Disclaimer: This piece is pretty long. I learned some things in the 48 hours after writing it (and then some more several months later) that made me add a section to the bottom that makes it a bit more definitive in its negativity, but I think it’s still worth reading through, top to bottom, to… Read More Not Fun Trading: I’m trying NBA Top Shot (update: I’m not trying anymore)
Last year, Topps did a yearlong thing mixing art and baseball cards called Project 2020. The concept was that 20 artists from across the art/fashion/culture spectrum would be assigned 20 classic cards from the Topps catalog, and each artist would put their own artistic spin on reimagining those cards, and the resulting 400 pieces of… Read More Topps Project 70: Déjà vu, but better
Watching the Apple TV smash hit comedy “Ted Lasso,” I was reminded a bit of the Pixar movie “Inside Out.” As I enjoyed the all-too-brief 10-episode first season, I started to see each of the people in the orbit of this fictional English football club as individual representations of very recognizable human emotions. There’s the… Read More “Ted Lasso” is my hero
I never had what anyone would call a large sports card collection. As a kid, I hung onto EVERYTHING, every single, every common, every dupe, and I put them in shoeboxes with cardboard dividers so the cards could stand up neat, rather than sloshing around the box in a pile. Of course, at one point,… Read More Blast from the Packs: Reminiscence Bites Vol. 1
When I was a young sports card collector, I didn’t really “get” the whole Donruss Diamond Kings thing. Diamond Kings was an insert in the Donruss baseball card sets with hand-drawn/painted images of some of the day’s most popular players. I always thought the drawings/paintings looked kinda lame, and the design of the cards was… Read More SportKings, Topps Gallery, and Panini Diamond Kings: Sports cards as art
I haven’t followed baseball all that closely the last several years, but for me there’s nothing quite like the time when the first baseball card sets of a season hit store shelves. There’s an excitement and a freshness that comes with a new baseball season that seems to exceed the excitement and freshness of all… Read More 2021 Topps baseball series 1: A base set to beat all base sets
The weirdest thing to me about the modern sports card collecting industry, after having awakened from a 25-year slumber of sorts, is finding that an Italian sticker company previously unknown to the vast majority of American collectors had snuck in and taken over the hobby. I remember reading that Panini (like the sandwich?) had signed… Read More I hate/love Panini: A two-sided essay on the current king of sports cards
The number one thing to understand about the sports card collecting hobby at this moment in time is that it’s very difficult to find packs and boxes on the shelves at your normal big-box retail spots, such as Walmart and Target. Anecdotal evidence from across the Internet suggests that stores across the country are haunted… Read More Blast From the Packs: 2020-21 Upper Deck Artifacts Hockey
I wasn’t a pro wrestling fan as a little kid, but at some point in 1997 (I was 15ish), I was at my friend Casey’s house playing the newly released Nintendo 64 game WCW vs. nWo: World Tour. That was and is an absolutely amazing wrestling game to play with friends. We had so much… Read More Blast From the Packs: 2020 WWE Topps Finest
Topps is a pretty old company, but among its trading card manufacturing peers, it’s arguably the one with its finger most firmly on the pulse of the nation. Producing timely sets of cards for sports leagues, getting the first cards of rookie players in their new pro uniforms, or of traded players in their new… Read More Bernie mittens, #gamestonk, Topps and the zeitgeist
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