I did end up getting some cards for Christmas* - two megaboxes of Topps Heritage and a megabox of UD hockey. (Did I pick them out myself, pay for them, and wrap them? perhaps...)
*the only Christmas card I received from outside the family arrived yesterday. D's friends have sent photocards in the past but I guess they don't see a reason to send one here without her.
I don't know why I took a picture of the packs but not the cards. There wasn't anything great in here - I already had one of the Young Guns rookies and didn't pull any notable Devils or superstar inserts. Just slowly plugging away at the base set as I've been doing for 35 years with Upper Deck hockey.
One of my Goals For 2026 will be to fill in the missing years in my UD base set collection. I stopped after 2015-16 and didn't resume until 2022-23. There are probably some Extended sets I'm missing, too.
Topps Heritage might be the best value of all recent sports card sets. I got a huge stack of cards with shiny parallels, a couple inserts, and some SP's for less than the cost of a single megabox of Topps Chrome basketball. 272 of these, or 42 of these? Heritage all day!
This stack is going to keep me busy for a while. And so will this book my brother in law gifted me:
He also got me a compilation of sci-fi stories, which I will enjoy almost as much. And one single card:
This was a very cool surprise. I asked if he met Mike Eruzione, but he didn't - this was an eBay purchase. If you haven't seen Miracle I highly reccomend it - even if you're not a hockey fan.
Thanks for reading and Happy New Year! Here's to a less shitty 2026!! 🎉
Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you're having a happy holiday celebration with your families and not driving two hours to your in-laws like I'm doing. Can I still call them in-laws? I'm not married anymore ?:/
This is the first year that I'm in charge of Christmas, and I definitely spent a lot on my girls. Next year we'll be a bit more frugal. I also spent a little bit on myself, with some high-end singles that I'll show off soon.
And there's at least one unwrapped sports card gift for me...
I spied a Topps Holiday ornament while shopping for my daughters and thought it would be a nice capper to the Advent calendar. Little did I know how badly I'd need a proper finale. Yeesh.
Inside this decorative ball (which was far too heavy to stay on my tree) is a tray holding 52 cards:
I'll add the base singles together with my calendar haul and recap everything this weekend. Meanwhile, here are the ornament exclusive parallels:
The blue ones look better IMO. Nice to get a Bregman even though he's definitely not coming back to Boston (not that we need him) I might ship the Machado out to Fuji once I open the rest of my Christmas cards.
There were no Nice List inserts (good, I'm tired of them) nor any other insert, but there was a card flipped over in the pack:
Hmm, I wonder why this was .... oooohhh
Holiday image variation of last year's big rookie free agent!!! This has got to be a $15-20 card, no?
No. Not at all. It's basically a common. Shouldn't the base Sasaki RC sell for $2+??
I am woefully out of touch with card values. Which is fine; I only need to know them when buying graded vintage anyhow. The Advent calendar and the Ornament were fun to open and that's what matters.
Did you open any sports card packs or boxes this Christmas? Did you receive them as gifts, or did you buy them yourself (like I did)?
We've reached the end of the Topps Holiday Advent calendar. Here's door #24 (shoutout Kiefer Sutherland.)
What grand finale do the fine folks at Fanatics have in store for us? I've heard the last pack is an original from years past....
...and, yeh... that it is.
Uh-oh...
Oh great, it's my least favorite Topps set ever. This came out when I was nine years old, and as much as I loved baseball I never even bothered to finish the complete set. Four years ago, when my mom moved out of my childhood home, I found a stack of bent 9-pocket pages with 1989 Topps singles sporadically inside, as if I'd completed 25% of the set, realized it sucked, and then threw the pages in the closet without a binder to protect them.
I'm honestly amazed that I continued to collect baseball cards after this year.
Welp, let's get this over with.
Here are the highlights, and I only added Henke to fill in the six-pack since the rest of the cards were absolute no-names (Mark Grant? Jose Cecena?) There was a broken stick of gum in the pack, and it stained the back of the Galarraga card. I'd rather have another stamped buyback from 2024. What a lousy end to the Advent calendar.
I've got one more Topps Holiday product to open tomorrow. Hopefully that will wash the stink off this pack (no offense to Hawk, Ryno, and Sweet Lou)
It's the penultimate post and pack of the Topps Holiday Advent Calendar. Today we're opening door #23 -- shoutout to Don Mattingly, Ryne Sandberg, and anyone who wore this number because it was randomly assigned to them, or because they were drafted #23 overall, or because they were born on the 23rd -- and NOT because they were trying to be Like Mike.
I complain about the sameness of these 5-card packs, but I have a feeling I'll miss them in a couple days.
Nothing average about these two Dodgers though. Nice to pull the Ohtani base card to go with those Nice List inserts. And speaking of -- how the heck did Matt Chapman post 7 WAR? Was it all defense?
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I've got some more space to fill, so I thought I'd share my first impressions of dating apps. After a few days of research I downloaded Hinge, which appeared to be a better option than Tinder (fewer bots, more mature users looking for more than a hookup) Match sounds like a good option as well, but I'm sticking that in my back pocket until I get the hang of this.
Set up was pretty basic - build profile, upload pics, share some things about yourself, choose your preferences (age, proximity, ethnicity, relationship goals, and one or two others) Once that's done you scroll through photos and click on the ones you like. You can also click 'like' on someone's prompt answer, or other descriptions. (I spent a like on someone who said a certain song by The Cure makes her cry.)
A few days in, and I had a couple 'likes' on my profile. Figured I might sign up for the full version after the New Year - if there's enough interest out there. But the full version costs money, and you can't see anything about the people who ‘like’ you unless you have the full version. That's frustrating, but understandable I suppose.
Yesterday was even more frustrating. There's this 'standouts' tab that's supposed to show you the best potential matches based on your preferences. The algorithm sent me a woman about my age who lives one town over from me. Normally I can decide within a second if I find them appealing in any way, but I was stuck on this one for a while. Which I soon realized was because she was right on my level - and because her profile didn't give me much to go on other than a love of tacos.
Eventually I will have to leave comments for someone I'm interested in, and I've really got no idea what to say. But! I could ask this gal for her favorite taco spot in town. I'm very familiar with said town and at least two taco joints.. perhaps that's how one eventually ends up on a date.
Except.. and this is the dumbest thing ever to a widowed fortysomething who hasn't dated in 20 years.. I couldn't message her because she was on the stupid 'standout' list. I couldn't click ‘like’ on any of her pics. I couldn't comment or bookmark or anything. The only thing I could have done was send her a (virtual) rose.
And roses cost money. Not just a buck or two either. Minimum of three for $11.99.
Sigh…too much to think about. I’ll have to set it aside until after Christmas.
For now, here's one of the two Sportlots orders I was still waiting on. Arrived in my mailbox today:
Yep, another aggressively off-center single. (The mystery Whaler is Jordy Douglas, btw.) I finally added Hillary Knight to my Women on Cards collection. Notice the Boston Fleet's logo, clearly a nod to the Whale.
Sportlots had several Sophie Cunningham cards but this was the only one available at the low common price of 20 cents. That's a much better investment than a virtual rose.
Hope you'll join me tomorrow for the Advent calendar finale. It'll be a short post, I promise :)
We’re back for the final three days of the Topps Holiday Advent Calendar. It's day number 22 - shoutout to Jordin Tootoo who wore number two-two .. but unforunately retired long before 2022.
It's another five-card pack, but this one is above standard:
Another Aaron Judge Nice List insert, and a Plaid Parallel of the James Wood RC. Not bad at all!
I got cards in the mail again today, though I was expecting these. One of my three Sportlots orders arrived and, well, .. I really wish I didn't have to buy singles on Sportlots anymore.
I'm still trying to fill out my Red Sox binders. 1980s team sets aren't quite complete, so I paid $1.60 for these eight cards:
And my 1970s Sox singles are really sparse, so I spent another $1.60 on two that were listed as "NM"
Ugh... nope. Not NM, not even close. I can accept vintage cards that aren't 50/50, but anything over 80/20 messes with my OCD. The '77 Doyle is centered well enough on the back but the front is no bueno. Koonce is 100/0 on both sides - and that one was $1.40.
One of my New Year's resolutions will be to trade on TCDB again - so that I don't pay actual money for poorly centered '70s-'80s singles - since vintage cards are rarely sold at card shows anymore :/
