Night Owl Cards

  A pretty crappy month-plus-one-more-week turned around for me in the last couple days, fortunately.   This is all relative, of course, with the state of things lately, but it was nice to be bubbly for a day. To briefly recap, in the last couple of days I learned that my retirement is not a pipe dream, my daughter who was laid off by AI last month landed a job with a salary significantly larger than her last position, and someone at work agreed to write a story instead of me writing it on top of my too many job responsibilities. Happy dance!   In there somewhere -- Friday, I think -- I received three card packages in the mail. This never happens like it used to on the blogs. Where once I could get three mailings from other bloggers around 4-5 times a week, if I want that kind of incoming now, I have to buy the things myself.   So that was nice. And probably the nicest surprise came from Kenny of Torren' Up Cards , who sent me a single pack all the way from his place...

I've written many times that I discard most of my rules for condition for a card from the 1950s or earlier. If I have a shot at getting a card from at least 70 years ago, I will not care if the corners are rounded, that there are a few creases, that it shows wear as a card like that should . (But I'll usually veer away from old cards that are stained or drawn on).   But those relaxed rules don't apply to most of the cards in my collection. Anything from the 1970s forward better be in tip-top shape. If it isn't, I'm probably going to upgrade it at some point.   But what about those cards between, say the mid-1950s and 1970? Where am I drawing the line?   I never thought about that until I acquired card #1 in the 1963 Topps set. It showed up yesterday.   This card has long been a Dodger need for the 1963 Topps set. It's fallen under the radar -- for years -- because 1) There are five rookie cards from this set with Dodgers on them that I still need and a couple ar...

  My first sportlots order of the year is finally here. There always seems to be one straggler card I'm waiting for two weeks after everything else is in. But content is content, it doesn't matter when it appears on here.   Ol' Walt was the late arrival -- almost got to the point where I sent a "I think the mail lost my card" messsage. But instead I get to declare that this card finished the Dodgers team set for the TCMA The 1960s II set from 1981!   This kind of card is about all that I ordered this time around -- stuff that either finished or got me closer to finishing team sets or set sets. The whole order turned out to be smaller than my usual sportlots order. I guess I was trying to save a little cash. The total seems slight, but it still packs a punch with me!     More TCMA stuff, but I'm nowhere near completing these team sets. I'm making a dedicated effort to finish the 1978 TCMA 1941 Dodgers set, which the Kirby Higby card is from at left. Hoping ...