Night Owl Cards

  It was a very uneventful and quiet Christmas this year. Not a lot to boast about as far as gifts go.   Unlike last year and the last few years, my sister-in-law did not get me any cards. I'm assuming she couldn't find any under the current Fanatics landscape because she always tries her best to get some for me. She did get me a Target gift card but there's nothing online to buy right now as far as 2025 product unless I want to pony up for a hobby box. (I won't bother checking the store in town).   I've yet to receive all my gifts so perhaps there's something card-like in the near future. But I won't pout about it because right before the holiday hit, I received a couple Christmas wishes that came with cards from both The Best Bubble and Too Many Verlanders .   They get it and it sure is appreciated. I'll show off the cards from The Best Bubble first.     Right before snapping pictures of these cards for this post, the Best Bubble cards slipped out of ...

    Christmas greetings.   My very first -- and, so far, only -- 2025 Topps Holiday card arrived in the mail a few days ago. I've said a few times that this year's Holiday set doesn't appeal to me because the design doesn't do enough to forget that the set is basically a repeat of flagship -- which was the issue with the first few years of Holiday.   However, the parallels are rather fun and this card is special. Not only is it my first Holiday card from this year but it is Jhonkensy Noel's first appearance in Holiday -- see the rookie logo -- which means this is a First Noel card.   It's too bad that Noel is currently without a team but he's useful in my collection right now. Added together with the other Noels in my collection, I have four total, which allows me to do this:     🎶Noel     🎶Noel     🎶Noel     🎵 Noel!     🎶Born   🎶is the     🎶King of     🎵Israel     Merry...

  I should probably post some thanks here for Nachos Grande running the end of the year awards again this year and allowing me to win Blog o' the Year for a fifth time.   I appreciate it after so many years of doing this because like I've said before, blogging about cards is far from the hot, young thing it once was. Folks still voting for NOC all these years later means I'm still doing what I set out to do -- writing about my love for cards and trying to do it in an interesting way. Glad to still be of service.   OK, now on to getting rid of some cards.   The last downsizing session a month ago was an immediate success, much to my surprise. So I'm going to try again with some slightly -- very slightly -- more interesting cards. As a refresher, I need to get cards out of my house. The card room is sizeable but can no longer hold everything. In order to make room for more cards I have to get rid of cards that aren't useful, i.e., have been stashed in boxes for year...

    OK, now that I've established myself as an oddball in the current collecting landscape -- preferring vintage cards and all -- it's appropriate that I show off some recent "oddball" arrivals in my collection.   This runs the gamut and covers 85 years of trading cards and some of it isn't even cardboard.   Let's see:   Fired-up by my first acquisition of a 1960 Leaf high-number Dodger card in Rip Repulski, I decided to grab another one with this Joe Pignatano. It has a few minor flaws (it was listed as "good," which is usually "good enough" for me), but it still looks great.   That leaves just Stan Williams to complete the team set. Upon landing the Repulski, I received an email informing me that the Williams was available for a reasonable price on sportlots. But I didn't jump on it (I'm rarely financially ready to pounce on opportunities) and it's not there anymore.     Here's a card -- and an owlie greeting card -- that ...

   One thing that has become very clear to me over the last year is that my way of collecting cards -- the way that was the established primary way of collecting for as long as I've been alive -- is being phased out.   There are a variety of reasons -- and forces at work -- for this. I am reminded of one of them every time I attend the monthly card show.   In the past year, the show has moved from primarily sports cards to primarily RPG/TCG cards. I have less than zero interest in these. When I paid my entrance fee at the table, the guy there asked if I wanted to enter the raffle and gestured toward a gift basket filled with TCG stuff -- don't ask me what it was, I couldn't tell you. I gave the guy a flat "no" that sounded like "of course not."   But I'd say more than half of the tables was Pokemon, Magic and whatever else there is in that fantasy realm. Just about the rest was graded football and basketball of mostly modern cards. But I've writt...