Night Owl Cards

  The curse of multiple collecting themes in your collection is often they overlap and then what do you do? I don't even have as many collecting themes as some bloggers and I run into this all the time. For example, I received a few cards from The Angels, In Order recently as Tom was offering up some extras in his collection again. These aren't the cards I chose. Tom sent them along because they were listed on my wants for the 1991 Line Drive Albuquerque Dukes set. They were two of the final four cards I needed to finish off that set. I am now down to John Wetteland and Jose Offerman to complete it. But you saw the Offerman card already. It's in my collection. It's in my Dodger autograph collection. That's a separate binder from where the '91 Line Drive Dukes go. Now, normally I don't mind grabbing an extra of a single card to go into multiple collections. But something about this particular time annoys me just a little. Why do I need to bother getting a se

Before I go back in time, here is the 2015 Topps Series 1 checklist , which was released today. My quick reaction to it is: Lot of the same stuff we've seen in recent years. ... Kershaw has to stop hogging awards so I can stop collecting those league leaders things with guys I don't care about. ... Oh, look, Derek Jeter is card No. 1 in the set, that will cause people to flip out -- oops, they already did. ... The inserts have card numbers (instead of letters) on them again --- weeeeee! ... The first-pitch insert is interesting in a D-list celebrity kind of way. But real reaction will have to come when the cards hit store shelves near me. Right now, today's excitement came in the haul that arrived at my doorstep this afternoon. I made it a mission to clear out as many junk wax-era Dodgers sets as I could. I have no desire to continue chasing cards from this time period. It's not particularly memorable for me and the cards are far too plentiful for me to still n

Online, I often get confused for someone who lives in California. I'm a Dodgers fan. I'm awake during what many would consider "West Coast hours". But as many of you know, I live a long way from California. That's OK with me. Most of the time I don't wish I lived there. There's only a few times when it would be convenient. The first would be to see my brother a little more often as he lives out there. The second would be to get my hands on more Dodger cards, as I'm sure they're more plentiful there, albeit probably more expensive. The third would be for days like today -- Opening Day at Dodger Stadium. I want to be at Dodger Stadium for Opening Day. And maybe one day I will. But for now it's all a dream. I'm not even able to enjoy the game vicariously from 3,000 miles away because I've got to work. What I do have is cards. From someone who lives in California. Close enough, right? These are all finds from Dave R., who has

So, the "Future Stars" subset is back. Everyone knew it was coming back because when Topps released its prototype of the 2014 design back in August , it plastered "Future Stars" script on its Yasiel Puig mock-up card. Topps is obviously rather proud that the "Future Stars" are back. It's a nod to collecting from the 1980s when Topps first featured the phrase on its cards. Those who first collected back then probably got all gushy when learning that it would reappear. Me? Well, other than indicting "Future Stars" for the ruination of the card collecting hobby, I didn't give it much thought. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's look at the beginning of the "Future Stars" tradition. And no, I'm not starting with 1987 Topps. "Future Stars" first arrived in 1980 with Topps' traditional rookies subset. In previous subsets, Topps labeled the new players "rookie stars" or "rooki

Unless your name was Nancy Kerrigan, Kurt Cobain or O.J. Simpson, 1994 was going along quite nicely until the baseball strike. I moved to a new city in 1994. I didn't know it at the time, but it was one of the smartest decisions I would make. After four years of frustration and upheaval, I began to experience stability in '94. I've lived in the same city since and what I know about my current life now began 17 years ago. In the baseball world, the Dodgers were on the upswing. Their catcher and first basemen were the two most recent Rookies of the Year. And the right fielder was about to win the next one. The pitching staff was pretty good, even though they had just traded away someone named Pedro Martinez. In Triple A resided touted prospects like Todd Hollandworth, Billy Ashley, Roger Cedeno and Ron Coomer. At the time that the major league season came to a halt, the Dodgers were 58-56, but in first place in the National League West. When baseball resumed, the D