For those of us who went to grade school in the 1970s, we grew up with a certain idea of the future. Yeah, flying cars and personal robots, sure, but we also knew when that would happen.   In the year 2000, we'd have all that stuff and walk around in space suits. The year 2000 seemed exceedingly far away, unimaginable really (I would be 35!). What would that be like? I used to try to wrap my head around it and then give up, happy that I didn't have to address what was to come for eons. As a 12 year old, 22 years into the future is eons.   Likewise, 1999 seemed just as futuri ..read more

  Just a short post today. I seem to be in a period where the ideas aren't coming as quickly and also time is limited.   I finally -- FINALLY -- received this Topps Now card of Walker Buehler's reaction to recording the final out in the 2024 World Series. I ordered it almost immediately after the World Series ended and it didn't show up until yesterday. So about a month-and-a-half. I shouldn't have been impatient because it was a preorder deal, which I didn't notice right away (too much partying). But even then, shipment was marked for Dec. 2 and that didn't happen.  In gener ..read more

The post I wrote the other day got me thinking about holding onto the memories before they disappear. And that caused me to remember the "firsts" posts that I've written. I haven't done one of those in almost three years so it's about time I added to the series. If you've forgotten what those are about (join the club), it's where I go through random "firsts" in my life, usually stuff that happened in my first 20 years because that's when most of the firsts occur.   Here we go:     First All-Star Game that I watched   The first All-Star Game I watched was in 1977, which ..read more

    Yeah, definitely something odd going on with Blogger's reading list. It's started dredging up posts from long-dead blogs that are five, eight, 10 years old. I've actually seen a couple of old Gint-A-Cuffs posts. I got excited for a second and thought Mark had reappeared and was reviving it for this year's A&G set! I admit I've clicked on a couple of those once-active blogs and read an old post or two. Things were a bit easier on the blogs then, you didn't have to fight a bunch of other social media outlets for hobby eyes.   Back then, too, it was easier for me to select ..read more

  I did my usual blog post ritual Tuesday, writing it up in the early afternoon and then setting a publish time for a few hours in the future.   The post did publish and it appeared on everyone's blog rolls, but it didn't show up on the blogger dashboard/reading list. That's happened periodically over the years and eventually it does show up. I waited and waited and it still didn't. It's on the reading list now if you go back a day or so on the dashboard, but I have a feeling some readers missed it.   So let's see what happens with this one. There's a weird synchronicity going ..read more

  I've been part of a lot of Nachos Grande group breaks over the years. It's an easy way to get cards of my team without suffering through blasters that insist on adding White Sox and Marlins as well as landing some cards from those years when I wasn't in a dark place (i.e. not collecting). I don't have the funds all the time so sometimes I leave and then come back and I came back recently for another one of his Breakers Club breaks through Discord. I always have fun with the breaks. Chris is great, he finds great sets to open and everything is done on the collectors' terms, they get ..read more

  I put on my winter coat this season for the first time Friday. As always when returning to a coat that has hung in your closet for months, the pockets can yield forgotten mundanes from the past. The best: cash; the worst: gum wrappers or discarded tissues. What would it be this time? Well, it was just a grocery store receipt. I looked at the date: March 23. I remembered buying the items on the list. It didn't seem long ago at all, like that happened last month. The year 2024 has gone by in a flash, the fastest year on record, I'm sure. Today is day 337 of 2024 with just 29 days left ..read more

(Greetings from one of only a handful of places on earth that received close to four feet of snow this weekend. No, I'm still not used to this after 30-plus years. I need some Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 345th in a series): Sometimes I can't believe my luck when I decide to write a post. This card has been sitting on my desk as a possible topic for months and I only decided to post it because I needed something quick during a holiday filled with visitors and snow. As I uploaded the card and searched for an online version of this newspaper front, the date on the top hit me: "Decembe ..read more

  We're getting our first snow of the season today. The good news is November is almost over before we saw snow, which is pretty unusual. The bad news is it's lake-effect snow, on the holiday, and why couldn't it have snowed on Nov. 15th when no one was visiting anything? But we'll get over it, we always do. It's nice to be inside with no responsibilities and cards to pass the time. Today I've been sorting the bunches of cards I received from Johnny's Trading Spot a couple of weeks ago. That always demands some open time in my schedule so I can squint at the copyrights on the back for ..read more

  First off, thanks to those who showed me the way on TCDB for the 1977-79 Sportscaster cards. I received responses via the comments, email and on social media. I agree, it's quite the morass -- way too many variations -- but it's a little more decipherable (at least more readable) than those Donruss back variations.   I tend to excuse variations and such when they are cards connected to my childhood. I increasingly lose patience as the years get closer to the present time.   For example, I just had my first close-up experience with 2022 Topps Chrome Sonic. This set is a bigger ..read more