(I am vacationing this week, which usually means more time for blog posts. But all that extra time makes me feel like avoiding blog posts. Why is that? It's time for Cardboard Appreciation, but it's going to be a short one. This is the 338th in a series): I received a two-card envelope from The Collective Mind a short time ago. Both cards were Dodgers of the vintage type, both former want list material. I did own the 1961 Post Maury Wills card already but this one is unmarked, whereas the other one I received 12 years ago had some updates. At the time of receiving the "updated" card, I m ..read more

  Well ... not exactly. Cards are always on my mind, even if I'm not physically present with them or writing about them. I traded cardboard success for family bonding success over the weekend. That's an even swap but you don't want to read about ducks and piggies. So I'll reveal the ugly card details and show some shoulder-shrug cards before getting out of here and refocused on hobby things.   I managed to skip not one but two large card shows near me over the weekend. This isn't my fault or anyone else's except for whoever decided that schools in this area would get this week off ..read more

  Before 2024 Heritage came out, commenters would reassure me during my 1975 Topps buyback posts that there would be buybacks accompanying Heritage in 2024. Just hold on, night owl! I knew that there would be. But having never hunted for buybacks in any previous Heritage brand -- I mean, like, why? -- I had no idea how many would be available. Wow. There are almost too many to process. And many, many that I need, even after accumulating 481 of the 660 cards in buyback form! My watch list on ebay is larger than it's ever been. It's the wild west on there right now. I make a bid, somet ..read more

  It's another day and another set complete. Another fairly easy one, too. I've wanted to complete the 1983 Topps Glossy Send-Ins set for a long time, probably ever since I discovered from an advertisement inside a pack of 1983 Topps that you could send away for some totally new cards from Topps that were ... glossy!!! Glossy was the original shine in cards, I've discussed this before. Long before the '90s came up with foil and dufex and chrome, shiny cards were glossy cards. They were definitely appealing to youngsters of the time, like me. Why else would I bide my time accumulating ..read more

    I had another post planned for today, had the cards pulled and ready to scan, but death had other plans. You know the old superstition that notable deaths come in threes? Well how about finding out three well-known baseball figures of my younger days died within a 24-hour period? That's an unsettling ramp-up. It started yesterday afternoon and it's still going. Ken Holtzman. Gone. Whitey Herzog. Gone. Carl Erskine. Gone. All three have meaning in my young rooting life, Erskine the most obvious, though I never saw him play. I'll start with him because that's where I have the mo ..read more

  Two things I've noticed since posting the first half of my hobby box of 2024 Heritage the other day. The first is that out of all the regular player and manager cards I've pulled so far, not one features a posed shot. Those were staple shots for Heritage all the way through last year. Just about all of the base Dodgers cards from last year's Heritage are posed shots. To go from that to absolutely none seems like a decision was made. We were still in posed territory in 1975 Topps, plenty of it, in fact. How I long for a hands-on-knees photo in 2024 Heritage like Robin Yount or Roger M ..read more

  All right, welcome to my 2024 Heritage box break. This is the first hobby box I have purchased since 2011 when I bought a box of Allen & Ginter for the third year in a row. After that I went into box-breaking rehab and have done quite well, except for falling off the wagon ... right now. I don't buy hobby boxes these days for a lot of reasons, but one of the big ones occurring to me now is I just don't have time for these things. Nothing in my schedule is going to allow me to open 24 packs at once. I still haven't opened all of the packs in this box and probably won't until Saturd ..read more

  I don't have very much time for cards today, nor tomorrow. But a Very Important Package arrived at my home last night and it's got to be addressed in some sort of fashion here.   Yes, this is the start of approximately 158 posts about 2024 Heritage on this blog this year. You're welcome!   I went ahead and pre-ordered a box of Heritage over the weekend. I chose Dave & Adam's for one very strategic reason: I live less than four hours away from the place and I knew I'd get it fast. I did not expect it to show up the day before release date. For the first time in my life, I ..read more

  All right, time to inject a little spirit of community into the blog world again. Everyone's gone off into their own directions, even if they didn't ditch their blog 10 years ago. What we need is another Blog Bat-Around. This version was started by Matt of Diamond Jesters. Inspired by his recent pull of a Tony Gwynn bat relic in 2024 Topps, he listed his top five pack-pulled hits. I'm taking up the challenge, but, per usual, I've got to complicate things. For starters, Matt used handy-dandy TCDB to determine what hits he's pulled over the years. There's a way to filter out just thos ..read more

 (Greetings on Eclipse Eve. The predicted gridlock has still not happened here. But I did go to the grocery store during a usual off-hours period on Friday and found lines at all the registers. We'll see what happens tomorrow. It's time for Cardboard Appreciation, this is the 337th in a series):   I've mentioned a few times how when I was a kid, I spent an inordinate amount of time studying the ground for discarded baseball cards. When you're little, ground activity is very important. I mean, you're right there. Dirt, worms, bugs, sticks, grass, it's all there for the examining ..read more