Night Owl Cards

(I am in that in-between period where I've just come home from vacationing and the return to work is still a day away. It always feels weird and out of sorts. So, I have an appropriately weird, out-of-sorts post for you. I don't blame you if you don't comment/read. Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 354th in a series):   As if I'm not a big enough nerd for clinging to a sports-card collecting hobby from childhood all the way into middle age, here's something that will surely earn my nerd badge.   I have been compiling my own music charts -- as in the kind that Casey Kasem counted down -- off and on for more than 45 years.   I first became aware of music countdown shows during the fall of 1979. The first one I listened to was not Casey Kasem's Billboard Top 40 countdown, it was some other version (it wasn't the Rick Dees either, though I was aware of that one at some point). I looked forward to the weekend when it would broadcast the top songs of th...

    So, hard to believe, the birthday was pretty great. I love cheese ravioli and meatballs and chocolate cake with chocolate/peanut butter ice cream. I can see why the day shows up once a year, we can't be eating like that all the time.   The gifts were almost all related to my hobby, too, which does not happen a lot.   For starters, I received this 2024 World Series program. I figured I was overdue for some sort of paper product recognizing the Dodgers' World Series title. I have the one Walker Buehler Topps Now card, but since Topps/Fanatics didn't bother to produce any other card Series retrospective other than that overpriced, ugly Topps Now set, I had to pivot to non-card items.   The program is pretty slick and impressive. It better be at 15 bucks. I hadn't gotten a World Series program since 2017 when the Dodgers reached the World Series for the first time since 1988. I didn't bother to look for a program in 2018 or in 2020 (the 2020 one is pretty small)...

  It's time for another birthday post.   It's a milestone one this time. The kind that you don't even want to say out loud because it can't possibly be right and if someone hears you, they're going to throw a blanket over you and haul you off to the elderly farm.   I shall distract myself with dinner out, gifts, cake, ice cream and this post.   I have posted almost every birthday since starting this blog and have tried to tie the occasion to cards or baseball. But I'm all out of stuff. In fact, I thought about not posting this time. But I can at least update a couple of past birthday posts with more information.   For instance, three years ago I posted about active players in the majors who share my birthday , focusing on a then-new discovery, Jarred Kelenic.   Kelenic is still going, on a new team since last time, and still over a year younger than my daughter.😬     I also happen to have recent cards of three other active players who are ce...

  Fifty years ago today, Major League Baseball played the All-Star Game in Milwaukee. The National League won, 6-3 (yay!). Bill Madlock and Jon Matlack shared the MVP award. (Reggie Jackson went 1-for-3).   At the break, the Dodgers had played 92 games or 56.8% of their schedule. This season -- 50 years later -- the Dodgers reached the All-Star break having played 97 games or 59.9%. Yet I read a social media complaint just a week or two ago about how the All-Star Game -- the supposed "midsummer classic" -- takes place too late because more than half of the season has passed.   The All-Star Game hasn't shown up at the halfway point of the season in a very long time. (And we're not even close to halfway through summer).   The ASG regularly pops up on either the second or third Tuesday of July. It's been that way for decades. It doesn't matter when the season starts, or how many games have been played, the second or third Tuesday of July is when the ASG exists.  ...

  I don't know how many card collectors can relate to this, but I'm writing about just one collector here.   I pretty much wrapped up my second straight Beckett Vintage article this past weekend. I sent the images today and will give one more read before sending the article. I basically wrote two magazine stories back-to-back, and let me tell you, they always take more time than I realize. I took the entire afternoon Sunday to finish up the first half I had written Saturday. Good thing it was so hot out that I wanted to stay inside.   The magazine stuff takes me away from my hobby, which is ironic. I've got a lot of incoming cards that I can't get to -- so I do weird things that only make sense to me:   When I receive cards from someone I separate them, cards I need and cards I have. Because there's limited room on the card desk (because all the incoming cards), I usually put the cards in one stack but the ones I own already, I flip them over.    But then I...

  It hit 90 degrees today. I'm not someone who is bothered by the heat, but once it's 90 I take notice. It's not super rare around here -- I'd say we're in the 90s about 5 times a year -- but I was still tempted to stay inside.   Fortunately I didn't.   I was in a yank to get to the monthly card show. I've been frustrated lately by the lagging arrival of my online card purchases the last couple of weeks. I don't know if this is a traditional July thing (sellers and postal workers on vacation), but shipments are not appearing on the days I was told. Also, I have received back-to-back postage-due slips on orders, which seems a little outrageous.   So it was one of those times where I thought "I can't get anyone to send me my cards, I'm going to go get them myself ." Crank the AC, I'm coming for you, show!   I had no expectations for this show. With just five 1969 Topps cards needed, and none of them available the last time I visited, ...

  I have been snapping pictures of the cards that Johnny's Trading Spot sent me a week or so ago just about all afternoon without suitable results.   I'm not sure what's going on but none of the pictures look right. Some of this may be because it's summer and there is so much light streaming into the house, but also I think it's because I never want to deal with whatever I need to get "the perfect picture." I really miss my scanner during times like these. But I can't be bothered to figure out why the heck it won't work or get yet another new one.   So I guess that's my problem, huh, if I don't want to do what it takes?   (And yours, I guess, since I'm going to show less than satisfactory pictures right now).   Johnny has been clearing house again in that alphabetical way he has. Lucky me, he's now at the K's, which means a whole bunch of Clayton Kershaw cards came my way. Sure, I have a lot of Kershaw cards already but he was ...