Night Owl Cards

  This is the giveaway post featuring the extras from my winnings from The Diamond King vintage giveaway on his blog last month.   I'll reveal the cards I'm giving away and the entry instructions at the end of the post, so you greedy grubbies can scroll right to the end if you like.   But I wanted to mention that DK's giveaway also encouraged participants to send cards out themselves. This is something I still do, even after 18 years, though not as often the last 5 or 6 years (still there are cards on my desk right now that are waiting for packaging and sending, as it's always been). But Kevin seemed to strike a nerve as I was the beneficiary of three separate card sends that I believe were related to The Diamond King's request.   First let's see some cards I received from gcrl from cards as I see them . Neither of us needs instructions for sending out cards, especially to fellow Dodger fans, but we'll take any excuse!   Goodies of the parallel kind. Will g...

  A couple weeks ago, I noticed yet another downturn in card blogging, and I went through my blog reading list to determine how many card bloggers posted at least once a week for the previous week.   It was around 40. That seemed like an all-time low ... or at least since the early days of my blog when I'm sure there weren't even 40 card blogs.   I just checked again, and the numbers were still low, but better this time at just over 50 posting at least once a week.   I'm grateful for anyone who writes about cards at least once a week. Reading card blogs has been a daily ritual for me for more than 17 years and I would hate to move on from that. I don't know how the people who used to regularly read card blogs stopped, frankly. Don't they feel like there's a hole in their day every day?   The amount of card bloggers who write at least once a week and trade through the mail regularly is even less. Much less. But two who still do both just sent me some cards. That ...

Like most folks in this country, I am not made of money. While going for my daily walks or driving around town, I look at the shiny gargantuans passing for cars on the local road and wonder who can afford that. There are so many of them now, maybe there actually are people made of money?   But little guys like me -- who drive a modest CRV -- must pick our moments for spending cash. Budgets and all that. And, while I've never been a bargain-hunter in everyday life, I sometimes am as a card collector.  Freebies are still a thing in the collecting social media world, though not as often as they once were. I need to do my part in that area -- it's not due to a lack of cards, just a lack of time. But at least I'm participating in the claiming!   Here are some very recent acquisitions, all in response to "free" or "free with a catch" come-ons.     Jim of cards as I see them revived his "Almost Free Fridays" giveaway recently. I was only able to find...

    When I wrote that article for Beckett Baseball magazine about my Dodgers collection -- wow, it's been three years already -- I ended it by saying I would continue to collect cards of my favorite team "on the way to 25,000" total Dodgers. Well, I'm moving in on 30,000 now. The counter on the sidebar says 29,469 so I think after a few more months I'll hit 30K. No plans for it to be anything special. In fact I like the idea of it being some insanely random card. I have a lot of people to thank for accumulating such a total and three of the biggest contributors to my team collection all recently sent me cards! It's not really such a coincidence, they're three of the few bloggers sending cards in the mail to other bloggers. I don't know what happened to everyone else, wasn't fun enough I guess? But thank goodness they're still doing it.   First up is a blogger who is probably an even bigger Dodger fan than me -- he still has more Dodgers than m...