Night Owl Cards

  It's another "long weekend" with just two days off for me. But it was enough time for my hobby to travel north for a brief visit.   Yesterday I finally paged the 1983 O-Pee-Chee set that I received from Angus of Dawg Day Cards months ago and put them in a binder. It kind of violated my new rule of "no incomplete sets in a binder" as I still need 67 cards to finish it. But I consider it a priority set -- anything from 1983 is -- even if I don't spend much time on it for awhile. It's just a relief to stop staring at that stack.   Then today I was sitting in a hospital lab waiting room -- I'm telling you, it's just another Monday around here -- and thought enough to bring some reading material. It was the latest copy of Beckett Vintage Collector with David Clyde on the cover.   I've read that story already, and the one after it. But the one up next, that I read fully during my 45-minute wait, was also related to O-Pee-Chee.   This was written...

  Like many folks, I've enjoyed the good fortune of a few extra funds lately. I've been a good owlie and dedicated almost all of it toward real life requirements and needs. I finally got that new roof so I can end years worth of hand-wringing over squirrels and rain clouds.   But I've also used some to gain some long-sought cards, which you've seen here over the last couple of months. And you'll see some more. I also decided to grab a smattering of cards for trade bait. These are cards that I care nothing about but I know others value quite a bit. They are from that late '80s/early '90s period, and I'm not going to show them because I want to use them for when I think it's the right moment. But probably the most coveted one that I grabbed -- no, it's not the '89 Upper Deck Junior -- is this one: For those of you who ignore cards from this period, that's the 1990 Leaf Frank Thomas card. I have no connection to 1990 Leaf and very little int...

(I've begun packaging some of the prizes for the giveaway. I believe I now have everyone's address except for Jeff S. Just send me an email!) For the first 35-40 years of my life, the word "goat" as it applied to baseball either meant the Billy Goat curse that followed the Cubs around for 100 years or a player who screwed up in a significant game. "Baseball's Greatest Goats," that was the kind of title used for books or articles and everyone knew that when they opened the pages, they'd read about the biggest gaffes, goofs and blunders in baseball history. Try searching that phrase now. "Goat" no longer means the opposite of "hero" in sports lingo. It actually means hero. G-O-A-T. Greatest Of All Time. Just about every internet sports reference to "goat" involves Michael Jordan or Muhammad Ali or some other athletic great. Somehow "goat" has come to mean completely the opposite of what it used to ...

One thing that is obviously lacking in major card companies' mass production of sets is an eye for detail. They think they have it all covered with access to Getty Images, a solid design (in most cases) and decades of practice (in Topps' case). But obviously with the amount of sets created -- about double the amount that is actually necessary -- stuff falls through the cracks. There is just not enough people pulling down a salary to keep up with that kind of volume. So the work suffers. The photos are fine but better ones could have been selected. Errors -- typos or incorrect facts or the wrong statistics altogether -- appear on the back. Allen & Ginter's set skips from card 300 to card 350 without even a hint of recognition that something went awry. There is just no time for details. This is why when I see what collectors can create -- you know, the collectors who truly care about cards, the ones who could talk about them all day and the day after that -- I ...

It's the season for nice gestures. Here is one: These are three 1975 Topps buybacks off my want list that came in a PWE from Dennis of Too Many Verlanders . He said he saw them at a card show, thought of me, and shipped them out in time for Christmas. Outstanding. These three cards get me to 259 cards from the set in my completion task, or 39 percent of the 660 cards in the set (although who knows how many are represented with buyback stamps). They are also three titans of 1970s baseball, the kinds of players that I don't think deserve to be marked up with a stamp, let alone be available so easily. Willie Davis was a center field star of the 1960s and '70s for the Dodgers, Beltin' Bill Melton slammed 33 home runs in both 1970 and 1971 for the White Sox, and Pete LaCock is a baseball card legend who is the son of Peter Marshall, the longtime host of the Hollywood Squares game show. Think of all the great pulls you've made over the years -- the trip...

I am not poor or disadvantaged. But watching how I spend my money has been a necessity most of my adult life. I work in a business with an average salary that would make a teacher snicker. Counting dollars is a way of life. So for decades I have carried that mind-set. Can I spend money on this ? Can I spend money on that ? Can I spend money now ? No, not this time, I have to wait, wait until a different time of the month, wait until that bill is paid, wait until the car is fixed. Year after year after year I've done that, the budget always hovering over my head constantly, a presence, always there. Some would call it a struggle. But I've always been a nose-to-the-grindstone person. Just get done what you must to get it done. Go without if necessary. The name of the game is to live. We'll get to that other stuff if we can. I've sacrificed without calling it sacrificing. Scrimped without knowing I was doing it. Declined with barely a pang of sorrow or guilt. It'...

I was at the dentist earlier this month. I look forward to/enjoy the dental visit about as much as you can imagine. But I still go because I keep hearing about what happens if you don't. The last couple of visits have been slightly more enjoyable because I have a new dental assistant. The office features three different dentists and several more assistants. I couldn't tell you how many. It seems like about 50. They seem to try to keep certain assistants with certain patients, which I appreciate. And I think I like Rachel quite a bit. She's one of those people who talks about interesting, relatable topics, and even though I'm at least 20 years older than her, I felt -- right there in that dentist chair -- that she could be a long, lost friend. She also didn't talk to me when my mouth was full of water/instruments. Major bonus. So, there we'd be, talking about high school experiences or parents' unfamiliarity with technology when suddenly Rachel would...