Night Owl Cards

  I'm now 50-plus years into my collecting journey. I haven't seen it all when it comes to cards, but I've seen way more than I haven't.   That's why the concept of "new to me" means more than it ever has. I love finding cards that are new to me. It's probably why I still buy packs of current product, because they have the best chance containing cards I've never laid eyes on.   It doesn't matter the era for new-to-me. Sure, the very best is something from the '70s or '80s, but I've covered that period pretty thoroughly so chances are slim. I'll take "new" from any time period. Even the '90s.   That's where the card up top comes in.    It arrived from of a very nice send from Dennis of Too Many Verlanders . But you could see the question marks forming above my head. "Now what the hell is this?"   So many questions. What year is this? What set is this? Is this an insert? It looks like an insert. What...

  It was a very uneventful and quiet Christmas this year. Not a lot to boast about as far as gifts go.   Unlike last year and the last few years, my sister-in-law did not get me any cards. I'm assuming she couldn't find any under the current Fanatics landscape because she always tries her best to get some for me. She did get me a Target gift card but there's nothing online to buy right now as far as 2025 product unless I want to pony up for a hobby box. (I won't bother checking the store in town).   I've yet to receive all my gifts so perhaps there's something card-like in the near future. But I won't pout about it because right before the holiday hit, I received a couple Christmas wishes that came with cards from both The Best Bubble and Too Many Verlanders .   They get it and it sure is appreciated. I'll show off the cards from The Best Bubble first.     Right before snapping pictures of these cards for this post, the Best Bubble cards slipped out of ...

   The hits keep on coming. Still crazy busy here, as soon as something is resolved, more shows up -- "Hello! Deal with me!!"   I'm not going to get into it all. I do that too much and, well, there's not enough time to bore people. So, hey, here are some relatively recently arrived cards that I'll bang out in hopefully a few minutes!!   Dennis at Too Many Verlanders graced me with a surprise envelope a couple weeks (or more?) ago. Much appreciated. So much that among the chaos I frantically looked for some cards to set aside for him once things blew over. I came up with one card. It's been staring at me for days. Obviously not the time for that. But it's a nice card!     I'll start with the best card from what I needed. It's a 1998 Leaf Fractal Materials something-or-other that I'm still trying to decipher, obviously a riff on his 1993 Leaf rookies card. The card looks shinier in person, sorry for the dull picture. And it's numbered to 3,2...

  Although I track milestones on this blog because it's a great way to see where I've been and where I am in the hobby, I don't think about my accomplishments in life very often. As a writer, though, I naturally look inward, so it's not difficult to come up with some on the spot. Some of my biggest are: establishing a career goal in college and making it work for me for 30-plus years, creating a family and raising a smart, well-adjusted go-getter kid, being a home-owner for close to 30 years, winning awards for my writing in my job and reaching a goal I had as a teenager -- writing in a national magazine. And here's another one: completing multiple sports card sets. Ha, ha, you say, that doesn't seem to fit with the ones above. But I say it does, very well. I am almost as proud -- really and truly -- of many of my finished sets as I am of the things above. This set-building ain't easy. I've heard more than one collector say that set-builders are a differ...

  An immediately apparent observation since starting my chase of the late '80s/early '90s Pacific Legends and Swell Greats sets is how available they are. I shouldn't have been surprised -- they came from the late '80s/early '90s -- but as someone who collected fairly frequently at that time, I never saw these cards for sale. Pacific Legends cards were issued mostly as part of "Collectors boxed sets," which were popular at the time. I'm guessing a little bit here as I was a little too old for that stuff at the time (or believed I was). Swell cards, I don't know how they were issued. I started coming across these cards in my early blogging days, from blogger swaps and through repack boxes. The sets are delightful, especially the Swell cards, mostly due to the set checklist, which runs the gamut. You could pull a Honus Wagner, you could pull an Eric Soderholm. Anyway, these cards have been traveling a constant flow to my home from everywhere. TCDB tr...