What is This Nonsense?

You can't, like, own a digital card, man. 

Imagine baseball cards. They're little rectangular pictures of baseball players with words on them. They're numbered and there's a whole lot of them. Fans of the sport and fans of collecting things like to collect them. Some people really obsess over them. People pay money for it.

Now, imagine that someone decides to create a digital version of baseball cards, where you can still collect things and tick off tiny boxes in your head and on your smartphone. You can still swap 'em with people, but it's just not the same. There's this weird emptiness about it, because you can't really touch the things and they're just pixels on a screen created by computer programming logic. But people pay money for it anyway!

Now, and here's where the mind really starts to warp and contort -- imagine that someone decides to create physical versions of these digital intangible fake baseball cards. Well, we can't hook up tiny printers to phones (I mean, we can but it's just not practical for everyone), so the next best thing is introduced. A baseball card set based on a smartphone app game based on baseball cards.

In my more than eight years with this blog, this is by far the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. Actually, come to think of it -- in my forty years of life, this is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard of.

Now, the only thing that keeps me from flying across the country and burning Night Owl's house down for sending me a physical-digital-physical baseball card is that it's still from a set that contains Cardinals, so I probably have to put the stupid thing in a binder along with other stupid things from said set. That, and, of course, he sent some other great cards along with it. I mean, feel free to send me all the BUNT cards and 1990 Pro Set (not really) cards you want when you are sending along '69 Gibbys.

Speaking of dumb things I still need to collect, I've got a ways to go before I have the whole bedazzled Cardinals team of 2011. Seeing as how Carp is one of my priorities, though, it's nice to get ahold of this one.

Here's Stan, digitally altered. Panini's recent Diamond Kings sets have looked nice despite their lack of logos.

Night Owl was also kind enough to send me a few more needs from this year's Heritage set. Here's ol' Barto Big Sexy because, why not?