Owls and Otters, Birds and Snakes

Trade time with Night Owl Cards. Yeah, we've seen this before.

We're approaching the last dozen or so regular season games of the baseball season, which means that it's time to be shocked about how fast summer flew by. You could be a little bit sad, too, or you could be so excited about football that you're ready to leave the mostly quiet din of leisurely baseball behind. If you're me, however, you're a lot sad about summer fading away and you also realize that you've got piles of things laying about your home that you need to get in their proper places.

So here's another hurried trade post, this time courtesy of frequent flyer Night Owl. Night Owl's Dodgers have all but clinched their division, by the way, with the Cardinals stuck in a three-way death battle to the end where the two losers will probably get a second chance to claw their way into the playoffs. He sent over some Allen & Ginter goodies and some Cardinals goodies because he's good at what he does.

Night Owl is a fan of minis, especially of the 1975 Topps variety. Actually, he's made it clear on plenty of occasions that all other minis are clearly inferior to this little test issue back from the mid-'70s. I'm happy to receive one of his extras, a John Denny rookie that's plastered with some other guys.

The team collector's dilemma: do I add this to my Cardinals binder shelf (I'm just going to call it a shelf from now on), knowing that there's no indication of Beltran's status with St. Louis anywhere on this card. I guess I'll just say yes and pretend I have a rock solid criteria for these things, where international/non-MLB uniform cards of a player that was under contract during the year of issue will belong with that player's MLB team. Sure. Why not?

Finally, here's a goldie version of the Stan Musial Chasing History insert from Series 1. I think it was Series 1? When does Topps Update come out this year? I haven't bought a ton of cards lately.