Night Owl Cards

    Sometimes I'll read about another collector's devotion to 1990 Donruss or '91 Fleer and my heart will go out to that individual.   "That poor collector," I'll say. "They have no idea what's good."   But those particular collectors can't help it. They know '91 Donruss is junk -- or at least they should -- but the pull of nostalgia is too strong. The meaning behind that set, what they were doing, who they were, the discoveries and intrigue when that set came out, is now sealed within every card in that set. It's all they can see. It's made them stupid ... for a set ... that, objectively, isn't anything all that great.   I know that because I've gotten stupid over too common, too pedestrian sets myself.   One of those is 1991-92 Pro Set hockey.   The cards from the set are everywhere. The design isn't all that great and, frankly, the set seems to have been put together rather haphazardly. It's also a victim of the...

If you're dumb enough to be a team collector during, oh, the last two decades or so, then you know the feeling of always being behind, always trying desperately to catch up, reaching one destination and then suddenly discovering there are many more miles to go. Topps' habit of issuing product after product, month after month -- and they're merely the only one to blame now, Upper Deck, Fleer, Pinnacle, etc., all did it -- keeps collectors, particularly team collectors, on a perpetual hamster wheel, paddling and paddling and never getting anywhere, never coming up for air. It's like that every year. And it seems to get worse, what with the growing number of inserts and variations and online cards. But this year might be different. If you have been adventurous enough to take a trip to a Target or Walmart or maybe an actual card shop, you know that the card aisle is stuck in time. Ever since Gypsy Queen was released in March, nothing else new has hit the shelves....

I was supposed to go to a card show today. It was one of two "guaranteed" card show destinations out of the year for me. I'd get up early -- well, early for me anyway -- maybe meet Angus in the Wild Wings parking lot, drive down to the show, marvel at all the deals and finds, spend all my money, feel giddy the entire drive back, have a nice dinner, then relive my acquisitions when I got home and in the rehash blog post the next day. None of that happened. The show, like everything else fun and worth driving to in the last month-plus, was canceled. And I will wait many months for another one to appear. So, I went to the mythical card show instead. What? You don't know about the mythical card show? Oh, it's great. There may not be as many tables at this show as the one that was just canceled. But the show is always packed. Wall-to-wall people. No more than 3 feet between anyone. But nobody cares, because nobody is going to catch anything. Some kid co...