Night Owl Cards

I have periodically wondered what would happen if I took a long break from this blog. But I have wondered more often why I don't take a long break from this blog. My longest break from Night Owl Cards has been a week. Some consider that remarkable consistency. I consider it more a mix of good fortune, my current period in life, and above all, an incredible drive to write. This is the only outlet that allows me to write on a daily basis, with a modest audience as a bonus. And as I've established many times before, I must write. So, what would cause me to take a large break of say nine months like Julie of A Cracked Bat did recently? I can think of two things: tremendous upheaval in my life or that I received a huge paying job to write somewhere else. Other than that, you're probably stuck with me and this blog for awhile. Sure, incredible boredom could take hold and shut the blog down, but that's not even a remote possibility right now. That's why I am al...

I will be announcing the winner of my anniversary contest in this post, but I wanted to clear off one side of my desk first. This is the last remaining trade package on the card desk. That means I have to get my butt in gear and get the cards on the opposite side of the desk out to people. The rest of this week, though, is looking fairly grim for that kind of frivolity. Anyway, these cards are from Twitter pal, Will. He sent very recent and very needed cards from 2016. I have neglected 2016 cards so much. There was a selection of needs from a variety of products. Let's take a look: Some Bowman. Only Kershaw and Puig are still with the Dodgers. #ThanksBowman. Some Allen & Ginter. These are from the retail-only insert set, I think. I get these confused with the Numbers Game inserts, which tells you how necessary it was to create both insert sets. Some Stadium Club. This just leaves three Dodgers cards remaining for the team set: Kershaw, Koufax and Jacki...

A few days ago, I read at Dodgers Blue Heaven that Panini was releasing its Cooperstown series again this year, and that each base card had three different versions. One card number, three photo variations. I shook my head at Panini, which I still have difficulty considering a legitimate baseball card company, pulling something that many take Topps to the woodshed over year after year. But I realized I was reading this at the same time I was unearthing card variations from sets that are decades old, which arrived long before what we consider as the era of variations/parallels. For instance, the above card from the 1983 Authentic Sports Autographs series. The series featured 12-card sets of 11 different Hall of Fame players. Each set also had a separate version in which the first card was autographed. Oh, and you can also find the cards with red or green borders. Which explains this: Each of these are card No. 10: Then, not long after I came across that, I came a...

This card came in yet another trade with Cards on Cards . It features those abominations that Major League Baseball made all-stars wear on their heads this past season. I am with everyone who hates these things. I hope they never appear again and wish like hell they were never captured on baseball cards. But here we are and I have this card of Zack Greinke looking goofy forever. I'm guessing some folks don't like these caps because they either don't remember or didn't grow up with the multi-tone caps from the 1970s and 1980s. Those caps used to be a regular fact of baseball life, like stirrups, sansabelt baseball pants and bullpen carts (which also sometimes wore a cap). Those caps didn't really bother me then. So I'm wondering why they bothered me so much when I saw them during All-Star festivities. I think one of the reasons is because teams that never featured those kinds of caps, like the Dodgers, were suddenly wearing them. The other reason onl...