Night Owl Cards

  Longtime readers might know that I was diagnosed as diabetic almost 12 years ago. It pretty much floored me, but I went to work right away and within three months I was in remission. At the time I was determined to get myself healthy the natural way without medicine, and it worked. I continued to do that through doctor visit after doctor visit. Warding off diabetes without any pills is not easy. I also did not check my sugar regularly, which has received some blank stares from nurses. It's kind of a tightrope act, I need to be super-vigilante about my weight and what I eat, but the theory on that lifestyle choice is, "that's what you should be doing anyway," so why not? Diabetes gets progressively worse as you age, and I've been coping with holding it off for more than 11 years. I'm not young anymore, I'm more than halfway to 100, and I've noticed it getting more difficult. A couple pounds over can make a difference. I'm no longer opposed to medi...

I recently received some cards from two different blogging buds. The envelopes from each featured vastly different cards, but there was one thing in common with both of them. First the cards from Daniel of It's Like Having My Own Card Shop (come back to your blog, Daniel!)     Many of the cards he sent that I needed were shiny -- I mean super-shiny, like that Puig example.   OK, that one isn't shiny, just mini.   But these are shiny and they are also cards that are the theme of the post title. They will not stay flat. I could place them under a large box filled with my Dodgers dupes for six months and they still wouldn't be as flat as your average card. And you know what, it doesn't bother me much -- in this example. I  will put them in a binder and they won't warp the pages, so it's all cool. I will always give a pass to something in pretty colors. The other envelope was from J...

  I think I'm on record on my opinion of Panini as a baseball product. I've never had use for it, think its weak points are glaring and its strong points -- if there are any -- help convince only some collectors that it's worth buying. Panini's license with the MLB Players Association ran out at the end of 2022 and we all know it already doesn't have an MLB license. So Panini is out of the baseball card game and, well, let me take a moment to figure out how I still type while I'm standing and applauding. Panini's baseball cards were ugly, uninteresting, inept and inefficient. The only thing it did well, the 2013 Hometown Heroes product, disappeared after a year. The only other thing it did "well," Chronicles, is a mix of boring (see card above) and a whole lot of WTF. It's good WTF, for the most part, but it actively defies you to complete it, which is the opposite of what I'm trying to do here. Panini's baseball inserts got a lot of pr...

  Usernames are an interesting window into individuals. Often, nobody ever sees your username, except for whatever entity is verifying that you really are you when you transact online (prove, prove, prove you're not a robot). But in our line of entertainment, usernames are quite visible. It's what appears when we comment on a blog or in other social media spaces. Choosing a username is key, I think. But it's pretty obvious other people don't (yeah, you, buttmunch69). I have no idea what some people's usernames mean. Other people, I look at their usernames with quiet admiration. "Yeah, that's a good one." Then there are people who don't even have a user and comment anonymously. To me that's like handing in a blank test paper. Some commenters I know only by their username because they don't have a card blog of their own. Lots of folks comment on my blog who are readers only. I consider that a blessing. One of the best-named of those readers-o...

  I have no problem with how anyone in the hobby wants to collect. Their preferences are their own and I'm glad they're happy. If the way they collect is different from mine, there's a good chance I won't understand it. But still, their way is their way and mine is mine and we can co-exist peacefully, each collecting in our own corner. Except in one instance. There is this one type of collecting that interferes with how I collect. In fact, our two kinds of collecting often butts heads. I'm referring to player collecting, a popular style of collecting for the last 30-to-35 years but something that I am on record as not understanding and I admit I've called it names in the past. But it's probably just the frustration of being a set collector coming out. Set collecting was king when I was a kid in the '70s and remained that way all through my first stage of collecting into the mid-1980s. We '70s set-collectors rarely encountered other collectors hoardin...