Night Owl Cards

  Since I don't prioritize autographs in my collection, I don't have a lot of them that aren't Dodgers.   The ones I do have sit in the back of my autograph binder, filled with 99 percent Dodger scribbles. There are a handful of Bills and Sabres scribbles, too.   But those autographs have meaning, too, and every once in awhile I will come across one that I need to include in my collection.   One of those times happened yesterday. I went to the monthly card show -- I'll have a post all about it tomorrow. The last card I picked up there was an autograph card. I saw it at the first table I was at -- and I told myself that if I still had money left and the card was still there -- I'd add it on my way out the door.   And that's what I did.   I had to -- it's The Mad Hungarian! This is one of the exceptions. Al Hrabosky is from my early days as a fan. I remember seeing him when the Cardinals played the Mets in the mid-to-late 1970s. Hrabosky, as you may know or h...

    One of my "unwritten" vows to myself in writing this blog is to try to make each post relatively original. I know not all of them are. I have specific blog series so each of those have a theme. And anything that is a "look at the new cards I got" can be lumped together as the same idea. But I try to make those trade posts and "got cards" posts as creative as I can. I've been trying to do that for years. I don't know why I'm so hell-bent on this -- other bloggers repeat stuff all the time -- but the thought of repeating a subject without knowing I'm repeating it, which I'm sure I've done, has been one of my worst blogging fears. Well, welcome to my nightmare. I made the same post within a year back in March and I'm just realizing it now.   It dawned on me that I wrote about the same topic two different times in remarkably the same way when I was writing the latest edition of the 1975 Topps worst to best countdown. As I often ...

The spending moratorium has ended. Cash is flowing again. It's been a while since I had an August like that. It used to be a regular thing -- every August I knew money would be tight -- but the last few years we had somehow avoided it. Then, thanks mostly to pandemic-related bureaucracy, cash-strapped August made its triumphant return. But enough of that! Trading is back. Online card purchasing is resuming. And, most importantly, I've found monies for approaching card shows and post-office trips!   I'll be gathering together a couple of envelopes for sends this weekend. Meanwhile I have received a series of PWEs. Even with my professional writing talents, I have a difficult time devoting one post toward a PWE. So you're going to see a parade of them. Don't worry, it's a short parade, not one of those with 46 school bands, each one stopping in their tracks to play the The Muppet Show Theme.   I'll even put them in pyramid form for you.   First the latest Time...

Everyone knows what this is by now, but at the time that I pulled it out of the package, nobody had shown their Baseball Card Breakdown Tony Gwynn rip card on the blogs yet. So I took a casual look around the card, with mild interest, wondering how many 1989 Donruss Diamond King Gwynns Gavin must have. Then I flipped it over. Rip Card?!?!? Of a 1989 Fleer Padre? I don't care if it's 1 of 25 (ebay 1/1!), I am so going to rip this!! This is the easiest rip card decision ever (not that I have any experience with rip cards). When I first started ripping it, I thought I might be unearthing a black-border mini. But I quickly deduced that it was a magnet of some sort. My magnet is the best magnet. It's a splendid mini magnet of The Penguin. Here is a closer look. Cey is playing ball on starlit field, which makes this better than the best magnet. The rest of the items in Gavin's Holiday Giveway package where a little more regulation-sized. ...

This is one of my favorite custom cards in my collection. It achieves the three things that I look for in a custom card. But I'll get to that in a minute. This card was devised for me by Big D of the long defunct card blog, Hey That's Mine . He hasn't posted since 2012 and that just goes to show you how long custom cards have been around the card blog scene. Remember Goose Joak ? That blog was probably the first that I saw that regular cranked out custom cards. I believe that's all he did in terms of his blog. Not many of those custom cards actually became real cards if I recall correctly (although I do have a fine Alissa Milano custom created by Goose Joak). And that's why I have trouble paying attention to custom cards most of the time. I like my cards to be real, things I can actually hold in my hand. It's why I have so much trouble with digital "cards". They don't exist in reality. Custom cards that you can create online through photosho...