I wrote a long thing here about some YouTube videos posted about something I said last week, but I hated every bit of it and decided instead to promote my friend’s book. We’ll talk about the drama on Surface Issues later this week.

Graig Miller of Midlife Sports Cards has written a book of card collecting stories, and I can’t wait to get my hands on mine. Graig talked about it a bit on the most recent Surface Issues.

You can buy your own here.

🎙️On the Pod

T-Pott joined me on This Week In Sports Cards to discuss his insane card grading video from last week.

If you haven’t already seen his video, it’s here:

🎁 My Pickup Of The Week

I’ll have a video out soon about the below card and another:

And a reminder:

A viewer named George sent me a binder and included his favorite card, autographed by him. He is hoping more viewers will autograph their favorite cards and mail them to me for the binder.

If you want to participate:

Mike JWH

PO Box 172

Topsham, ME

04086

Please include your YouTube commenter name if you want.

👻 Brief Horror Movie Reviews of the Week

I’ve seen a bunch since I last published:

Send Help: 4 stars — fun one I saw in theaters

mother!: 4.5 stars — crazy that I’d never really heard of this movie and it was this good

Life: 5 stars! — another 2017 horror movie with a great cast that I’d never heard of. How is it possible for these movies to be this good and I’d never heard of them?

Scream 6: 3 stars — I needed to re-watch this because I was going to see…

Scream 7: 4 stars — I know the reviews are really bad on this one, but I liked it a ton. The ending killer reveal was lame, but I feel like they almost always are.

🔗 Links:

These can be found every weekday in Hobby Headlines!

I don’t enjoy selling cards, but in the fall decided I had to pare down my collection in various ways once I got it into my new office. I knew that I didn’t want to sell them one by one and ship them each myself, so I needed to figure out what to do.

I first had to decide what should go. I knew I wanted to keep my focus on a few key things:

• Iconic cards

• HOF rookie autographs (mostly baseball)

• Red Sox cards, autos, and refractors

• A small number of Celtics cards

• A few key sets I’m collecting

• Ted Williams playing days cards

• Pedro Martinez rookie and pre-rookie cards

• Ken Griffey Jr rookie cards

This gave me a place to start. I set out to sell off a ton of slabs and singles that had decent values.

A surprisingly easy decision was to sell off all but two of my Yaz slabs. I still want the cards, but I don’t need them all graded. So I sold (and am selling) the rest of them through eBay via my COMC store.

The higher-value items went to Collector Investor Auctions, and I’m sending a few more in March.

Don’t worry, I still have the vast, vast majority of my cards.

Plus now I have some cash to buy some cards that are more meaningful to me. And the first batch arrives this week for mail day.

Football Card Hall of Fame

Ray From Philly is wrapping up voting on the Football Card Hall of Fame this week and I wanted to encourage you to go and vote!

🗣️ YouTube Comment Of The Week

Such a good point by Allon.

🎙️On the Pod

On Monday morning my conversation with Jeremy Donson will drop on both podcast and YouTube.

Graig did his second podcast-only episode with Ash of Legacy Cards:

MidLife Card Talk #2- With Ash of Legacy Cardz

Sports Card Clubhouse · Episode

open.spotify.com/episode/2pYRroFOcvV6eb0LRCHm7x?si=t8uzLAiVRv2mnXMlXdxJoA

🎬 Channel Highlights From the Past Week

I figured I’d organize these all in one video:

And Attic Find Friday made a triumphant return:

🎁 My Pickup Of The Week

I have some huge mail day videos coming up! I don’t want to spoil any of the big items, but here’s one that’s sitting in my PO Box:

Speaking of my PO box, a viewer named George sent me a binder and included his favorite card, autographed by him. He is hoping more viewers will autograph their favorite cards and mail them to me for the binder.

If you want to participate:

Mike JWH

PO Box 172

Topsham, ME

04086

Please include your YouTube commenter name if you want.

👻 Brief Horror Movie Review of the Week

I've already watched eight in one month! Here are the latest:

The Grey (3.5/5 stars)

The Ring (4/5 stars)

The Thing (the original from 1982, starring former pro baseball player Kurt Russell) (4/5 stars)

I decided to buy the poster below and watch the top 100 horror movies listed on it:

The poster is neat because each of the boxes you see starts out in black and white, and then when you watch the movie you scratch it off and it turns into the beautiful design you see above.

I have a nice headstart because I’ve watched 18 of the 100 in the past year.

🔗 Links:

As mentioned before, links are now over at Hobby Headlines every weekday. More than 300 people have subscribed!

Western NY Cards has been doing these funny short videos, and this one about Topps making decisions hit hard:

Twitter tweet

Of course, this one follows the one about the at-home repack experience:

Twitter tweet

Some Cards I’m Auctioning

I decided to auction a few of cards off on eBay through COMC. Here they are, with a handful more coming in a week or two:

• 2022 Panini Flawless Premium Ink 4/10 Pedro Martinez #PI-PM Auto HOF

• 2022 Topps Inception Rookie and Emerging Stars Orange 11/25 Jarren Duran Auto RC

• 2016 Panini Flawless Hall of Fame Auto 12/15 Carl Yastrzemski #HOF-CY HOF

🗣️ YouTube Comment Of The Week

After Topps discovered that their mega boxes promised a certain chase card, they sent out emails saying it was an error and those chase cards were not in those boxes.

That led to this comment:

🎙️On the Pod

I’ve settled into a nice rhythm in my This Week In Sports Cards podcast, and this week I featured a good conversation with T-Pott:

🎬 Channel Highlights From the Past Week

I had my biggest mail day ever:

I reacted to Ryan Hoge’s PSA podcast announcements:

And I brought back the ACE 100 series!

🎁 My Pickup Of The Week

For the first time in a while, I bought nothing.

👻 Brief Horror Movie Reviews of the Week

I went to see Primate, which I was skeptical of and boy was I wrong. What a fantastic horror movie. I just have to ask: why wasn’t there any blood in the pool?

4.5 out of 5 stars

I also watched Misery and was impressed at how well it’s held up for 36 years.

4.5 out of 5 stars

🔗 Links:

As mentioned last week, I’m now doing a Hobby Headlines newsletter that comes out every weekday and aims to keep you informed on hobby topics in under two minutes per day.

A year ago I published my 2025 hobby predictions, and now is a great time to review and assess them.

I’m not doing a traditional 2026 predictions post or video*, despite the popularity, because it would be pretty repetitive: more corporate consolidation, more ways for the big companies to get your money and you to end up with little, and more scams.

Let’s look at my 2025 predictions one by one:

• A newsletter network: did not come true, as far as I know. -1 point

• A sports card YouTube network: did come true, sort of. Sports Cards Nonsense sprouted up. And despite me saying I would not be a part of one, I did start one with Graig of Midlife Cards and Adam of Splendid Sports. Neither is quite what I described, but they both fit. +1 point

• Hobby ESPN show: this did not happen, but I do think we’re closer today than we were a year ago. -1 point

• One major flipper will disappear from YouTube: this is a tough one to assess. I’m not familiar with all of them, and am not sure if any stopped. Sports Card Radio did drop off of YouTube, but they’re not flippers the way I intended. 0 points

• No migration from Twitter to Bluesky: this is difficult to believe now, but at this time a year ago everyone was saying the migration was in full force. I went against the grain and said it wouldn’t happen. Can I arbitrarily assign myself 10 points here? +1 point

• Mantel will become more prevalent: this did happen, through their hobby awards they gave out as well as their partnership with Cllct and Yahoo. +1 point

• PSA will continue to Amazonify themselves: this very much did happen. Here’s what I wrote then: “While I’m not sure that their goal at this point is to gain more market share in grading cards, they can definitely grow their business through their collaborations with eBay, and likely introduce more partnerships elsewhere. The end goal is for you, the card collector/seller, to more easily buy cards, grade them, and sell them, from start to beginning. And for PSA to make more revenue from the entire process.” Pretty accurate. +1 point

• Collectors (PSA & SGC’s parent company) will start making changes at SGC: again, this very much happened. A lot of people didn’t like or believe this prediction, but it was year two of the merger and it seemed obvious to me. +1 point

• Smaller graders, specifically HGA, would go out of business: another tough one to assess, but HGA was just purchased after being inactive for over a year. Their new parent company? Not someone anyone has heard of, and they don’t seem to have existed much prior. 0 points

• PSA will not move to AI/ML in a meaningful way: as far as we know, they haven’t changed anything on this front. +1 point

• Beckett will take a big swing at PSA: this one is hilarious now. -1 point

• More corporate consolidation, like Collectors buying SGC in 2024: yeah, that’s more like it. +1 point

• Gambling will continue to be a big problem: yes, yes, yes. +1 point

• There won’t be more calls for regulation because too many of the bigger people are profiting too much from it: yes, yes yes. +1 point

• Fanatics will continue to increase production & prices, and because of the aforementioned gambling problem, people will continue to buy it: is this two predictions? They both came true. +2 points

Results:

• 3 wrong

• 2 undetermined

• 11 correct

Net: 8 points

This is so easy when you make semi-vague predictions and then audit yourself!

*I will be talking about 2026 with Chris Sewall on Sports Card Clubhouse, to be published probably Monday

This Is Some Great Research

Instagram post

These Videos Really Spoke To Me

🎬 Upcoming Videos

Other than the typical ones, I have a fun one about a Carl Yastrzemski card.

🎙️On the Pod

Is Geoff Wilson Right About CGC?

Sports Card Clubhouse · Episode

open.spotify.com/episode/4nCAhbHf0Nh4xXTFsDFjVp?si=Ee7vospASXq1h2GEAxTO5w

🎬 Channel Highlights From the Past Week

My top 25 cards:

And a fun new Attic Find Friday:

🎁 My Pickup Of The Week

I had a massive, massive week of buying cards. My upcoming mail day videos are going to be so fun. Here’s a teaser:

👻 Brief Horror Movie Review of the Week

I went into my vacation week having watched 49 horror movies against my meaningless goal of 52 for the year.

To get me there, I ended up watching:

Annihilation (3.5 stars) — slow burn but I liked it a lot.

The Plague (4 stars) — really enjoyed this way more than I expected to!

The Plague: Anarchy (3.5 stars) — again, enjoyed it way more than expected

And it wouldn’t be a good staycation without some classics:

Die Hard (4.5 stars)

Home Alone 2 (3.5 stars)

Plus I watched:

Bugonia (3 stars) — really enjoyable until the weird end

Wake Up Dead Man (3.5 stars) — a lesser but still very enjoyable Knives Out mystery

Then, after 2026 started, I watched these:

The Housemaid (4 stars) — one of the best thriller books I’ve ever read, turned into a movie starring Sydney Sweeney? Yes please!

The Purge: Election year (3.5 stars)

The First Purge (3 stars)

Did I watch too many movies on my vacation? No such thing.

My Favorite Horror Movies I Watched In 2025

These are the 8 horror movies I watched that I rated 4.5 stars or better:

• Speak No Evil (5 stars)

• Companion (4.5 stars)

• 28 Weeks Later (4.5 stars)

• Eden Lake (4.5 stars)

• Bring Her Back (4.5 stars)

• Saw (the original) (4.5 stars)

• World War Z (4.5 stars)

• 30 Days of Night (4.5 stars)

This fall I did an Attic Find Friday video about a 1921 Koester Babe Ruth card:

That card just sold for big money. $190,650!

Farewell Patch Auto?

Viewer Jeromy writes:

“I’m watching the debut patch hype and had some thoughts. The debut patches are cool, but they are rare and big money for some prospects who may not pan out. Kershaw retiring got me thinking. What would be awesome is a “Farewell Patch” for veterans to wear on their last game and go into a card. Wouldn’t a 1/1 Big Papi have been sweet!”

I love this idea!

🗣️ YouTube Comment Of The Week

Go subscribe to Wax Pack Wisdom!

🎬 Upcoming Videos

I recorded my “top 25 cards” video over a week ago and still haven’t published it. I probably will this week.

🎙️On the Pod

Who better to discuss the recent PSA controversies than John Mangini?

Adam (Splendid Sports) has also built us a website! We aim to launch a new poll every week.

Go vote for best auction house while it’s active!

🎬 Channel Highlights From the Past Week

Whew, it’s been a crazy 4 weeks or so. Another video went viral:

(Yes, I consider 12,000 views viral in our niche.)

Attic Find Friday was fun too:

🎁 My Pickup Of The Week

I’ve been buying a bunch of smaller things. Here’s one of them, and I’ll explain in my weekly pickups video:

👻 Brief Horror Movie Review of the Week

I went to see Silent Night, Deadly Night on Saturday and enjoyed it more than I expected!

It wasn’t a typical slasher, where the main character was the killer and you knew it the whole movie. Pretty unique concept.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

🔗 Links:

The Hobby Spectrum, from my podcast with Jeremy Lee

The trading-card boom is back, and Gen Z is buying like crazy on eBay

WNBA cards grew three times faster than NBA on Whatnot in 2025

Global collectibles market reaches $100B

By now you’ve probably already seen it, but in case you missed it here is my video from Friday:

With over 22,000 views and going, it’s my second-highest published in 2025. The whole “scandal” — I’m adding quotation marks because I’m not sure it’s truly a scandal — has generated a lot of discussion, and for that I am thankful for the collector who brought it to light.

On Sunday night Nat Turner, the head of PSA’s parent company, started replying to randos on Twitter about it:

Twitter tweet

If, for some reason, that is truncated or the link is dead, here is a screenshot:

In his explanation for re-grading cards from a 9 to a 10 in which the submitter had already accepted offers from the PSA Partner Network for the 9s, he admits that PSA authenticates counterfeit cards sometimes.

Not a great look!

The explanation is as I expected, though. Systematic failure, which he says they’re working to close:

And when asked about further transparency:

Meanwhile, he’s poking fun at people who are joking about the controversy:

In related news, two card shops have halted PSA submissions:

As many have pointed out, it’s interesting that they mention cleaning on here. Some have speculated that they were actually banned from submitted to PSA because they were caught cleaning cards, but there’s no evidence of that. It’s possible that “cleaning” is simply a wipe-down service.

And the other:

I’ll be keeping a close eye on this.

🗣️ YouTube Comments Of The Week

I received hundreds of comments saying PSA had committed fraud and should be investigated by the DOJ. On the other end of the spectrum was this very reasonable comment:

My favorite angry comment was the guy who accused me of working for PSA:

Yes, they’re paying me to highlight all of their stupid mistakes. It’s a great use of their money.

🎬 Upcoming Videos

I’m caving and doing a video showcasing my top 50 cards.

🎙️On the Pod

The weekly Surface Issues episode seems to have resonated nicely:

And the day after announcing his new project on Sports Cards Live, Jeremy Lee joined me to discuss it in depth (and I discuss my results):

🎁 My Pickup Of The Week

Super-excited about this one!

👻 Brief Horror Movie Review of the Week

I finished my re-watch of Breaking Bad! So I watched As Above, So Below.

Really good concept, executed well, but got really weird at the end.

3 out of 5 stars.

🔗 Links:

'Kabuto King' looks to corner market on common Pokémon card

'Kabuto King' autographed card nets $51k in charity auction

Danville Police looking to return baseball card collection to rightful owner

Police look for thieves who stole Pokémon cards from Burbank shop

Ken Griffey Jr. collector sad to part with huge lot of iconic tickets

The “Golden Age” Collection of autographs that I promised I’d share here

I don’t use it here or on YouTube, but I believe, when used right, generative AI can be a valuable tool. eBay’s AI item descriptions, though, rarely ever provide value.

Take this example:

Count the errors! They’re not limited to my highlighted portion.

How does this happen?

eBay isn’t using an LLM that’s trained on sports card data. They’re actually just using the data the seller feeds it from the “Item Specifics” section. The example above is for an 1887 Allen & Ginter N28 Annie Oakley card, one I want very much:

The AI description appears to just be taking from this section, most of which I left out because it’s accurate and I wanted to focus on the mistakes.

The seller mistakenly entered Annie Oakley as a Major League Baseball player, and the description snagged that and ran with it. I’m no expert, but it seems to me like a good genAI model wouldn’t rely on sellers to enter correct information; it would be trained on a lot of data instead of one listing.

🗣️ YouTube Comment Of The Week

🎙️On the Pod

Graig and I are really hitting our stride with Surface Issues. Here’s our latest:

The Fallout From An INSANE Month In The Sports Card Hobby!!

Sports Card Clubhouse · Episode

open.spotify.com/episode/3pR77ZoNLLOeZXXY64Xk7j?si=zC9WYYc0R1eHjBaz1wmKqw

🎬 Channel Highlights From the Past Week

I reached 90,000 views for the month again, which is pretty neat. I’m on the cusp of 14,000 subscribers. Should I do a livestream later this month? I haven’t done one since January 5th!

This was a fun one:

This was a highlight, too:

Ron and I had been talking about doing that since summer. He’s such a great guy.

🎁 My Pickup Of The Week

Surprise! It’s another early Red Sox refractor!

👻 Brief Horror Movie Review of the Week

I’ve been watching so much Breaking Bad! I did watch Home Alone (4.5 stars) and Zootopia 2 (3.5 stars) with my family.

I had some more links I meant to include in this week’s Clearing the Bases, so I’m sharing them here.

The final playing-days Ken Griffey Jr. Mariners Superfractor sold at auction for $35,000 on eBay:

Top 100 Most Graded Sports Cards Over the Past 10 Years

Fanatics closes Florida facility, cutting 286. Here's what we know

1990 Upper Deck Heroes Reggie Jackson Signed, Inscribed "Babe Ruth / Mr. October" (#0714/2500) sold at auction for $12,539:

Check out this loose Manny Ramirez card in a PSA slab:

I include this because I wonder if sports cards are next: Kalshi, StockX partner on prediction markets for Labubu, Pokémon and sneakers

50% Off At My COMC Store!

My COMC store is already priced low, but for Black Friday Week I’m taking 50% off everything! (And I’ll even consider reasonable offers beyond that!)

🗣️ YouTube Comment Of The Week

On the video about an eBay scammer:

🎬 Upcoming Videos

I have the week off, so I’m hoping to work through my backlog a bit.

🎙️On the Pod

We made a change over at Sports Card Clubhouse. Instead of doing a weekly rotating Meet A Hobby Content Creator / So You Wanna Be A Card Dealer podcast, I’m going to interview someone each week about the week in sports cards.

Call it The Week In Sports Cards, if you will.

The first two have been very popular, starting with the conversation with T-Pott, and now NEO on Saturday:

It was pretty popular!

I will still interview an occasional dealer or content creator, but for the most part look for a more topical weekly podcast.

🎬 Channel Highlights From the Past Week

Crazy week in terms of big views on multiple videos. First, my consignment video with CIA was popular:

And then I asked: is COMC going out of business?

Then I covered yet another card scam:

🎁 My Pickup Of The Week

I had two pretty big pickups from CIA, but you’ll need to wait for my weekly pickups video to see those. Here I’ll show this one:

👻 Brief Horror Movie Review of the Week

I haven’t watched a horror movie in a couple weeks. I’ve been rewatching Breaking Bad. But with vacation for the next week, I expect to watch one or two.

For me, the last season of Game of Thrones ruined the entire series. Trevor, a viewer of the channel, didn’t mind it so much that he has amassed an impressive collection of GoT cards.

“Hannah Murray/Gilly Auto Cards - I have 21 of the 26 auto cards available. The 5 I am missing all come from the same set. You can see on the second row and part of the third row, inscribed autos. There were 16 of these inscription cards and I am missing 5.”

“Hannah Murray/Gilly rainbow - missing opal /25.”

“Red Sigil auto cards from the 2024 Legends of the Realm set. Missing the most valuable card, Emilia Clarke, which goes for $1,700 to $2,100 (previous sales). The interesting thing with this set is that even though it appears that the actors were instructed to sign in red ink (all other auto sets appear to be black/blue inks), a small number of actors signed the cards in both red and blue and a couple just in blue and so I've purchased both. I've kept an eye out for red versions of those just in blue but after a year, I still haven't seen any of those pop up...and yes, I purchased the Red Sigil auto card of Hannah Murray twice so I have one in both collections.”

“Red Sigil auto cards from the 2022 Complete Series Vol 2 set. I have all 18 cards in the set, actually 19 if you include the blue ink version of Jack Gleeson/King Joffrey.”

“I love collecting non-sports cards and gravitate towards Rittenhouse because of their on-card autos, cheaper hobby boxes and 2-4 autos per box.”

Have a cool collection you want to see featured here? Email me.

_{PRESENTED BY COLLECTOR INVESTOR AUCTIONS}

CIA, owned by The Texas Snowman Jeremy Donson and his business partner Chris Sewall, is the best auction house for collectors.

I consigned some cards with them for November, including the four 1964 Topps Giants seen below. Search for “junkwax” in the November auction search box to find all nine of my cards.

Check out the November CIA auction!

Print Runs

This Twitter account has some good analyses on print runs.

Here’s 2025 Topps Update:

Twitter tweet

And a look at buying 2024 Update and best value right now:

Twitter tweet

🗣️ YouTube Comment Of The Week

And regarding the following image:

🎙️On the Pod

Monday’s new podcast is another episode of Meet A Content Creator, and for this one I interviewed Nick Andrews of Boston Card Hunter on Instagram. Nick has some interesting stories and perspectives, and I think it was an interesting conversation.

Check out the podcast wherever you get your podcasts! It’ll be available a little after 9am ET Monday. The Sports Card Clubhouse podcast network can be found here on Spotify.

(It will be up on YouTube on Thursday.)

🎬 Channel Highlights From the Past Week

The highlight of my week was easy: recording a video with some of my favorite hobby people (plus Dan from Dan’s Vintage Baseball PC):

🎁 My Pickup Of The Week

My pickups video this week will feature some early-2000s Red Sox refractors and I’ll talk about a small collection I’ve started.

👻 Brief Horror Movie Review of the Week

None this week!

🔗 Links:

Collectors on Alert Help Recover Stolen Jackie Robinson Rookie Card

All in the Family: Toronto Father-Son Snare Big Dodgers Home Run Balls, Toronto Exec Grabs Bichette Homer

Going to the Shriners card show on Saturday made me realize something important:

Most card shows aren’t for me anymore.

And that’s okay!

I’ll talk about this in my video recap of the show, including the three cards I purchased, but my collection has become too focused for most card shows. And the more cards I buy, the fewer there are that I need that fit what I’m trying to do.

And then there’s the problem that exacerbates this, which is condition-sensitivity.

Throw in that most dealers have outrageous prices, and you have a recipe for failure.

So I’ll go to shows that large groups of friends are going to, such as:

• Shriners

• The National

• Strongsville

And I’d love to make it to a Philly show, and maybe a Dallas show in the future. As Baseball Collector Mike proved to me, the bbq in Texas is good enough reason for the trip.

_{PRESENTED BY COLLECTOR INVESTOR AUCTIONS}

CIA, owned by The Texas Snowman Jeremy Donson and his business partner Chris Sewall, is the best auction house for collectors.

I consigned some cards with them for November, including the four 1964 Topps Giants seen below. Search for “junkwax” in the November auction search box to find all nine of my cards.

Check out the November CIA auction!

Newsletter Update

🎙️On the Pod

Sports Card Clubhouse had a great week!

My conversation with Sooz (Twitter / Instagram) has been heavily watched and very well-received.

Surface Issues is really taking off, too. Here’s our latest, which will be available on YouTube later this week:

Organic vs Manufactured Scarcity- Is The Hobby's Opinion Evolving?

Sports Card Clubhouse · Episode

open.spotify.com/episode/7EBlIfll8K9rb3zqHriRs1?si=DXdjxMnDS8-8Ypu2vLMG7g

🎬 Channel Highlights From the Past Week

Attic Find Friday:

Quite a few people took issue with my claim that my PSA 7 Jeter looked as good as a PSA 10, saying my 7 must have some small flaws. To that, I would say that you missed the point.

I also cleared 90,000 views in October for the first time since May.

🎁 My Pickup Of The Week

I had three big pickups at the Shriners show that I’ll cover early in the week. But I’m having so much fun buying refractors of Red Sox players in the ‘90s and early-’00s.

Here’s one I got for $2.64 all-in:

👻 Brief Horror Movie Review of the Week

After watching Eden Lake recently, I stuck with the lake them and watched Bone Lake this weekend.

It was predictable, but I really enjoyed it.

3.5 out of 5 stars

🔗 Links:

As cards get more expensive, average collectors have power to fix it

More 1916 Newspaper Ads Reveal Distribution of Baseball Cards

Last week I posted this to Twitter:

Twitter tweet

It was pretty snarky! But it elicited a variety of responses that range from very possible to downright false, and then to conspiracy theories.

Several people said that SGC doesn’t sell well, which might be true in modern slabs and TCG, but is not true for vintage. We sometimes forget that our experiences are anecdotal, and are not the experiences of everyone. If you’re selling modern cards at card shows and can’t sell SGC slabs, that’s a very specific experience with those slabs that vintage dealers aren’t experiencing.

My less-obvious theories about why it sold for 44% less than it did two years ago:

• It was never a $7.2 million card in the first place

• People with money in the market for this card have speculated that it would have been crossed to PSA if the owner could have

  • Or potentially even asked PSA about crossing it

• The eye appeal movement of the last two years have made well-heeled collectors take more notice of the appearance of these cards

• There just aren’t a lot of people in the market for this card

What do you think?

Fun Collection

Thanks to Jumbo Jimbo for sending me this cool Facebook post:

Amazing Collection For Sale

The number 1 PSA registry set for the Chicago Cubs went up for sale at an auction house I’d never heard of, Donley Auctions.

From the listing:

“The objective is to hold EVERY Topps Chicago Cubs Card created AND have them ALL PSA Graded. This set is 92.6% complete and carries an overall grade of 8.773. Consists of total of 2014 cards with ONLY 159 needed for completion of the set is it stands today.”

Pretty neat!

🗣️ YouTube Comment Of The Week

Last week I posted that I was selling off some cards:

This comment made me laugh:

And then he followed it up on my next video:

🎙️On the Pod

I had a really interesting conversation with Max about being a dealer:

Graig and I talked about getting into modern cards:

And you can listen to our latest before it hits YouTube:

When Your Collection Needs A Reset: Selling & Changing Your Sports Card Collection

Sports Card Clubhouse · Episode

open.spotify.com/episode/4b5DtB1Y4Ubbzc8cX4fdZX?si=2MJIT1GpQmqOZIHlYW9iiA

👻 Brief Horror Movie Review of the Week

This week I watched Dead Mail, which had a good story told in an unusual way. I enjoyed it enough but quite frankly I regret spending the weekend before Halloween watching this.

3 out of 5 stars.

🔗 Links:

Gehrig ‘Luckiest Man’ Day Ticket Headed to Auction

Rookie card with rare Lew Alcindor signature sells for $97k

Michael Jordan rookie autographed at secret signing sells for record $2.7 million

Feds Accuse NorCal Man of Selling Bogus Willie Mays Items

GameStop CEO on Power Packs: ‘We can’t get enough inventory’

The math behind sports card repacks: Who makes money, who doesn’t and when it becomes a problem

Topps destroys additional debut patches worn by Cooper Flagg

What will sell for more? Cooper Flagg's debut jersey or rookie debut patch

For Canadian ex-major leaguers looking for their baseball cards, a Saskatoon man is their go-to source

On Sunday’s episode of Clearing the Bases I talked about the new Topps “Three Kings” cards and how tone deaf it is of Topps to focus only on the top 1% of collectors.

Here are some ideas presented by someone named JB on Twitter/X:

Twitter tweet

Will any of these ideas ever happen? No! Because they’d cost Fanatics too much money. The type of people who collect like this aren’t generating enough revenue for Topps to make this worth their while.

Graig and I talked about this on our Surface Issues podcast episode 5. (That link is for Spotify, but you should be able to find it wherever you get your podcasts.)

🗣️ YouTube Comment Of The Week

Regarding this card:

🎬 Upcoming Videos

Another hobby scam I’d never seen??

🎙️On the Pod

Releasing Monday morning is episode 1 of my new series, “Meet A Content Creator,” featuring a great conversation with Adam Gray. No link yet since it goes live at 6am, but go to Sports Card Clubhouse on your podcast provider and it should be there.

Also noteworthy:

• Adam and Dylan’s latest Turn Back the Clock episode is a great listen

• My “So You Want To Be A Dealer” episode with Chris Sewall is still going strong

• Graig from Midlife Cards also uploads his weekly Q&A as audio each week, and it’s always really good. Here’s his latest, on SGC grading consistency, collecting sealed wax, and more.

If you’re more of a YouTube person, our original podcasts air on the Sports Card Clubhouse network.

🎬 Channel Highlights From the Past Week

Man, that scam video killed it. 17,000+ views as of Sunday afternoon.

Another great Attic Find Friday, too:

🎁 My Pickup Of The Week

With a big laptop purchase and saving for the Shriners show in 3 weeks, my budget hasn’t afforded me anything new. I haven’t been to my post office box in a bit, though.

👻 Brief Horror Movie Review of the Week

I watched Strange Harvest Sunday morning. It’s a mockumentary found-footage horror film. It had a good feel to it, despite the mediocre acting. I enjoyed it but it was nothing special.

3 out of 5 stars.

Hi all. I thought it might be good to put out a newsletter issue with a few updates. I am occasionally asked what I’m doing this summer, and how my “break” is going.

First off, a recap:

• I took a break from this newsletter

• I took a break from Collectibles on SI

• I intended to cut back on my YouTube videos

The first two of those have worked out really nicely. And I have reduced the amount of time I put into YouTube, due to other priorities.

Health Update

Over the winter I talked about some challenges with my health. I wasn’t sure how to describe it, other than to say that I was struggling.

On May 27th, I said to my wife, “I’ve gained 40 pounds, I have no motivation, and I generally feel down all the time. Am I depressed?”

I had been depressed once before, when my foot injury ended my running “career.” But I knew that would end, and it was tied to something specific.

I had never just been depressed.

I’ve been very lucky with my mental health. This felt different. But my wife is very wise to these things.

“Have you been taking vitamin D?”

Last summer, my doctor told my I was severely deficient in vitamin D and told me to start taking 2,000 IUs per day. Great suggestion, had I remembered.

“Would that cause this?” I asked my wife.

“Probably!”

So the next day I took my vitamin D3 pill and suddenly had a lot of motivation. I took it every day after, and I got a lot done and lost 11 pounds in June.

Crazy, right?

My doctor agrees. She says some people have that reaction to it, but it’s unusual.

Maybe it’s the placebo effect. Maybe it’s just the time of year. Who knows?

I live in Maine, so we don’t get a ton of sun year-round. And let’s face it, I work in my basement and don’t go outside a lot during the day.

So while I’m not ready to be back doing weekly writing again, I do see the sunlight at the end of the tunnel.

Office / Hobby Room Update

I’ve been talking about it for a long time, but it’s finally becoming reality.

The office / hobby room.

We cleaned out a bedroom over the weekend. Next up:

• Paint that bedroom

• Move child 1 from their bedroom to newly-painted bedroom

• Paint child 1’s former bedroom

• Tear up carpet in that bedroom and put down new flooring? TBD

• Move in!

My goal is September to get all this done. It could be much, much sooner. Again, depending on motivation. Mine and my kid’s.

I can’t overstate how excited I am for this.

I’ve worked from home for over 5 years, and I’ve been YouTubing for 4 of those years. All from a small corner of my basement.

The sad thing is, I’m back in the office for work two days a week. That’s 90 minutes of drive time each of those days. This, of course, also challenges my productivity.

Buy My PSA 10 Shohei Ohtani Rookie!

I bought this raw from a Portland card show a couple of years ago. I paid $90 for it at the time, and I think the dealer had it priced wrong because when I got home I discovered that it was actually a $200-250 card.

I felt it had a chance at a 10, so I sent it to PSA. And voila:

I have a bunch of PSA 10 Shohei rookies, so I’m selling this one on eBay.

Auction ends Sunday night, July 7th.

Summer Schedule

• I’ll be making my first appearance on Jeremy Lee’s Sports Cards Live Saturday night around 10pm ET. Yes, that’s very late for me. I’m hoping I’ll be able to nap. I hope you can watch live! (If not, you can watch another time.)

• On Monday, July 7th I’ll be on Midlife Live at 9pm ET with Dan from Dan’s Vintage Baseball PC and Jake from Wax Pack Wisdom. The last one we did was the most-attended live Graig has done yet. <patting self on back> I’m hoping you’ll all show up again.

• On Sunday, July 20th I’ll be on two livestreams during Hobbypalooza on the 4 Collectors channel.

• July 31st I leave very early in the morning for Chicago and The National! I’m very excited for this, and have packed a lot into 3 days. Can I get to a Cubs game at Wrigley too? We’ll see!

• In August I dial it back some.

👻 Horror Movie Updates

Since my last newsletter, here are the horror movies I’ve watched, and their ratings (out of 5 stars):

• The Ritual: 3.5 stars

• Presence: 3.5 stars

• Jeepers Creepers: 2 stars (sad because I remember loving this when it came out in college)

• 30 Days of Night: 4.5 stars (really surprised at how much I enjoyed this)

• Event Horizon: 2 stars (really surprised at how little I enjoyed this)

• 28 Years Later: 3 stars (the weakest of the trilogy)

• World War Z: 4.5 stars (really surprised at how much I enjoyed this)

That’s 27 horror movies this year in 26 weeks. I’m on track for my goal of 52 in 2025!

Milestone

I hit 2.5 million views on my channel!

That’s it! I might be back in a month or so. Thanks for reading.

Hi Collectors,

I’ve decided to take a break from this newsletter and from Collectibles on SI for the next three months. I anticipate being back in September, refreshed and ready to rock.

Why am I taking this break?

It’s simple: I have a lot of summer responsibilities around my house that can’t get done if I’m spending Sunday afternoons writing like I can do in the winter.

I will continue to maintain the same schedule of 2-5 videos per week on my YouTube channel.

In the meantime, I hope you’ll check out The Pennysleever for your card-protection needs:

👻 Brief Horror Movie Review of the Week

This weekend I went to see Final Destination: Bloodlines with a couple of friends and absolutely loved it. The story was unique to the series and character development was really good.

The deaths were spectacular. One of them I had to cover my eyes, and another made my jaw actually drop.

Competing with Terrifier for craziest death scenes. Morbid, I know.

4 out of 5 stars

I’ll probably dump a bunch of reviews in here in September when I return.