Night Owl Cards

Christmas greetings, you few folks reading blogs during this festive time of year. Over the last week I've shown nothing but cards I did git. I feel just a wee regretful about that, but not enough not to show even more cards I BEEN GITTING. TIS THE SEASON OF GITTIN'!!!!! (Those are the words of a person confident there will be no coal in his stocking, because there are no stockings hung up this year! ) Anyway, I found enough cash left over from shopping for others to squeeze in one small COMC order for myself. It's not close to the size of my Secret Santa package from Wes. It's just a few cards, that are just my speed, because I know exactly what I want. The last 2016 Stadium Club Dodger base card that I needed. This IS a merry Christmas. Look how happy Clayton is. Sure his cohort is now a Marlin and as Jerry Seinfeld once said, "that's not going to be good for anybody," but this is all about capturing the moment. And the moment is: I finally...

Easy mojo hunters. I didn't pull a "hit." What I did pull the other day was the Kershaw card you see here. I bought a pack of 2008 Bowman Draft Picks and Prospects. The one with Joey Votto on the pack wrapper. Why a box full of these cards is still sitting in my Target is baffling. But it suited my habit of plucking a pack here and a pack there of product I'm not really collecting. I do this not only to find cards for fellow collectors, but to educate myself on what is out there. To me, it's a lot more fun than scanning ebay or other online sites. I have never liked window-shopping (which is why you probably won't see a Blog Bat-Around post from me this time). And every once in awhile I pull a card of someone that I collect. This is the refractor version of the '08 Bowman Chrome Kershaw card. It was one of the "2 Bowman Chrome cards in EVERY PACK!" Bowman is so criminally confusing that it took a little research to figure out what I had (...

I'm always kicking myself for not thinking of the most simple, most ingenious ideas. I hear about what someone has come up with, how they've gotten rich inventing soap-on-a-rope or some other such thing, and I think, "you could've figured that out, dodo. What's wrong with you?" For instance: Cliff of Capewood's Collections (yeah, I know some of you know him as " Capewood ," but he's got an actual real name and I'm telling you it's Cliff), came up with a terrific idea that I can't believe I hadn't thought of myself. What he did was, before the cards came out for the 2009 season, he contacted several bloggers and offered a team swap. The person he contacted would accumulate either Phillies or Astros -- Cliff's two favorite teams -- from any 2009 sets and Cliff would set aside '09 cards from his trade partner's favorite team. Then, at mid-season, they would check in with each other and swap teams. What a great i...

I'm a person who is well aware of his faults. No need for you to call attention to them. I know the rundown. I have the list. I check it daily. But even though I could start a blog on the topic, there are times when I come across a fault of mine that I never knew I had. Trading cards through the blogosphere has brought one particular previously unknown fault into focus, and here it is: I suck at pulling Minnesota Twins cards. You may think this isn't much of a fault or that it doesn't even fall under the definition of the word, but let me tell you: if you are trading cards with a Twins fan, it's a definite shortcoming. I don't know what it is. You may think it's because the Twins are a small-market team and the card companies don't feature as many Twins players. Well, then how come I have no problem pulling Kansas City Royals and Houston Astros? How do you explain my Carlos Lee temple o' cards in the basement? I most certainly pull small-marke...

I may have gotten too caught up in the spirit of St. Patrick's Day with the last post. I fixated a little too much on the green color on the 1994 Topps cards. You see, while I look at '94 Topps and only see the color, it appears others look at it and see the home plate design that outlines the photo. That, I think, made it too difficult for people to fit "green" into the title for their "Define the Design" guesses. So this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to set aside '94 Topps for now. I'll think about it and come up with some sort of name that combines "home plate" and "green." It may take me a few years, but I'll find something. But so you still have a chance to win some cards, I'm going to come right back with another Define the Design contest tomorrow. The set that I will be featuring will have no stipulations on it. You'll be free to guess away. And, the winner will still get the Shawn Green doubles th...

I figured it would be timely to feature Mark Sweeney as the latest player on the Brush With Greatness thread. Sweeney recently retired to become a coach with the Dodgers. And I also just received this card from Matt F. of Heartbreaking Cards . The addition of the Sweeney Topps Black card means I need just four Topps Black Dodgers from Series 1: Ramirez, Park, Pierre and Blake. That's pretty good for not seeing a single blaster of the stuff in my neighborhood. The bloggers take good care of me. Anyway, I came away from my conversation with Sweeney as impressed by him as any other baseball player I have interviewed. I am not surprised at all that he became a coach. He seems like one of those players who absolutely loves everything about the game of baseball. I think he'll be involved in baseball until he takes his last breath. Some people get Mark Sweeney mixed up with Mike Sweeney, who was the longtime Royals star and now plays for the Mariners. But Mark was a part-time player ...

Seriously, look at this card. Doesn't it look like Topps put together a whole set of "night cards"? These Topps "Black" cards, or whatever they're calling them, sure do fit the whole night theme. I swear I had no input into this decision at all. I wasn't in on any board meetings. Topps didn't call for advice. Topps hasn't visited my blog to my knowledge (although I'm sure it's possible), and I'm sure that even if they did, they wouldn't take any of my suggestions seriously (although I wish they would). What I'm saying is, even though I didn't like the underhanded way Topps had planned to foist these black cards on the collecting public, I kind of like them. This is the first time I've seen these in person, because not only do my local big box stores not have the specific blasters that carry these black variations, they don't HAVE ANY BLASTERS AT ALL. Two weeks of this crap I've been going through. But tomorrow...

Note to card companies: Buying this ... ... and ending up with this ... ... is not the way to win over consumers. This was my comment on the "Trading Cards, TCGs and Me" blog, a site that is well worth your time, by the way. But I am among a group of collectors who are not happy with the original plan of attack by Topps, according to Nate of "Trading Cards," which was to release the "Topps Dark" cards in April but not let consumers know which cards they were getting (the regular '09 issue or the dark cards). I commented, "you don't go to the grocery store to buy tomato sauce, get home, open it up, pour out peaches and say, 'awesome, peaches! I'll buy more!'" Thank goodness, Chris of Nachos Grande wrote to Topps and Topps had sense enough to inform customers as to what they were buying. The "tomato sauce/peaches" analogy is an exaggeration for effect. I realize it's not quite the best representation of what Topps...