Night Owl Cards

I've been home the last couple of days from various vacation jaunts but it's still a bit difficult -- even for me -- to get back into a blogging state of mind. Although I live to write, and what else better to write about than baseball cards, the weather is just too nice to sit in a chair and type away at a laptop. I will never be a beach person or a rock-climbing person or a ride-my-motorcycle person, but the summertime definitely does call when it's 75 degrees with no humidity and that sun -- oh, that sun -- is so, so, shiny. Just take a look at my blog stats over the last eight years or so: If you are to believe Blogger, July isn't the greatest month for readership. It's definitely not the worst (I'm going to credit the annual release of Allen & Ginter for that), but it's rarely one of the peak months. May and October seem to be when readership climbs. Looking at the July 2019 stats is a bit alarming -- fewest views in years -- but keep ...

A couple of weeks ago I received a package from Cardboard Catastrophes that contained stuff that I would never buy. This doesn't mean I didn't want what Jeff sent. It's just that I was amazed that virtually the entire package contained cards that either I have no access to, would never end up on a shopping list, or are from sets I avoid like the plague. The card up top, a 2002 Topps Tribute item, is from a set that I've never purchased in my life. Did/does Tribute come in packs? I have no idea. I don't have a card shop near me that sells actual cards and Tribute never made an appearance in a big box store that I know of, yet Jeff found this semi-rare item in a discount box. Oh, did I leave that part out? Apparently all these cards came from some crazy discount box that he happened upon. This was in a discount box, from what I understand. It is from 2015 Panini Cooperstown, numbered to /75, die-cut a number of ways and looks like a giant mouth is s...

In the quest to own every Dodgers card ever made, you make a lot of compromises with what you know as "a baseball card." In general, a baseball card for me is a photograph of a major league player, background included, arranged inside a colorful design. But there are all kinds of definitions to baseball cards these days. Bowman Draft, for an example, is a weird spin-off of what I know as a "baseball card." It does not contain major league players, for the most part, and in most cases it's filled with cards of players I don't know at all. It's also rife with Topps' version of alternate reality. Players often are photoshopped into uniforms they haven't worn and shown in front of generic backgrounds. Take a look at this Connor Wong card, for example (and no, I didn't know who Connor Wong was until this moment. But thanks to 30 seconds of research I now know that Austin Barnes is the nephew of  Mike Gallego). There doesn't seem to be...

As we all know, Topps is the only card company granted an MLB license. But that hasn't stopped Panini from making baseball cards. I give them credit for trying, even though it's clear they don't know what they're doing. (Although turning Kershaw and Seager into Dumb and Dumber is kind of a feat). It's like this guy I know who used to work with me. He really likes sports. He's really into media. He's been a sportswriter and a TV news reporter and radio show host and self-published his own book. He tries really hard and he's enthusiastic. And he's a pleasant guy. Likeable. But he's just not that good. The talent isn't there. Yet he keeps plugging along. That's Panini. They just keep trying. They don't have it. I don't know if they ever will. But they own a license from the MLB Players Association, so, dammit, they're going to keep making lousy cards. I never thought this Donruss thing would last. Just about every year...

We've reached the part of the baseball card release calendar that I've started calling "The Dead Zone". After Topps flagship and Heritage comes a number of products that don't appeal to me and I wouldn't miss if they disappeared. Opening Day is redundant. Panini Donruss is incomplete and often incompetent. Gypsy Queen is too expensive for really ugly cards. After that, I believe, is Bowman, which means less to me than the three other sets I just mentioned. It's a long gap between Heritage and the return of stuff I I'm interested in, like Series 2 and Allen and Ginter. A whole season goes by before Series 2 shows up in June and A&G appears at some point in the summer. That's quite the wait. And although I'm more immersed in vintage and other non-current collection pursuits than ever, it's weird to go so long without sampling some cards. It's been three weeks since I've sampled from my local Target or Walmart. So, t...