Night Owl Cards

  It was kind of busy this weekend. I went down for a card show today and it takes quite a bit of driving -- this is the bigger one, instead of the one right in town.   I'll have a full report on that in the next day or two, but I wanted to make a quick observation about some very modern cards for a moment.   The above three cards sit consecutively in the 2025 Topps portion of my Dodgers binder. They are all parallels. But they are not the same parallel.   Perhaps you can tell from the image. I realized after taking pictures that the differences are a little more obvious in the photos than if you're just looking at them with the naked eye. But let's go through the "differences" shall we?    River Ryan is the "Holo Foil" parallel.      Teoscar Hernandez is the "Confetti" parallel.       Shohei Ohtani is the "Sandglitter" parallel.   None of these parallels are numbered, which would have helped narrow things down. As you can...

(Happy National Pet Day. There was a point a couple years ago when I thought there'd never be another pet in the house. I even wrote about it. Today, there's a cat who is about to turn one all up in my business. Knocked over a bunch of cards today. She's officially part of my hobby. Time for Cardboard Appreciation, this is the 351st in a series):   I reached a collecting milestone yesterday when this 1941 Play Ball card of former Brooklyn Dodgers MVP first baseman Dolph Camilli arrived.   Although I have a modest number of pre-1950s baseball cards, this was the first time I ever purchased one. Everything else pre-1950 has arrived as a gift or in a trade.   I've written many times that I collect cards for which I feel a connection. Those are mostly cards related to my childhood, my adolescence, my first disposable income days and all the way to the present time. If I know the players -- especially if I have seen them play and read about them when they were playing -- the...

  Yesterday I impulsively ordered one of those "megaboxes" for 2025 Heritage from Fanatics. Just a few hours later I received an email from Target: "Good news! 2024 Heritage High Numbers is back in stock!"   Sorry, Target, my budget doesn't allow me to buy two kinds of Heritage at the same time.   This is the mess Topps has gotten itself into by delaying the '24 Heritage High Numbers three months into 2025 while still churning out the Heritage set for this year. I'm on record as liking the 1975 Topps design very much and by extension the 2024 Heritage design, but I can't juggle both. And if someone like me can't, what about those (weirdos) who don't like '24 Heritage as much?   I'm now in the situation of prioritizing Heritage brands, which is something that has never happened before for me. Like flagship -- and Allen & Ginter during the golden era -- I cleared my calendar for Heritage. No other sets issued around the same time m...

  Last week Diamond Jesters celebrated his milestone birthday with a week's worth of posts featuring cards with a number that matches his birth date. He invited others to do so as a blog bat-around.   I love a good blog bat-around. But I had already written a post with this theme two years ago on my birthday. So I weighed not participating at all with having to come up with a post of original material and ... sequel it is!   Here are 10 more cards with 716 on the back. I guess these are the second-best, though it would be tough to tell as it's not a number where Topps or anybody else was stashing their stars. Just like the last time I did this, I'll mention whether I have the card or not and if I don't, I'll add whether I'd like to own it.     2006 Topps Update Barry Bonds HR History, 716th HR   Do I have this card? No. I may have had it at one point, when I was including the massive HR History insert set in my quest to have everything related to 2006 Top...

  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 ...