Night Owl Cards

   Ever since I was a kid I've been about the "more" of cards. I have always liked "more cards" over "less cards."   This probably has to do with not having a lot when I was a kid. I had old-school parents who thought kids should earn things through something called an allowance. I didn't have much money, and there was nobody around to just give me stuff unless my grandma made a visit or it was my birthday. Even then nobody was gifting me a complete set.   So when I finally started working and receiving a paycheck, well, adding as many cards as I could seemed like a great idea.   Add the fact that I come from the set-building generation -- what's the point of getting cards if they're not going toward a set? -- and more is the way to go. Those sets are at least 660 cards strong and filled with commons.   So through decades of following the "more mantra," I have added binders upon binders of cards and boxes upon boxes. You've se...

  Did I show this 1941 Play Ball Whit Wyatt I got about a month ago? I don't think I did, I used to be more on top of stuff like that but that's the way it's been in the hobby for me lately.   The first half of the year I've been in a hobby lull. The combination of weather, lack of decent transportation and the general cost of everything, particularly cards, has really cut into what I usually do in the hobby. That isn't just acquiring, but trading and organizing, too.   Don't worry, the desire is still there. I grab a card here and there when I can. I finally landed the 2025 Chrome Shoehei Ohtani for something under $5 -- it had been going for anywhere from 10-20 bucks for months.   My latest '75 buyback arrived several weeks ago. It was the 544th buyback in my chase and a key one. I've been aware of the Ron Santo buyback for years but it was always selling for more than 30 dollars. I finally landed one for two-thirds less.   It's been mostly small v...

    OK, now that I've established myself as an oddball in the current collecting landscape -- preferring vintage cards and all -- it's appropriate that I show off some recent "oddball" arrivals in my collection.   This runs the gamut and covers 85 years of trading cards and some of it isn't even cardboard.   Let's see:   Fired-up by my first acquisition of a 1960 Leaf high-number Dodger card in Rip Repulski, I decided to grab another one with this Joe Pignatano. It has a few minor flaws (it was listed as "good," which is usually "good enough" for me), but it still looks great.   That leaves just Stan Williams to complete the team set. Upon landing the Repulski, I received an email informing me that the Williams was available for a reasonable price on sportlots. But I didn't jump on it (I'm rarely financially ready to pounce on opportunities) and it's not there anymore.     Here's a card -- and an owlie greeting card -- that ...

   Here is the other 1975 Topps-focused post I wanted to get to before the 50th anniversary year is over.   I've reached sort of a milestone in the 1975 Topps buyback chase. It's been exactly 10 years since I first decided to collect these and see how far I could get. I admit I've gotten farther than I thought I would, particularly when I was first starting the mission. But my approach has always been to keep pressing on. As long as I kept finding new ones -- and I can still afford them -- I'd continue.   I just went over 82 percent of the set in buyback form with the addition of three cards. One is the Bob Forsch here.       These are the other two. I now have 542 of the 660 cards in the set in buyback form.   These three cards would be considered "commons" by most collectors, but they mean much more than that. All three have puzzled me for years. I couldn't figure out why they were so elusive. None are particularly notable. I'd reason that I cou...

 (I've experienced a lot of low points in my 50 years as a Dodgers fan but last night's game might have topped them all. I think I finally see what lots of other Dodgers fans have seen for years. Time for Dave Roberts to go. Also time for Cardboard Appreciation! This is the 356th in a series):   You are viewing my 537th buyback from the 1975 Topps set. Yup, I'm still on this thing. In fact this year happens to be 10 full years since I first decided to collect the buybacks in the '75 set in an effort to get one of every card.   I knew then that it would be an impossible task. I still know that. But I also had no idea that I would get this far in the quest. I've passed 80 percent of the set in buyback form (81.3% to be exact). Didn't even know way back then that there were that many to chase.   Even with the boost from 2024 Heritage the quest is getting more and more tricky -- prices have rocketed on some of the ones I still need and I'm all too aware that som...

  All right, a quick post to get the bad taste of the last post out of my head.   Perhaps you've been wondering what I've been doing the last month? Yeah, you know about all the work. It's March and all that. But this is a baseball card blog! What else? Sure, you know people are sending me cards. That's plain as day. But what else? What am I -- individually -- doing to help my collection, my hobby? You know, anyone can ride a motorcycle up and down the street as a hobby -- there's plenty of that going on and will be for the next seven months -- but am I doing something actually constructive in my hobby? Am I contributing to my own collection?   I'm happy to say that I am -- even with precious little time.     Just recently I completed the 2006 Topps Dodgers' gold team set. Strangely Jose Cruz Jr. was the last card to arrive. But the '05 Dodgers weren't a desirable lot.   TCDB says Jose Valentin is also a needed Dodgers gold. He's mentioned as a ...

  I've mentioned before that work has been even more of a time-suck than previously. It's infringing on blog posting and I don't think I can go to my bosses and say this is the reason why something's got to change, but something's got to change!   The first three days this week I worked more than the usual eight hours (plus a couple hours on Sunday) and I was prepared to do the same Thursday. I had a story interview arranged before I started my shift and I thought, "welp, I just added more hours that I won't get paid for!"   But it didn't turn out that way. Thanks to some general panicking about the weather, every single sports event in our area was canceled last night. So I ended leaving work at 10:45 p.m! That never happens. Usually I'm there until 12-12:30 and on busier nights (like tonight), I'll close up shop around 1:30 a.m.   So I got to leave work early. That's a red-letter day around here! (I don't have much). But I should...

  I am about the only card blogger that I can think of who has multiple blog posts dedicated to old-school checklists. All those posts were generated by nostalgia, pure and simple. I cannot reasonably expect those checklists to return to current sets nor pretend that I enjoyed pulling them out of packs way back then. But the look of them -- the very '70s look of them -- I do enjoy and they make me smile, as ugly as they are.   I can respect them for the purpose that they served at the time -- it was the only way to track your collection. The checklists in current flagship show up on the back of random action/celebration shots. Those cards have no purpose -- front or back -- and need to go. If you're going to placate a few old-school collectors by including checklist boxes on the back, make the fronts themed, something like notable highlights from the past year seems easy enough.   Anyway, due to the current treatment of checklists and recognizing that nobody needs to be p...

  Apologies for the negative self-talk in the blog title here. This isn't about you, it's all me, and I need to work on that. But I thought if I wrote things out I'd finally get myself into gear. I've needed a few binders and the pages that go with them for several months now. The completed -- or about to be completed -- sets are piling up. I don't like stashing complete sets in boxes, that's a terrible fate for something so carefully crafted. So they are stacked and waiting all around the card room, and, yes, a couple are in boxes as a last resort. In stacks are my complete 2024 Heritage set and my soon-to-be-complete 2024 Topps flagship set. Another stack contains what I have for 1987 Fleer. It's a long way from completion, but it's there, quietly telling me that a binder is needed for that, too. Two sets that should be in binders are now in boxes -- the almost complete 2024 Heritage minis set and the getting-there 1985 Donruss set. These guys need to ...

  By my quick calculating card blogging is at its lowest point in terms of frequency and number since my first few months of blogging. I counted about 12 card blogs now that write at least 5 days a week. Then there are around 50 card blogs that write less than that -- a few times a week, once a week, a couple times a month. So that's maybe 65 blogs that write about cards at least once a month. The amount of former card bloggers that I know is five times that amount. This means interaction is down and that's a bummer, but the good part is everyone -- card bloggers and former card bloggers and definitely non-card bloggers -- still collect cards. And they also (*phew*) still remember who I am.   I received a major reminder of that last week and I'm still getting to that later in the week, but here is an appetizer:   These are 1975 buybacks -- all needs -- from Cardboard Catastrophes (who is still blogging, thankfully).    Jeffrey's a Yankees fan, and he guessed th...