Night Owl Cards

   Blogger may be trying to kill off our card blogs but it can't kill off the Blog Bat-Around. This is the second one I've done this year!   I have a little window of time today that I didn't expect to find, so this is a nice, quick topic to address as year 19 gets under way.   Torren' Up Cards touched off the Blog Bat-Around by listing the three hobby accomplishments that make him the most proud . He should be proud, too. I can't even conceive of doing most of the card things he mentioned.   I have some obvious ones myself, though. I'm going to mention just the three, though I could do much more if I thought about it a little. Here they are:   1. Ran a card blog for 18 years and counting   What's the record for consecutive years operating a blog? I certainly don't know. In terms of sports card blogs I know I don't have the record, there are a handful that started before I did and are still going in some form or another.   But the part that make...

My goodness, we're just starting right up with this school thing aren't we?   For decades I could count on high school football starting before any other school sport and always after Labor Day. But games are afoot -- looks at calendar -- tomorrow -- and other sports that kindly waited for football to get going are now opening at the same time, if not earlier. It's a free-for-all.   How does that affect you? It doesn't, except the owl is too busy for just about every prospective post on my "to blog" list. Instead I have another edition of The Awesome Night Card Binder page review, plus some stuff tacked on the end.   When I last did an Awesome Night Card Binder post, I left off at page 32. I've got eight more pages to show, and many of those are pretty empty.  I need to consult the "night card" tag on TCDB like immediately after I post this to fill some of these puppies up.   Here is page 33:   Page 33   Pretty solid page with only one opening. ...

   Yesterday, Shohei Ohtani hit his 30th home run of the season, and became the seventh Dodger to hit 30 home runs in three straight seasons.   There was some online fanfare for the feat, but it's more muted these days for Ohtani, not like his first few years in the league when Ohtani hysteria was high and I almost had to cover my ears with all the yelling.   Ohtani has been in the majors for nearly 10 years now and that'll happen. He's not the new thing anymore, even while he continues to do new things. But I think along with that, ever since he came to the Dodgers, people are more reluctant to sing his praises. There may be more Ohtani fans than ever, but there are an awful lot of brain-dead gambling jokes from Barstool acolytes and grumbling about deferred money to go along with it. I seem to read about that more on social media than any cool thing Ohtani has done.   It causes me to wonder where all the Ohtani fans went -- I'm still seeing his cards sell for ...

The farther I get away from the age 18-49 demographic, the more the players that dominated the sports scene for seemingly forever fade out of the conversation.   You could have never convinced me in the 1970s and 1980s that guys like Reggie Jackson would slowly disappear, that their names would cease to be on everyone's lips, on every magazine cover, in every card set, in every sports column and TV broadcast.   Fewer and fewer sports fans can relate to the significant players and moments of the '70s and '80s and, yes, that means I have less to discuss on social media sites and the like. There are more modern players and moments that get all the attention and I sit on the sidelines either puzzled or with nothing to say.   One of those notables of the past who has become less and less significant with each passing year is Steve Garvey. I know a lot of people my age don't want to acknowledge that, but it's true. If someone isn't a Dodgers (or even Padres) fan and d...

   What would you say collectors who aren't bloggers think of us collecting bloggers, if they think about us at all?   Would they think we're wildly dedicated to the hobby? Probably not. But we are.   Would they think we're wasting our time, writing a bunch of words nobody has time to read anymore? Maybe.   Would they think we're stodgy, focused only on old cardboard (defined as anything before the '90s) and traditional ways of collecting -- buying packs, holding on to base cards. Some would, I think.   But I happen to think that card bloggers have the most varied and interesting collections. Sure, there's a bit of pack rat in all of us collecting bloggers, but those hoarded stacks of cards are so damn fascinating. In this world of specialization -- just take a look at what the grading aspect of the hobby focuses on -- I'm glad my collection is eclectic. It's not as eclectic as some but it's more eclectic than most.   All I need to do is look through...

  For the first five years of this blog, there was nothing more mind-blowing to me than communicating and trading with collectors from around the world, specifically overseas.   England, France, Australia, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, I couldn't believe the reach of the blog and how many different people collected baseball cards! I connected with many of them and traded multiple times with some.   Then, slowly, each of them disappeared from the blog space, often without a trace, until it's now just me and some of my Canadian friends.   One collector, though, has turned back the clock, at least for now, by moving from the States back to Japan. Kenny, a.k.a., Zippy Zappy , has been downsizing and refocusing his collection and sending out cards to folks who could use them more than he can.   I received an envelope from Japan a few weeks ago with some cards, and then yesterday a big, fat package from Japan Post was deposited on a chair on my porch. Well, well, t...