Night Owl Cards

  People from California reading this can probably skip the first few paragraphs. Because, for them, it will be a bit like someone coming up to me saying, "Hey, I just saw the 1974 Topps Traded Oscar Gamble card, it's so cool, you should check it out!" Yeah, I know. So, with that in mind, I experienced the strongest earthquake of my life Sunday. Don't get excited. It was a magnitude 3.6. But we don't get earthquakes, or at least feel earthquakes, very often around here. For the first 20 years of my life, I never felt one. The quake was centered just west of Adams Center, N.Y., which is a town 10 miles away from me. It felt like something exploded in the basement, then there was some brief rumbling. By the time I got outside -- where most of my neighbors now were -- it had stopped. They were rattled. "What was that?" they said. I knew. It was an earthquake. I knew, because I felt one, centered at the same spot, 10 days earlier. It was a 2.6. It came at 2 ...

I've mentioned the changes in the checklist and the philosophy of Allen & Ginter a couple of times recently.   People still insist on labeling A&G as "that quirky set where you never know what you're going to get," but those people really aren't paying attention. It's still "that quirky set" but all of the "quirk" is stashed in the inserts and hits now, and that's become more and more the case over the last five years and is especially the case this year.   You had a much better chance of coming across a card of a "bridge" or a "door" in 2008 or 2010 or 2014 than you do now. And the same goes for coming across inventors or Olympic heroes or former presidents. People are still operating off that A&G stereotype, but actually today's A&G, here in 2020, has more in common with other currently released baseball sets than it ever has. It is more of a baseball set than it's ever been.   I'm sure ...