Night Owl Cards

Last week I pulled from the mailbox my third or fourth package in the last couple of months from Cards on Cards  (sorry about the spill, dude). The pace he's on is crazy. Here I am trying to keep from slipping more than a month behind, and madding's firing off cards and -- just as amazingly -- finding cards that I NEED at about the same rate that I go grocery shopping. I'm baffled at how he does it, but happy that he does. The cards this time, as they always are, were directly from my want list. I think madding's been finding '90s goodies at some card shows lately, so he's been passing those never-before-seen items on to me. So, of course, there were ... Piazzas ... and Nomos ... ... and other assorted '90s items (not all shown here). But what really caught my eye ... or, shall I say, caught my nose , were some 1979 Topps needs. Here's the very first card in the set. And here's the rookie card of a player we

(Welcome to National Honesty Day. Yep, to balance out the first day of April -- a day for lies -- the last day of April has been reserved for telling the truth. In the spirit of that, here is my bit of honesty:  I don't understand 80 percent of what's on Twitter. So there you go. Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 182nd in a series): If you were lucky enough to experience the major league baseball season in 1980, you know the first half of the year was consumed by a man named Super Joe Charboneau. Charboneau was a one-year rookie sensation. He was one of the first rookie sensations I ever knew. David Clyde came first, followed by Mark Fidrych and then Bob Horner. And then came Go Joe Charboneau. The stories about him were repeated so often that I had them memorized. Got stabbed by a crazed fan with a pen knife. Performed his own dental work. Fixed his broken nose with a pair of pliers. A lot of the stories revolved around beer, as good stories often do. C

I received another one of those Plain White Envelopes from Jeff a little bit ago. He threw in this '69 Willie Davis, which is quite nice of him, and a couple of other items that are right up my place of residence. Minis! But of course. But this is the one that made me go running to my stack of 1975 minis to add it to the pile. I put it on the stack, and then I realized that I need one of these minis for my Dodger binder, too. Koufax, you know. So I went to take the card off the stack, and when I did, I knocked the minis all over the desk and onto the floor. I spent a few minutes picking them up, digging them out from under the desk and between boxes of cards, and then sorting them back into order. I was thoroughly disgusted during the entire exercise because my most favorite cards of all-time really should be in pages . In a binder . Like all self-respecting cards of worth and value. I know I've harped on this before , and the Ultra Pro people are working

One of the things about blogging that I keep forgetting is that it is a wonderful way to network with other collectors. (I really don't like that I just used "network" as a verb, but I suppose I need to join everyone in the '90s finally). If all I do is post to this blog once a day, it automatically makes other people know that I'm still interested in collecting. And I find that I have that same perception of others. I am much more apt to trade with collectors who blog frequently rather than infrequently. It's simply "out of sight out of mind." Or, rather, the opposite of that. Which I guess would be, "the squeaky wheel gets the grease." That is one reason why I continue to blog as often as I do. Yes, there are more urgent reasons for why I write , but a key one is to keep my name out there. All the time. HI THERE! I'M NIGHT OWL. I LIKE CARDS! DODGERS AND STUFF! GOT ANY? It works. I've made lots and lots of connections

There are some cards that cause me to emit an audible "ugh" when I see them. This is one such card. It is definitely not "awesome." I'd much rather call it an "unfortunate night card," a "disturbing night card," or a "jerk-face night card." Let's get the "jerk-face" part out of the way first. My dislike for Will Clark is well-established. Prickly, shrill, Giant-loser, these are some of the words I use and have used to describe Clark over the years. I'd like to say he was more enjoyable as a Ranger, but there was too much Giant stink on him by then. Kenny Rogers, meanwhile, was a plain idiot. I will never forget his unprovoked assault on cameramen before a game in 2005. Terribly inexcusable and it blackened my perception of him forever. Don't like the guy. To a lesser degree, there are a couple of other guys on the card who have never been my favorites. Ivan Rodriguez, while an admirable player, fre

As someone who is a team collector and has been blogging and collecting for some time now, I inevitably receive many duplicates. The large box where I keep my Dodger dupes is now full and there are stacks atop it that have no chance of fitting into that box. That's OK, because part of the way that I keep myself entertained when I receive a card I already have is seeing whether I can upgrade my current version. This is especially handy for cards that are older than 25 years. Those are the cards in most need of upgrading. I receive so many dupes that I have this down to a science. If the Dodger card I already have is perfect in every way except for a fuzzy corner, and I get the same card but it doesn't have that fuzzy corner, then I will be replacing that card. Cold, yes. Heartless, yes. But it keeps me entertained when dupes come my way. And that's all that matters. But there is one card that I have no hope of upgrading. It is the 1979 Topps Dusty Baker card.

I've rambled about repacks so many times on this blog that I should just open nothing but repacks here and gladly accept all of the freebies that Fairfield will inevitably send my way. In fact, I've written about them so many times, I feel totally guilty writing about them again. But it's still interesting to me and I'm still reeling from yesterday, so here we go again. I grabbed another repack tonight just to see if I could find SOMETHING interesting. The repack never fails. First, there was this: The '91 Score Darryl Strawberry card has popped up in about the last 5 repacks I have purchased. But this time there was three to kick off the top half of the package and four to kick off the bottom half. And then, just to show the packager has a sense of humor, the '92 Score Strawberry followed the bottom half group of Strawberrys. The Strawberry crop is very good this year. The Wayne Edwards Score card? I just threw that in there because it'

Sucky title, I know. But I've had a very irritating day and I don't care. A few weeks ago, somebody on Twitter wondered which Topps flagship set featured the most Hall of Famers. Some speculated it was the early '80s. I speculated it was the mid-1960s. After some frantic, imprecise researching and a few suggestions, I landed on 1969 as the set that likely has the most Hall of Famers. The 1969 set has 44 players in the set that have reached the Hall of Fame. Here they are: Ernie Banks, Walter Alston, Joe Morgan, Roberto Clemente, Luis Aparicio, Jim "Catfish" Hunter, Lou Brock, Johnny Bench, Hank Aaron, Carl Yastrzemski, Leo Durocher, Jim Bunning, Willie Stargell, Willie Mays, Brooks Robinson, Bob Gibson, Don Sutton, Frank Robinson, Steve Carlton, Reggie Jackson, Tony Perez, Bill Mazeroski, Dick Williams, Phil Niekro, Juan Marichal, Harmon Killebrew, Orlando Cepeda, Earl Weaver, Don Drysdale, Al Kaline, Willie McCovey, Tom Seaver, Billy Williams, Red Sc

Here is the other half of the card package from My Cardboard Mistress . Contrary to the impression that I apparently gave in the last post, I really do appreciate the cards that I received. I just have a difficult time pretending I like Yankees, Giants and Diamondbacks cards. I'm not going to fake it. I'm sure you understand. But the other half of the package didn't have any of that awfulness in it. It was all Dodgers. Some of it was odd -- like the foursome of Kershaw Triple Play stickers you see here. Actually, most of it was odd. But that's because Mr. Spankee paid attention to my interest in oddball cards real well. I'll show the regular-type cards first though. Here they are: Yup. A whole three of them. And I'm willing to even consider the Valdes card odd, given the headaches he gave me (love the Nomo card, by the way). The rest of the package was downright odd. An oddball Leaf Fernando card. Someone is finally taking my quest

I have decided that I would make a terrible coach. I already knew that I would make a lousy teacher. Knew that a long time ago. I neither have the ability nor the patience. But even with the added benefit of teaching a topic I love -- sports -- coaching doesn't interest me. The worst part for me would be cutting players, or telling them that they have to sit the bench, and then watching them ... sit . I have some small inkling of the way that would feel every time I update my Allen & Ginter mini frankenset binder. There are cards I "cut" from the binder all the time, and it's very difficult to let some of them go. Recently, Adam from My Cardboard Mistress sent me a bunch of A&G minis along with some other cards that I'll show later. I couldn't wait to see which ones made the binder, and I full expected to engage in a little cardboard mourning for the ones who would hear "we're going to have to let you go." What I didn't