Night Owl Cards

  Well, I didn't listen to my OCD and went ahead and finally acquired the 2023 Allen & Ginter Clayton Kershaw mini. Until the 2023 arrival, I could display a complete page of A&G Kershaw minis from the start of his career. It looks like this: Ain't that pretty? That's very nice. (It also illustrates how less-interesting Kershaw's cards have gotten over the years). I could have stopped right there. That's most of his career, really. It's all the most valuable minis, too. One page to sum it all up. But I've never really been a less-is-more collector. So ... There's this situation. A new Kershaw mini, a new page, a card all alone by itself and my OCD running around the room screaming with sirens going off. I couldn't leave well enough alone. All in the pursuit of more, more, more. But I had to do it. Kershaw still pitched in 2023. He's supposed to pitch in 2024. I need cards to represent those years. Hell, I just need all the Kershaw cards. ...

  My most recent COMC order arrived the other day, after waiting a bit longer than they said I was going to wait, about two weeks longer. I don't know if that indicates anything but it's not a big deal right now because it's still not as long as I've been waiting for the Beckett Vintage Collector issue with Rickey Henderson on the cover. I mentioned a couple weeks ago that it probably should have shown up about a month ago, and normally I wouldn't care too much but I suspect an article of mine (or maybe two) is in it. If I had a decent book store near me (aka Barnes & Noble), I could check for it myself, but living among the rubes, I can't do that without planning an outing. I bring this all up again because my articles paid for the 1970 Nolan Ryan I showed last time and they also paid for my COMC order. This is "the other half," although it's a lot more than one card and also cost a lot less. So, let's get to it, since other people aren...

I go back and forth over whether I am naturally tidy or sloppy. I tend to think that I am tidy because my mother is quite the neat freak, and, oh, the random rules when I was growing up. Whether by force of habit or inherited genes, I tend to like certain things tidy. But only certain things. My desk at work ranks only third in the sports department in terms of health department disaster area, but consider that I have been meaning to clean my desk there for 15 years and have never gotten more than five minutes into it. That's a lot of accumulation. So it seems I'm only tidy about areas that matter to me. The kitchen, for example. Get those counters clear. Food is too important to eat in filth. And, above all, baseball cards. My collection is not as tidy as other collectors. I marvel at those who have their own dedicated card rooms and have constructed four-level shelves just for their binders. My goal is one day to have my own exclusive card room (my wife has even si...