Night Owl Cards

  I picked up this card on Friday. Ryne Sandberg passed away Monday.   I was not a kid when Sandberg was starring for the Cubs. I was a senior in high school when his rookie card showed up, and I'm pretty sure I didn't know who he was when I pulled it. That was the last year of dedicated card collecting for me for the next six years. That's a lot of Sandberg cards I didn't see.   I'm also not a Cubs fan, and it feels odd writing a tribute. So I'm going to wander through topics while discussing Sandberg cards, too.   The Sandberg diecut card came from a collection I am assessing for a co-worker. She helps run a thrift shop through her church. The cards are the former collection of her neighbor. The collector's mom made the cards, and everything else in their garage, available to the shop.   It's apparent that the kid collected somewhere around 2005-15. There are also cards going back to 2001 (and some football cards from the late '80s but that was bef...

This post was originally going to be called "stuff I discovered on the internet," but I figured that would leave too much to the imagination. Before the internet came along, I discovered cards and card sets mostly through advertisements in the Sporting News or Baseball Digest, or through hobby catalogs that came to my house, like TCMA or Fritsch Cards. Later, I subscribed to Baseball Cards Magazine and found new-to-me sets in articles in that magazine. But I missed so much through those methods. Outside of what was selling in wax or cello packs at the drug or grocery store, that was all I knew. It wasn't until years and years later, when I ended up online like everyone else, that I discovered how much that I had missed. Once I became aware of card blogs, the door was open wider than ever. There were so many sets -- so many sets and cards that often had been issued right under my nose -- that I never knew existed. For example: I had no idea there were so many box sets fro...

Hey, the Blog Bat Around is back! It's only been four years since I wrote one of these things. I suppose if I actually did anything to jump-start this series on my own maybe four years wouldn't go by between episodes. Anyway, this latest edition has been started by garveyceyrusselllopes . He discusses cards he used to own and wishes he still did, and wonders if others have similar regrets. My first response to that was "I know how you feel, but, no, not really." Then, I thought about it a little, and that's still the way I think. But it took some time to get there. Let me tell you a little story first before I explain why. Perhaps you've heard, there has been a manhunt for two escaped murderers in the wilds of Adirondack Park. Yesterday, police found, shot and killed one of the escapees, Richard Matt, the man on the right. The other man, David Sweat, is still on the run as of this writing. But I know they'll get him, too. For most of y...

I'm not sure how much longer the card show that I went to on Saturday is going to last. It's not even really a card show, it's actually a collectibles show that caters to the old money vacationing river people that arrive here every summer. It's mostly lots of elderly people trading coins and combing for postcards. A year ago, the show was cut from the traditional two days to one day. I missed that show because I didn't know the change was made. This year, I was wise to them and headed up bright and early on a Saturday. When I walked in, the table where I usually paid my three bucks was empty. In place of people taking money was a donation jar to raise funds for foreign exchange students at the local high school. "That's odd," I thought. When I turned the corner into the hall, I saw more indifference. There were far fewer people looking over wares than I had seen in past shows. And most noticeably, an entire one-fourth of the hall that onc...