Copycat

I'm not going to start beating the dead horse that is Topps reuse of images over and over. That's not what this post is all about. If you were around in October of last year, you would have seen the bombing that was dropped on me by Wes from Jaybarkerfanjunk. That was amazing fun. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. So about two months after Wes' mailing came a box from Pat at Hot Corner Cards.

A little bit of everything ChiSox wise was in the envelope. A lot of cards made it into my White Sox box, and Pat did a fair amount of damage to some of my mid 80's/early 90's team sets. But there were a few great cards within that need special scans.

Whoa baby - someone was really drunk in early '78. Love that Richards card. You hardly see someone choking up on a bat that far. I'm fairly certain the background on the card below LaRoche was taken at Comiskey. Those arches look familiar.

Rowand goes into the player collection. A nice hometown parallel from 2014 Bowman, and Sax is flying high for the turn at two. Let's hope he actually threw the ball somewhere towards first base.

Pat also sent about 10 Tigers for my 1964 set, but he just sent these in two PWEs I got a few days ago. However, Pat finally made real on his threats of a Bipping.

YODA'D!!!!!!! I can handle a Bipping like that.

Pat's no Wes, but who is? It's not exactly a Wes bomb, but a Pat grenade is still pretty awesome.

5 for 5

Along with here at 2x3 Heroes, I post about cards over at A Pack To Be Named Later. If you have viewed any of my recent posts there, a common statement is "man, I have a lot in my scanned folder". Which I do. I still have 40 packs scanned for the site, from pack wars and repacks.

The same is true here - I got a lot of cards scanned, sent to me by you kind readers. It's important I let you all know my gratitude of the fine rectangles sent. I hope the five people from today don't mind sharing thanks with their blogging partners.

For starters, Thorzul from Thorzul Will Rule, ran a recent giveaway called "trade me anything". I'm in on that when I can get a couple cards like these.

No way I would ever pull that Pauly, so now I don't have to. And the Abreu went to the throwback binder. Thanks Thorzul.

Non-blogger Steve (who took part in TTS2) dropped a small envelope on me.

A couple nice double play cards I needed (great photo on the Shumpert), and some junk wax Black Jack. Not any junk wax, though, as Steve pointed out this was the error card. The back shows his career games as 30 instead of 63. Thanks Steve!

Ryan who posts at O' No! Another Orioles Blog, was giving away stacks of cards that did not fit in his collection. He had a great selection, and I decided on just one stack.

61 cards from a set I really went to put together, 2008 UD Goudey. This stack pushed me about halfway through the set, and luckily very few doubles. Ryan, I'm working on a return package for you. Thanks man.

Ya know what you hardly find in the blog world? Dodger bloggers. Really, there are SOOOOO few of them. Strange. Anyway, one of the very few out there is Jim from GCRL. He helped me out with a couple of my collections.

Some great bunting shots there. And a nice ChiSox for the box with a dive into 3rd. Appreciate the love, Jim.

Last, but by no means lest, is Chris from Nacho Grande. If you don't like his breaks, you have to love his current "Better Know a Blogger" series. Chris shot me over a few cards shortly after cards he sent from a box break.

I miss Foulke. He had a quirky delivery and was a great setup man. If someone ever asks "hey, what where cards like in the late 90's", I would just have to pull out that Durham. The manufacturers were on a lot of acid back then. Thanks Chris.

Another group "thanks" to all of you for the cards.

Interleague trade

Interleague play has existed in MLB since 1997. So prior to '97, if you were to look at your favorite team's records against other clubs, all you will see are teams that may or may not have a DH on the roster. But everything changed on June 12, 1997 when the Rangers and the Giants played a regular season game that counted in the standings.

My White Sox have an all time interleague record of 163-120, However, the team they have faced the least from the National League are the Mets. Only seven games against them, with a 4-3 record. There are no games scheduled between the two clubs in 2015, so who knows when we'll be visiting Shea Citi or when the Mets will bus into Comiskey US Cellular.

Fortunately, Keith from Home Run Apple makes plenty of visits to my part of the world. Another blogger that is in the "oh, here's a bunch of cards for you" trade cycle that I have, Keith recently dropped a fine group of cards on me.

Man - the Cubs had ugly road uniforms in the late 90's. I was shocked when they honored them last year with these as part of the throwbacks remembering Weeghman Wrigley. That was a bad design. But a nice bunting card, for sure. Rienzo - we had high hopes for him, and now Miami can have those hopes. I think he'll do ok if he gets his control in order.

MIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!

Pauly goes into the Pauly binder. Jake goes into the mini binder. It's organization great?

Lots of A&G in the envelope from Keith. I don't have a lot of A&G in my White Sox monster box, so these (along with others) packed in a couple of the years. I know '09 in not a popular year, having to come right after the great '08 design, but it's a style that is growing on me.

Keith was wise to drop 2 of the Konerkos in the package, so this is a fine dupe, since it goes right to the Pauly binder with the others shown. While the design is total crap, that Prizm is not too bad a card.

Thanks for the cards, Keith. Maybe 2016 will see us visit a borough other than the Bronx.

GAME ON!

I work in tech support. My job is to come up with solutions to problems. Sometimes I have to come at a problem from a different angle to solve the issue. And at my job, we have a database of fixes. It stinks, cuz it's really tough to search. But before this program, we had our own collection of resolutions. You could click a link to rank the solutions, so when a tech searched for a problem, the fixes that worked the most sorted to the top. If you searched by name, a lot of my entries had scores of 2 or lower. Mainly, I had to create the solution that wasn't common, so it wasn't widely used.

But that's all I really created in my life. I'm not an inventor, and I certainly haven't created anything entertaining. In fact, my only creations are my two kids and the gray hair on my wife.

Do you realize what all the coloring does to it, hun?

My wife, however, did create the greatest sports game ever: Squatee Ball. What? You have never played it? It's a up and coming college competition that may be in the Olympics in 2022. For those unaware of the rules, let me go over them.

There are no rules.

Ok. But how do you play it? Usually, it's with two competitors. Each has a pillow in their hands. Usually, the best pillow for this is one of those square pillows you find on a couch. For the ball, it needs to be something soft, like a balled up sock or a small Nerf ball. Then, you hit the ball back and forth between each other. Score isn't kept, really. And you can hit it multiple times if you need. Think of it as keeping a balloon afloat, except it's a sock, and you are hitting it with pillows. Oh - there is a third piece of equipment: alcohol.

So when Gavin created Wallet Card, I was in. Place a card you don't mind ruining in your wallet. Take it out from time to time and snap a picture with it. Pick a card that makes you smile when you see it. I didn't completely follow the last one, but I picked a card that I won't mind seeing for 365 days.

Yup. A bright yellow '91 Fleer of Robin Ventura. My wallet is brand new and black, so the contrast is pretty remarkable. I'm fortunate that the card j-u-s-t fits where I keep my debit card, so it will be getting a lot of wear and tear as I pull that out. I hope I also get some looks and comments from people if they see it. Play ball!

2014 Blog of the year. Well....sort of.

Each year for the past three, Wes, from the awesome (and temporarily retried) Jaybarkerfan's Junk, would run a contest to determine the blog of the year. Each of those three years, the winning blog was Night Owl Cards. It was pretty much a given he would win each year. Greg owns the Jules Rimet Cup of blogging.

NY newspaper workers sure do party weird.

Prior to Wes taking a break, I had planned to run a contest for the blog of the year. I just didn't think it would become front and center like it is. "TWO contests for blog of the year" you say? Let me explain.

For every McDonalds, Delta, Coca-Cola and Microsoft, there is a Burger King, United, Pepsi and Oracle. Someone has to be in second best. When you look back on the past years of Wes' votes, second best of each year was Wrigley Wax (2011), $30 a Week and Dime Boxes (2012) and Dime Boxes (2013). Each of them was close, but no cigar in winning the prize and the award. So I had decided, back in the summer of 2014, that I would run "The 2nd Best Blog of the Year" award.

I was going to run the 2nd best blog contest with the exact same rules that Wes had, but with one simple change: Night Owl Cards was not eligible. So even though this is the only blog of the year contest (to my knowledge), Night Owl is still ineligible. Sorry Greg, you win the 2014 best blog of the year award by default because frankly, you've earned it. So you cannot get this award. Otherwise, let's review the rest of the rules.

Each reader may nominate one blog. It cannot be their own and it cannot be 2x3 Heroes. You cannot nominate the blog of someone that nominated your blog, and you cannot nominate a blog that has already been nominated.

Nominations will be accepted until January 17th at midnight. The poll will be posted on or about January 18th. Voting will run until January 31st at midnight.

Wes would give out prizes to the winning blog, as well as second and third. The person that nominated the winning blog would receive a prize and he would throw the rest of the commenters into a random draw. I'm not sure if I can compete with the prizes Wes comes up with, but I will do the best I can.

Normally, I don't ask for a pimping, but I'll break the rules because I would love to get a lot or participants in the voting. Pimp away, and nominations start below!

 

So.....2015

I had planned to talk about my 2015 goals a couple days back, but then life got in the way and I never really put my thoughts into keyboard taps until now. And like many others have stated, these are goals and not resolutions. I suck at resolutions and don't bother setting myself up for failure. Instead, I set a goal and if you make it realistic, you have a chance to achieve it. And potential for a high five.

Don't leave me hanging, bro.

So what are my plans for 2015?

Organization - I have all my player projects in my Zistle account, along with my bunting, double play and throwback binders. I have my want lists for Sox teams set needs from the 50's through the 70's. I guess I should link to them on my blog, huh? Here: 50's, 60's, 70's - help is appreciated. The only thing I really need to do is catalog my 5000 count White Sox box. It's all sorted by year. I just need to get it into Zistle. This is a low priority goal, so I'm not going after it with a lot of gusto or drive.

Sets - I have enough on my Wants and A&G Wants to keep me busy. Most of them are really simple, and I just need to get over to JustCommons, Sportlots, COMC or wherever to finish them. That's the plan for a few of them. In regard to 2015, I will for sure build A&G. High chance I will build Stadium Club (depends if they keep it simple like this year or screw it up like Topps tends to do with parallels and inserts). Heritage and GQ are maybes this year. But flagship is out. I'll pick up a team set for ChiSox, but the only thing I may do is buy a boxed factory set. And that's a weak "may". But I plan to focus hard on my '64 set. I'm not going to finish it in 2015, but would love to get past the halfway point as commons are pretty inexpensive and the set has few high $$$ cards.

Player Projects - Nellie Fox has stalled, for the main reason is that it's an expensive player to collect. I'll keep hunting for the right Fox cards, though, to keep that one moving. Sherm Lollar should be done in 2015. I hope to get Aparicio to a halfway point. I just started Ted Wilks. I would like to get to 50% on him as well. He's very small and not too pricey.

Cost - Speaking of pricey, that is my undoing year after year. I spend money on what I shouldn't and not what I should. I need to get out of the pack rip mindset. It's SOOOOOOO tough. Ripping wax is fun. But in my desire to do that, I buy useless stuff, get useless cards and still have holes I want to fill. So I am going to work hard to tame that pack opening monkey on my back and not hit the card aisle in Walmart or Target every time I visit. Why drop $20 on a blaster, get 3 or 4 cards I want and have junk for the rest of the year? Pick $20 worth of cards at JustCommons or COMC and know that every card I open is a want.

Trades - I have no goal on trades. I want to keep on the focus of sending out cards whenever, and get Club PWE back up to a regular mailbox trip. I severely lacked in sending out 6 card envelopes and I apologize.

Blog - No goal here either. Number of followers is fine. Number of post (about every other day) is fine. I like numbers, but only for the fun of pulling them apart. Having a lot of readers or followers is not so important. Followers not make one great.

Use my words, you will not.

I do need to get my attention to my 1964 blog. I don't post there on a regular enough schedule. I have enough cards that I could do two post a week and almost make it to the end of the year (104 posts). So that is a higher priority goal - post at least twice a week about my 1964 set. If I get my set to the halfway point like my goal is, I could stop collecting it in 2016 and still have enough to post. I linked it at the top - pay me a visit!

Collection - I will continue to just have fun with my cards. That is the primary goal like it was last year. Though I plan to get more into TTM autographs. Why not use all the generous cards sent by you people to get autographs of current and former White Sox players? In that vain, I am starting a collection called "2005". It just so happens next year is 10 years since the Sox World Series championship. I want to have an autograph from each player on that team. In my collection, I currently have 7. I am basing the 2005 collection on the list this person posted on another forum. Though, I may ignore a couple names there. I wish the World Series trophy was like the Holy Grail and they engraved the player's names on the thing.

Ok - that's all. All except a theme song for the year. How about this?

A look back on 2014

With 2015 right around the corner, and all the blogs showing the best cards, best sets, worst inserts, blah blah blah out there, I'd like to take a little look see at what I had planned for 2014 and see how well the year turned out for me. I made some not so lofty goals, because I felt it was far more important to have fun instead of putting unneeded pressure on myself trying to complete something that may be out of reach.

First though, let's take a quick glance at the goods - the best cards obtained during the year. If I had to look back and pick the best three cards I added to my collection, I will need to give the nod to these three:

From a group break run by Chris over at Nacho Grande, I lucked out by not only getting my White Sox, but securing this ùber rare Abreu diecut from one of the mini boxes. While prices on this card has been dropping over the months, there was never a plan for me to sell it. It's a fine addition to my throwbacks binder.

Certainly not a pull from me, this sweet relic card was a gift from the super insane (in a nice way) Wes from Jaybarkerfan. For a nerd like me, who gets a chance to play Star Wars dress up, I still geek out on the galaxy far, far away.

I was going to type that the three cards are in no particular order, but who am I kidding. Top pull from 2014 was this beauty I yanked from my LCS. Buy back auto of the best hockey player of all time. I think I was grinning for a week after this hit. Someone at my LCS wants me to sell it to him. Yeah - that's not happening.

Now, I like to look at the most popular posts for the year. The five most visited, in regard to page views:
1 - "I Walked Alone", discussing a visit to a card show in November. At almost 1200 views, I am pretty sure I am somehow stealing views from the video linked in the post.

2 - "Happy Birthday to Me", my 2nd anniversary post. Contests certainly draw page views, and 430 views made it popular.

3 - "Blogger Meet-up", a recap of DimeBox Nick and I hooking up at the Orland card show in February. Over 360 page views. I think the picture of an entire box of '75 minis made Night Owl visit the page at least 200 times alone.

4 - "Who gets post mail?", a post covering 6 different envelopes from 6 readers who sent me some great cards. I'm not sure what drove this post to 280 views, but it must have been interesting.

5 - "Card show visit", talking about a solo trip to the Orland show, with a side visit to Winston's for the greatest Irish soda bread anywhere. 225 page views on this post. There were some sweet vintage on the page, so I think that helped.

Personally, my favorite post with average page views concerned a multi-blogger trade I was a part of. Though my sad attempt as being Dr. Seuss was a close 2nd.

Ok - so that quickly recaps the big additions to my collection. So let's go into the way back machine, take a gander at the goals I had for this year and see how I felt I did.

Trades - I had put a goal of about 26 trades into my plans. I really didn't keep track, plus I less "make trades" and more "send out stuff to people". If I was to take a guess, I would say I fell short of the goal. However, to me, the idea of a trade is to get cards into the hands of people, and I did a lot of that, so I am going to say I did a decent job with this goal.

Collection - I had put goals to get specific binders to specific numbers. I WAY shot low, because all but one of those I beat by mid year. I set my goal for double play cards to 450 - I am at 779. My bunting goal was 250 - I hit 791. Throwbacks were going to get to 300 - right now I am at 583. And my Ben Petrick collections was going to be 90 - I missed that, currently having just 68. However, I had a Sportlots order to place which contains 14 Petrick cards so that gap will be closed in a couple weeks.

Organization - Organization was a huge goal, and I nailed that one. I have a fantastic grasp on what I have to keep, what I have to give away, and what I would like to add. Once I got my Zistle account moving with the initial card recording, everything flowed well. I have yet to add all my White Sox cards. I would like to do that, but it's low on my priority list.

Sets - This was the loftiest of all the goals, It's also the goal I really should have kept track of. I can't say if I knocked off 15 sets, because I kept adding sets to the lists. I think I completed 8 or 9 sets. I am also sooooooooo very close to a couple others. Feel free to click on my Wants and A&G Wants links at the top if you can help me out.

Blog - I didn't care about adding followers or readers. Thanks if you do both. Just know that numbers don't matter to me. I made a few changes to the links at the top of the blog, and along the side. I will keep tweaking as needed. I'll continue to write in a fun way, hopefully not bore you to death and maybe post a cool picture or two.

Is this one cool picture or two?

Tomorrow, we'll look to the future.