Night Owl Cards

(Greetings, I'm back after a rare two-day break from posting. While I appreciate out-of-town visiting more than ever these days, I still feel lost without my cards. So let's get back into it. It's time for Cardboard appreciation. This is the 301st in a series): As much as I loved baseball cards as a kid, I wasn't very observant about them. The aspects that stayed with me back then were the design, the player on the card, what team they played for and probably the pose, or the action shot. On the back, I noticed the stats and the cartoon, if there was one. I glanced at the bio sometimes, too. That was about it. The elements that jump out at me these days -- that the player was airbrushed into a different uniform, that there is a teammate in the background, that there is a piece of equipment in the background, that a word is misspelled or incorrect information provided -- almost always sailed over my head. I'd like to think I was like most kids in that way. Too many i...

I am on vacation this week. During these pandemic times, with limits on where I can go and what I can do, this would be a prime 7 days for getting some chores done and catching up on sleep, right? Nah. The city is working on my street again. I had no idea this was going to happen. A couple days ago, two doors down from me, whatever tool they were using shook the ground and knocked me right out of my nest. This morning, two doors down on the opposite side, they've been using a loud vacuum thingy to suck away my sleep. This throws off my night owl schedule. I end up napping in spurts, not really getting anything done, and on the back half of the day -- baseball takes over. I'm not a TV watcher. It's ball games and that's it, and even then I'll get up and do things while the game is happening. But postseason baseball requires your undivided attention, especially if your team is playing. And this season, they play EVERY NIGHT. There are no breaks, no catching your brea...

Here's another story about "the good in Twitter". I was having a conversation over there with a few like-minded collectors, fans of vintage cards, in which one of us displayed the entirety of the sixth series of 1972 Topps. The difficulty of obtaining all of the cards in that final series is well-known, so seeing that series all at once, even though all of those cards are sitting in a binder next to me right now, was impressive. Seeing that image brought back all of the trials and tribulations that went into completing that last series, which also completed the entire 1972 set for me. It was a grind. It was an obstacle course. It was a treasure hunt. It was nothing like I had ever collected before. So I said: It certainly feels like a club. I'm aware, from being a blogger a number of years, that not just anybody can complete a set. A lot of people don't have that gene. And completing a set with high numbers? THOSE kind of high numbers? That takes a ...