Night Owl Cards

  The trouble with Twitter is it's so damn topical. We always have to discuss the hobby issues of the day and fire our opinions out there for anyone to view and -- well, I can be opinionated sometimes and also sometimes those thoughts don't line up with other people's opinions. This isn't some firestorm issue. Nobody blocked me (I don't think) or took away my account. It's just a hobby topic and one that's come up periodically. It was the final question on another CardChat by former blogger Sooz. The topic for the chat was "base cards" and the final question, asked somewhat jokingly, was "do you throw base cards in the garbage?" My answer to that was, "yes," but only in some very few instances. But plenty of people said no. And plenty of people were horrified by the question. "Blasphemy!" they said. "People who do this should be fined!" "Fucking monsters!" Their words, not mine. I rolled my eyes. Re...

It's all in the way you look at it. Like just about everything in life, a repack box can be praised or ridiculed. You can seek out the negative. It's very easy to do, particularly when Fairfield hides the less desirable packs so they are not viewable from the outside. So you could focus on the repack's weak points. It's bound to include a pack or two of some version of the lifeless, metalic-looking Prizm. Grown men in wordless laundry on a set that is from either 2012 or 2013. Who knows? And, yeah, you could emphasize that every repack seems to contain multiple packs of Panini Triple Play, including those useless puzzle pieces. You'll scare plenty of collectors away with that rant. Also, there are lots of packs of cards from sets that either I don't need or don't want, like 2015 and 2016 Topps flagship. The box is filled with collecting incidentals. But I find that after I'm all done opening the repack packs and sorting through what ...

(Today, vacation season is officially over. I return to toiling until the holiday season at the end of the year. Is this why people follow college football? To forget the drudgery of September to November? I think that's what it is. But now something more fun than toiling or college football. Time for Cardboard Appreciation. It's the 157th in a series): Every August, money is tight. I just had a discussion with my wife about how we were going to pay the bills for the week. I have this discussion every August. It's a hoot each and every time. This current state of affairs automatically eliminates card purchasing from my to-do list. ... Well, I wouldn't say "automatically." There is some numbers-crunching and book-cooking and paper-shredding in an effort to find a way to buy a pack of cards. But even after all of that, there is just no way this week. Not even a buck to spare. That's too bad, because if I could buy a pack, it would be of Panini...