set, just because many of the photos, especially when the swoosh is a dark color, look like an image as seen through binoculars. Now, as deal said, telescope would be more appropriate, because the card does look more like what you'd see through a te

I can't get too excited about photoshopping on baseball cards. As long as you're not rubbing out umpires or transforming an entire ballpark, I think it's harmless fun. It's been going on for decades, first with a simple paint brush and now with a computer program. This is a 2010 Opening Day card of Roy Halladay. He's pictured working for a team for which he's never taken the mound in an official game. He was traded to Philadelphia in December. Companies are getting better at "hiding" their photoshopping efforts, but this is one of the easier ones to detect. The cap and T-shirt colors are too dark. The name on the back of his jersey is just too big as is the uniform number (Halladay wore No. 32 with the Blue Jays). I like that they put the "TV number" on Halladay's sleeve because the Phillies do feature TV numbers. I guess Halladay is supposed to be wearing a Phillies road unform, because their home uniforms feature pinstripes. But t

This weekend may be the busiest two days of the entire work year, and the next three weekends won't be any picnic either. That means I don't have time for anything clever or thought-provoking today. All I can offer is a simple trade post. I know. That's dull. But I've had to stare at 2010 Topps Heritage posts all week. So now it's my turn to dish out a bit of boring. Fortunately, it hasn't been boring on the trade front at all. A couple weeks ago, transactions had trickled down to nothing. Then, in an instant, I'm scrambling to keep up. I'm starting to lose track of who needs cards from me. On Sunday, I hope to narrow that down. Also, this weekend, I hope to put up a poll on what I should call the 2010 Topps design. I liked the suggestions in the last post and it's time to settle on a name. 2010 Upper Deck may take some more time. Meanwhile, I've got a lot of transactions to show. I'll keep them to a few cards per trader to accommo