Night Owl Cards

  Hooooooooooooooooo! It's your favorite cardboard-collecting owl's designated holiday! Who decided I'd rather scare kiddies from tree tops instead of page binders inside a well-lit card rooooooooooooom? Who? Who? Was it the same person who decided airing Game 6 of the World Series on a major holiday was a good idea? Who? Who?   When you think about it, Halloween is trooooooooooly the oddball holiday on the calendar when it comes to major U.S. holidays. Almost every other holiday has to do with family, country or religion. Halloween covers a couple of those elements but only tangentially and only if you have little tykes trudging outside in the rain and wind and cold while they beg for gooooooooooooodies.   So on this oddball holiday I have some gooooooooodies of my own -- the cardboard kind -- that arrived on this festive day. They happen to be oddballs, tooooooooooooo! In keeping with the season.     Ooooooooooooo. One of the last remaining 1971 Fleer World Se...

  As a Dodgers fan, I haven't said much about the World Series while it's been going on. So on the one-year anniversary of the Dodgers winning the World Series over the Yankees, and while this year's Series teams are traveling back to Toronto (boo!), I'll write about it a little.   First, Game 2 and Game 3 -- the two most interesting games in the Series, per me -- are now two of my most favorite World Series games in my almost 50 years of watching the Fall Classic. Yoshinobu Yamamoto's complete-game victory on Game 2 was marvelous, and while not very unusual in the annals of World Series starting pitchers, the performance was a rarity in the last 20 years and a call-back to pitchers like Hershiser, Reuss and Sutton. Very exciting.   Game 3 was even better -- a repeat of Game 3 of the 2018 World Series, filled with so many wonderful, exciting moments that it was difficult to remember them all. I thought I would only be able to watch Game 2 of the whole Series, thanks...

  Yesterday I completed the 1969 Topps set. While home for dinner, I opened a couple of card orders and the last one contained card No. 500, Mickey Mantle.   It's the yellow-name variety, it's the last Mantle card issued during his career, and all that stuff. Most importantly for me, it's the final card.   I thought it would take me longer to get this card and finish the set. Once I had acquired the Nolan Ryan in September (and the Phil Regan, don't forget him!), I started looking at Mantle prices. I didn't like what I saw. But I didn't do a thorough search, so I figured there was something a bit more reasonable out there for when the time came.    Well, the time came a couple of weeks ago. Out of the blue, I received a reimbursement check from my health insurance that I wasn't expecting, and I immediately knew where some of that was going to go. I started searching again and it became apparent that I was going to have to spend $200 to get anything that was...

  Isn't it the best when you get sick on the weekend? I'm way under the weather with what I think is a bad cold and it killed all my weekend catch-up plans. I'm pretty much in a zombie state, waiting for my next round of meds.   I'm a little more capable of sitting upright today so I can get a post out for you to read. A little under a week ago, when I was operating properly, I received another surprise package from CardBoredom. I really like his thoughtful posts and am always interested in people's cardboard origination stories, which the most recent post tackled.   CardBoredom had taken notice of my recent 1983 Donruss chase and sent me a "lightly sealed" pack of '83 Donruss. This is pretty cool. I've mentioned before that I bought just three packs of Donruss that year, so not even the pack wrapper is familiar to me.   Let's open up this pack, but not before consulting the few remaining cards I need in the set:   277 - Ryne Sandberg 530 - Wh...

  Just a short post today. Fridays are always busy and it doesn't help that MLB starts the World Series on a Friday now. We sat through three off days so we could get to a day when I absolutely cannot watch. The current configuration means that I will get to see exactly one game live even if it goes a full 7 games. Also no World Series game on a Sunday is appalling. Makes me want to write a strongly worded letter to the commissioner.   So there's not nearly enough time to relay my complicated thoughts about my Dodgers going for a second straight World Series title for the first time in my life as a baseball fan. It's already a weird space to be in, having to constantly bat away "anyone-but-the-Dodgers" spewing on the usual sites. (I spent part of the morning deleting any youtube video suggestion that has to do with "the Dodgers are ruining baseball". Why would these be in my suggestions?)   The Dodgers can do something in the 2025 World Series that has b...

  Why do I continue to show off recent "trade packages" when I know there's limited interest and the views will be low, perhaps lower than ever?   A few reasons:   1. Easy content. I'll admit, it's an easy post. Maybe that's why people don't read. They know I didn't open a vein.    2. It's the right thing to do. I'm pretty certain that most people who send me cards would like some public acknowledgement. I know from experience that it's cool to see others write about the cards I send them (and I always try to comment). And it's better than a thank you email, although that's welcome, too.   3. I'm still grateful. Not nearly as many collectors send me cards as they did 10 years ago. It could cause someone to walk away -- "it's just not worth it to me to write and write and the only cards that come my way are the ones I bought." Maybe I appreciate it more now when people do send me cards. But, truthfully I've alwa...

  For the first time in two decades I have a new favorite player.   Admittedly, it seems silly to still be selecting favorite players at my age. I've long passed the period where someone currently playing on the field is older than me. Just about everyone playing these days are "babies" to me, and I know that I have almost nothing in common with many of them.   But then somebody like Shohei Ohtani does something like this , and I'm a wide-eyed youngster again.    So, yeah, Shohei Ohtani is my new favorite player.   He surpasses the retiring Clayton Kershaw, who had been my favorite player for longer than any other Dodger in the life of my fandom. Here is the rundown, which I last listed -- holy smokes -- 15 year ago .   1975-83: Ron Cey 1983-85: Pedro Guerrero 1985-94: Orel Hershiser 1995-99: Raul Mondesi 2000-04: Shawn Green 2005-07: Brad Penny 2007-08: Russell Martin 2009-25: Clayton Kershaw 2025-?: Shohei Ohtani   Usually I don't select a new f...

  How many times is too many times to go to the Dave and Adam's store when you're in Buffalo? Turns out the answer to that is "three times," at least for me.   I didn't realize it over the weekend, but my latest trip on Sunday was my third visit there this year. I've blogged about each instance , too. ... And my enthusiasm has waned with each visit.   This is more because of the way I collect but also due to the state of the hobby today and, probably, the state of buying and selling in general today. There was stuff there for me -- but it wasn't syncing up.   As I mentioned the last visit, Dave and Adam's store is half apparel (Bills, Sabres and Topps) and half cards and collectibles. I only care about the cards. Because I still collect modern cards, I usually find stuff there and am often impressed with the stock -- blasters and blasters of whatever Topps/Panini has available at the time.   But here's the thing: Topps doesn't have a lot avail...

  When I first started chasing down the 350-or-so cards I needed to finish the 1983 Donruss set, I figured it would take me awhile.   I knew it would take longer than when I decided to finally finish the 1982 Donruss set. With that, I just bought a complete set. It cost me something like 50 bucks. Swift and easy. And with these '80s Donruss sets -- even though they include the players that made me want to complete them in the first place -- they're not appealing enough to get into the whole "joy-of-building" scene that we set-collectors are known to love.   But I knew I couldn't buy the full set of '83 Donruss and be done with it ... well, I could, but I'm not paying that price for a 1983 set. The Boggs-Gwynn-Sandberg rookies were holding up the quest, and I simply decided just to build it the regular way. Maybe I'll be done in 2026, I figured.   But almost two decades into this blog, I'm still underestimating its power and the generosity of collec...