Night Owl Cards

It's true. I now consider base cards as more valuable, more desired than relic cards. It's quite possible that I've felt that way for some time. But now that I have announced my decision to no longer seek out relic cards, I am now realizing that I don't care about them at all. It's to the point where I instinctively look at them as inferior. I wouldn't say I put them on the same plain as an unnumbered checklist. But they're falling in that direction. So, what do I do when someone sends me relic cards out of the goodness of their heart? Well, of course, I spit on them, scream curse words so the neighbors can hear, and vow vengeance to the grave. Heh. I'm kidding. Julie from Funner Here sent a very complimentary note and a pair of relic cards to me recently. I have the Sheffield bat relic already (I used to have two of them -- which makes me think I should have kept it, so I'd have three now and be well on my way to reconstructing ...

As a member of the media, I am trained to recognize BS when it's walking toward me. Coaches lie to us. Colleges spin us. Businesses try to use us. It's an on-going battle against crap. Because of this, I am ever sensitive to the waves of hooey that come at us from every direction. I have little tolerance for pitches, commercials, sales drives, even the cute girl at the phone kiosk in the mall. If you're not saying something with meaning/truth, I ain't buying. Because of this, Twitter is best avoided during the first half of the day. I swear every card business in the world spends the morning shilling whatever they have to shill under the guise that it's THE GREATEST THING EVER on Twitter. It makes Crazy Eddie seem like he had Low T. But there is a lot of other BS -- what I like to sugar-coat as "pointlessness" -- on Twitter, which I still wade through because I like to stay informed and it's a great way to do that. Among the pointlessness of r...

So, I was talking to Clayton Kershaw the other day. I was telling him how I had signed up with the Wax Heaven directory as the designated Clayton Kershaw collector. Any Kershaw card that Mario pulled would go to me. "Great," Kershaw said. "How's that turning out?" Well, I said, it's nice and all, very generous of Mario, but it's getting off to a rough start. Clayton gave me the eye. "How's that?" he said. Well, the first card I received in the mail was damaged, I said. It was a relic and it came out of the envelope with a crease. "That sucks!" Clayton said. Yeah, it does, but I've written about that already . It was kind of my fault. I sent down a plain, white envelope as the return envelope, and you really shouldn't do that with cards. The post office apparently makes paper airplanes out of those things. "But things are better now, right?" Clayton said. Um, not really, I said. What's great ...

I don't know why I do the things I do. I know full well that I don't like Upper Deck Spectrum as a product. I think it should be eliminated. In fact I'm on record as saying the color/design irks me, reminds me of unpleasant-tasting cold medicine, and other wacky things that only someone with my confused brain could think up. And I'll blame my confused brain for buying a couple of packs of Spectrum, just to see what it would be like to pull some out of a pack. Maybe they wouldn't be so bad, I thought. Maybe I could find a Dodger or two. Well, right out of the chute I knew it was a waste of five bucks plus tax. Dan Haren last played for Oakland on Sept. 28, 2007. Yet, here he is, in an Oakland uniform on a 2009 card. But I'm not surprised by this. I've seen it several times already with Spectrum. I've even mentioned it before . Spectrum and I don't see eye-to-eye already because I've never been a fan of cards in which the players are taken out ...

Yeah, Upper Deck, I told you I was coming for you. And you made it too easy. What the hell is this? Forget about the fact that this is a card from that awful, nausea-inducing Spectrum, or that Manny Ramirez's photo is cropped at the knees (a photo editing no-no). I'm talking about the fact that Ramirez last played for the Red Sox in July, this product came out in February, and Manny is still featuring his familiar, pine-tar gunked RED SOX helmet. So lazy. So I'm-going-to-sit-on-my-couch-eat-bon-bons-and-print-photos-on-foil-board lazy. Three months ago, we were ripping Stadium Club for photoshopping Ramirez (and the rest of the stadium) into Dodger blue. So if not being able to track down a photo of Ramirez playing in a Dodger uniform -- even though he played for the team for two whole months -- was unacceptable three months ago, then what does doing the same thing now make it? I'd say unpurchasable. I don't know why anybody is buying Spectrum anyway. Aside f...

Isn't that a sad sight? There is a big, freakin' crease/wrinkle through the middle of my 2009 UD Spectrum Clayton Kershaw relic card. The card wasn't like that when I saw it on Wax Heaven's review of this year's Spectrum release (Spectrum is such a hideous-looking product, by the way). When I saw the card featured, I was thrilled. Since I am down as the Kershaw collector in the Wax Heaven directory, I knew I'd be getting the card. Mario is cool like that. But somewhere along the mailing route, the card was damaged. The SASE that arrived in my mailbox Saturday was not in good shape. It looked like it had been knocked around quite a bit, and a corner of the envelope was bent. Still, I have received card-containing envelopes in worse shape than that and the cards have always been perfect. In fact, this is my first experience with receiving a card damaged in the mail. I certainly don't blame Wax Heaven for this. Mario has been nothing but generous with ...