Gooooaaaaallllssss!

Like a lot of American sports fans this summer, I am suddenly and thoroughly invested in soccer.

Last night's match between Argentina and Cape Verde was one of those rare sporting events where the losing team won more than the winners, if that makes sense. Against Lionel Messi and the defending World Cup champions, a tiny island nation with a population roughly the same as Sacramento nearly pulled off the impossible. I kept thinking it's gonna suck when Cape Verde lose this game on penalty kicks ... and we were almost there. 

I mean... look at this goal. Did Beckham ever bend it like that in a knockout match?? (he did.. kinda)

Anyway... you're probably not interested in those types of goals. And I'll have plenty of time to talk about soccer at this afternoon's 4th of July picnic, every time the in-laws mention politics.

We are officially in the second half of 2026 and I wanted to take a quick look back at my New Year's collecting goals. The initial post wasn't as clear about my objectives as I remembered, but the main three are:

• set building, team PCs, and vintage

My set building projects are a little more daunting than I'd expected. I added 2026 Topps to the list, and Series 1 is almost complete. I'm not quite ready to publish an updated wantlist, as I do expect to find some needs at the card shop in CT. However, thanks to my Sportlots order finally arriving, I am nearly done with my flagship Upper Deck hockey base set project. Not counting upgrades, I'm less than 20 cards away from completing every set so far:

		Upper Deck Hockey
year	card #	player	status
2016-17	323	Kris Russell	incoming (SL)
2017-18	320	Connor McDavid	incoming (eBay)
2017-18	422	Daniel Sedin	incoming (SL)
2019-20	354	Brian Dumoulin	incoming (TCDB)
2019-20	392	Craig Smith	incoming (TCDB)
2020-21	52	Oliver Bjorkstrand		upgrade
2020-21	528	Carl Soderberg	incoming (TCDB)	upgrade
2020-21	549	Marc Staal	incoming (TCDB)
2020-21	560	Alexander Wennberg		upgrade
2020-21	564	Olli Maatta		upgrade
2020-21	626	Ryan McDonagh		upgrade
2020-21	649	Trevor van Riemsdyk	incoming (TCDB)
2020-21	658	Patrick Kane AS	incoming (TCDB)
2020-21	669	Braden Holtby AS		upgrade
2020-21	677	Leon Draisaitl AS	incoming (TCDB)
2021-22	58	Miro Heiskanen		upgrade
2021-22	63	Tyler Seguin		upgrade
2021-22	128	Evgenii Dadonov		upgrade
2021-22	188	John Carlson		upgrade
2022-23	511	Patrik Nemeth
2022-23	515	Nick Foligno
2022-23	528	Antti Raanta
2022-23	552	Dominik Kubalik
2022-23	569	Filip Gustavsson	incoming (SL)
2022-23	571	Jacob Middleton
2022-23	572	Alex Goligoski
2022-23	592	Jaroslav Halak	incoming (TCDB)
2022-23	593	Ryan Carpenter	incoming (TCDB)
2022-23	596	Ryan Lindgren	incoming (TCDB)
2022-23	600	Tyler Motte
2022-23	609	Chad Ruhwedel
2022-23	628	Ilya Samsonov
2022-23	652	Axel Jonsson-Fjallby
2022-23	699	Tkachuk/Niederreiter CL	incoming (SL)
2023-24	511	James van Riemsdyk
2023-24	563	Steven Lorentz
2023-24	586	Scott Mayfield
2023-24	659	David Pastrnak AS
2023-24	666	Kirill Kaprizov AS
2023-24	688	Leon Draisaitl AS
2024-25	651	Rasmus Kupari		upgrade
2024-25	699	E Bouchard / Fox CL		upgrade
2025-26	149	Justin Faulk		upgrade
2025-26	267	Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen		upgrade

And I'm about as close to finishing the 1956 Topps set as Cape Verde was to beating Argentina. 

I still need to find a ... Bob

As for team PCs, I continue to chip away at the base card binders - while often finding room for one more page. I'm very close to having every Hartford Whalers base card from 1992 to 1998; my spreadsheet says I’ve got 29 cards left to track down but I probably have half of those in completed sets and need another copy for the Whalers collection.

Sidebar - you know how Topps made those SSP photo variations of Washington Nationals players on Expos day a few years back? 

Upper Deck has produced some Carolina Hurricanes base cards from Whalers night, but they haven't done one in a couple years. Which is a shame, because superstar winger Mikko Rantanen played all of 13 games in Raleigh before declining to sign an extension(whoops!*) and ending up in Dallas via trade.

**if Mikko chose Dallas over Carolina to avoid paying taxes, well... he also avoided winning another Cup lololol

Anyway .. one of those baker's dozen appearances for the Canes happened to be on Whalers night. I would pay $25 or more for an SP photo variation of Whaler-rantanen. Alas, UD didn't think to make one. 

I was working on a deal with a TCDB user who had several Whalers I needed. But he was so slow in responding that I had to put an Out of Office sign on my profile stating I'm pausing trades on the 3rd (This was the 29th btw) Though I made it clear that if we could come to an agreement by the end of the week (on a PWE swap) I'd be able to mail the cards. He declined the trade and said maye we could revisit later in the summer. He needed more than ten days to decide, I guess? 

The last goal of mine was to complete a 144-card collection of (mostly) vintage slabs. That has gone very well, though I'm still about 20 cards short of my goal. I've been saving for the Connecticut trip so I haven't added to this collection lately. 

Some of my newest additions

What are you working on this year? If you set collecting goals for 2026, how close are you to achieving them?

Thanks for reading!



~

p.s. ... did you hear the tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs got married? ;P