Night Owl Cards

  It's been a fairly stressful week, between traveling, a delayed doctor's appointment, the loss of a beloved player from my youth, and now the most taxing World Series matchup I could possibly conjure up as a fan. The weekend will help a little (stupid sports teams still have to play on the weekend, tho) and so will the collection. I just happen to be wrapping up a super-simple sportlots order with the final cards trickling in. I like simple orders. Big-ticket and super-cool arrivals are always fun but they contain a certain amount of worry what with prices paid and condition concerns. Simple orders are just simple cards, they don't cost much but still they fill holes and are always wanted.   Some of those cards were upgrades and they've already been filed away with a smile. A 1983 Topps Ron LeFlore, a 1986 Fleer Bobby Castillo, items that should have always been pristine but weren't, and I was horrified. But now the monster is back in the closet.   Others were reg...

  I don't know about you but among the many voices in my head are the ones that say "have you finished this set yet?" "Don't forget to complete that team set!" "Wow, it's a long time since you did anything with that set!" So many voices and out-and-out badgering about card tasks. So the first Sportlots order of the year was about quieting a bunch of those voices -- or at least cutting down on the volume -- by completing as many sets as I could as cheaply as I could. You already read about me finishing the 1986 Traded set . I posted that back on May 27, and there's still one card straggler from that Sportlots order that hasn't arrived. It's always interesting how some cards show up within days and others seem to have a long conversation with themselves over whether they really want to live in my house. When that card arrives, it will complete a team set, too. But let's see the stuff that's actually here. Look it, you guys, 19...

(Greetings. I have no special opening this time, I just got up from a nap. A thing old people do. Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 329th in a series): My latest sportlots order is working its way to my house. It's down to the final few cards. I don't plan to show much of it on the blog, it's mostly upgrades, a few Dodgers needs and a set filler here and there. If I get desperate maybe I'll show something, but that's what this post is for! One of the cards I got was this 1986 Topps Bob Rodgers. I completed the 1986 set long ago, one of the first that I finished with help from bloggers. But it turns out I never actually finished it. It's been laughing at me -- in a binder -- for 14 years. The 1986 set is the first set in my collecting time that I didn't have memorized ... well, same goes for 1984 and 1985 Topps, but I bought those in their entirety, there was no room for slip-ups. But in '86, I ignored everything cards. And so, I picked up the...

  I joined this hobby, was sucked into it, in the mid-1970s. Not too long into my time in the club, maybe a couple of years, I caught on to the one primary goal of card collecting.   The name of the game was completion, set completion.   That's changed in the nearly 50 years since. Sure, there are still set collectors, but we're a much smaller percentage of the entire collecting scene, unlike when I was a kid, when it was just about 100 percent.   Still, I can't get that goal from the '70s out of my blood. It's there forever. It is THE reason why I collect -- to complete the mission, to finish the set, whether it's a team set or a set set. This is what makes sense to me in the hobby, and no matter how much I try, I still can't fully grasp what the heck other collectors are doing if they're not trying to finish sets. What does it even mean? So, my second Sportlots order of the year arrived recently, the last cards showed up today. Without even thinking ab...

  I've been watching the cards from my first Sportlots order of the year trickle in. It seems like it's taking longer than usual. But I'm down to the final two cards that need to arrive. Unfortunately they were supposed to be part of this post. In fact, the plan was that I would have all of the cards I needed to finish the 1985 Fleer set for this post. That was the first mission of the year: complete that set. But I'm still six cards short. One card that I ordered did not show, I received a refund -- Mike Brown, of all players. Two Darryl Strawberry cards were swiped from my cart. Damn player collectors. I think a couple of the others were snatched from my cart, too, but it's possible I missed adding a couple. All of those cards should be easy enough to snag and very quickly, too. But I don't want to wait for those to get this post done. So now you'll have to suffer through two 1985 Fleer posts. Sorry, I'll make it interesting, I promise.   The '85 F...

  My latest sportlots order is in and I went the "even I can afford that" route, which is mostly sportlots' reason for being.   Most of these were cheap upgrades and easy team set-fillers. There are a handful that don't fit easily into a compartment other than "cards I want."   I'm not going to show the upgrades other than the '70 Jesus Alou up top (replaces the one I have with tape on it) and the '76 Lopes Record-Breaker comparison:   The card on the left harks back to my collecting days in 1976. It's a nice keepsake but doesn't fit with my modern collecting standards. I've owned a cleaner copy in my '76 Topps set for quite awhile but another version for my Dodgers binder has not shown up at the house until now.   The other upgrades are related to the 1975 Topps set, specifically the minis. I will continue to upgrade '75 cards for as long as I'm collecting. Some of the minis I accepted just to get the set done so now it...