This Week In Mail - 3.8.26

For the most part, it was a boring week via the mail.  The top two items didn't show up until Friday and Saturday.  Part of the "boring" start to the week is that the early mail days were just set additions and I just find it difficult to be very excited by them.  Even though I do work on some modern sets, I guess I'm not a true set builder at heart.  I need a reason to build a set and even then it can be pretty boring.  

In addition to the 2026 Chrome Olympics set I decided to buy all the Olympics Topps Now set.  I don't enjoy the lottery aspect in the hobby so rather than buy these directly from Topps at stupid prices, I am just acquiring the singles from eBay at a lower price.  It takes me longer to get them, but others can play the lottery and lose.  This Breezy Johnson is the first card that's made if for the set.  You'll likely see more next week.  I'm playing the long game and waiting for even lower prices via auction on the ones I haven't ordered yet.  Also, I need to sell some more from my eBay store to get the funds.  

These are two more "Buongiorno" insert American Flag parallels /76.  I briefly talked about why I like them in my last mail day post. These two bring me up to three of the twenty cards in the set.  I have a long way to go, but hopefully a long time to get there.  I'll need the time to wait out the ridiculous Alysa Liu prices.  

Nothing special here, but did want to mention that we've watched some of the Paralympics.  It was interesting to see the difference in the Curling Mixed Doubles.  They slide the stone and just let it go.  There is no sweeping like in the Olympics.  We watched the USA sled hockey team annihilate Italy yesterday.  Seriously, Italy needed two late touchdowns to make the comeback.  I also learned that in the four prior Paralympic games, the United States team has outscored opponents something like 120-6.  I did not type those numbers incorrectly.  If memory serves me correctly, I believe they play again Monday and Tuesday.  

If you've never bought a card that you really didn't need to just because it was a good price, are you even really a collector?  I literally won an auction for this card less than five weeks ago, but this one was posted as a Buy It Now for less than half what I paid for the auction.  So, in homage to my friends at NASCARD Radio, I went <click> and snagged this one as well.  

I'm thrilled with the decision.  There is no chipping along the edges.  As long as it's not trimmed, this card is an absolute gem.  I need to check my copy at COMC and perhaps post it for sale.  

Last but certainly not least, this beauty arrived yesterday.  I have a handful of Lloyd Ruby autographs.  I have a handful of Lloyd Ruby postcards.  I did not have a slabbed, signed Lloyd Ruby postcard.  Now I do.  

Until Michael Andretti, Lloyd Ruby was considered by many to be the best driver at Indianapolis Motor Speedway not to win the 500.  The combination of that, his being a life-long Texan (Wichita Falls) and the fact that by all accounts he was one of the nicest men ever has made me a fan despite his career ending before I was born.  

I have dreams of someday commissioning someone to build me a custom case that will display (some of) my 1:24 and 1:18 diecast in the top but have cabinets below to house my card collection.  This will be proudly displayed with my Lloyd Ruby diecast.  I don't need slabbed, authenticated items for my collection but in this form it will display nicely.  All I need to do is downsize my collection and come up with the money.  What I want will NOT be cheap.  

Thanks for reading and following along with me!  

This Week In Mail - 3.2.26

 Okay, so it's more than a week's worth of mail...but never let a title get in the way of a good post.  

If you followed the blog years ago or followed me elsewhere you already know this, but I'm not the most focused collector.  I like many different things and go through spells of collecting different parts of my collection.  I think it goes back to being a kid collector in the late 1980s - early 1990s and it was possible to both enjoy and collect multiple sports.  

I mentioned in my last post that watching the Olympics is something that my wife and I enjoy doing together.  It's just not the watching, it's the conversation we have.  I'm fortunate to be married to my best friend.  

These were both the first Olympics cards I ordered from eBay and the first to arrive.  They coincide with the early days of the Olympics.  Snowboarding was one of the earlier events and we watched more snowboarding this year that I'd probably watched in my entire life before this year.  I love the image on the Red Gerard and also that, well, his name is Red.  Later in life will he threaten to stick his foot in his kids' ass?  I doubt it but he has the name for it.  I bid on the Ilya Malinin becuase it was from the same seller and my wife telling me that he could do things on the ice that others just couldn't.  Unfortunately he wasn't able to pull things off and win a singles gold medal, but he's young and should be back in 2030.  Wait, 2030?

This Alex Hall is the black parallel, numbered out of ten.  It felt cheap at the time and he was another competitor that we watched early and talked about.  I may have overpaid a little (after priced calmed down a little), but it will always be a memory of the 2026 games for me.  

These cards were nothing more than cheap additions for the frankenset.  My wife bought me a hobby box but these Red, White & Blue parallels are exclusive to blasters so I had none.  I think I paid about $3.50 delivered for the trio and there's really no fun story about any of them.  

This Meryl Davis gold parallel /50 was less than $3 delivered but is a card that i wouldn't buy now.  At the time I bid, my aspiration was to get the gold /50 parallel of anyone that won a gold medal.  Once I dug deeper into the set and Olympics results, I scratched that idea.  It would have made too much of the frankenset the gold parallel.  I have decided to go after the athletes (likely minus hockey players) that won a gold in the 2026 games.  Davis did win gold for the United States, but in 2014.  

The final Olympics card is the Apolo Ohno "Buongiorno" insert American Flag parallel /76.  I'm not interested in most of the inserts or their 743 parallels, but I do love this particular insert and parallel.  It's a 20 card set (if memory serves me correctly) of current and former Olympians and the cards have different Italy landmarks on them.  For example, this one pictures what I believe is the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  I want to collect the entire 20 card set in the American Flag variation, but it might be a long term project.  Why?  While most can be had for less than $10, last night an Alysa Liu sold on eBay for...$472.  I feel like some shenanigans HAD to be involved but it still may keep that card at an unreasonable price for months or even years because "cOMPS." 

Moving from Olympics into racing, this Sage Karam autograph will eventually go into one of my projects that I want to complete, a card of every driver ever to participate in the Indianapolis 500.  I don't believe that collection is possible to put together, but I'll do the best I can.  

Karam has no IndyCar cards.  He never ran a full season in the series but that's not why there are no cards.  After Rittenhouse produced a mainstream-ish set in 2007 (which didn't even have all drivers represented), there wasn't another mainstream IndyCar until 2024.  Karam hasn't run the 500 since 2022, so he's not included in any of the Parkside sets.  So, I will settle for this Panini NASCAR card but hope he will have an actual IndyCar card some day if he can put together a ride for Indianapolis.  

This is a card that I really didn't want to shell out the money for but since it came up at auction I "needed" to go after it.  I have a future post planned that I'll talk more about it.  Kyle Larson is the reigning and two-time NASCAR champion and one of their most popular drivers.  In both 2024 and 2025, he ran in the Indianapolis 500.  Despite this being a base card, the base cards were numbered to 99 and because of the appeal to NASCAR collectors as well makes this easily the most expensive card in the base set.  

Another Dale Earnhardt collector, at least based on his eBay user name, put these two cards up for auction and I HAD to go after them.  I want to save the details about "what" they are for a future post but had to share them now because I'm just so damn thrilled to have them.  They aren't cards you can just log into eBay and find multiple copies of, even if I am planning to move a lot of my Earnhardt cards. 

I'm going to post the image of the card backs below to end this post, but do you notice anything that makes you go hmmm...?  

Moving On

 The Olympics are over and I'm a little sad about it.  The wife and I enjoy both the winter and summer games and I love that they're no longer on the same year.  From the day that the 2026 games started (days before even the opening ceremony), our TV has been tuned to Olympics probably 95% of the time.  I don't think I'm exaggerating.  We talk a lot about things while we watch and that's one of my favorite things, spending time with and talking to her about the sports.  I'm fortunate that my wife truly is my best friend. 

We do differ a bit in that she likes the summer games more and I like the winter games, but we still love them both.  We've talked about that and it makes me wonder, which do folks like more?  I'd love to know in the comments which you like more.  

We also are big Christmas people.  We watch "Christmas in July" on Hallmark.  The Christmas season literally begins as soon as we come inside after handing out candy on Halloween night.  The tree and inside decorations are up for two months until it's time for the switch to our Birthdanniversary deco.  Both birthdays and our anniversary are all on January 29.  

As fun as the Birthdanniversary deco is, I still go into a funk most years on December 26.  My love of Christmas isn't the 25th alone and the gifts, it's the entire holiday season and I dislike how it comes to an abrupt end.  Piling on top of that, my wife and I have experienced more loss of family (both human and canine) from early January through mid-February than any other time of the year.  We really look forward to spring after Christmas.  

Living in Texas, at least the signs of spring are earlier for us than many in North America.  Every four years, though, we have the 2.5 weeks of games to help us bridge that gap.  The next three years are going to suck a bit from 'Happy New Year' until, for me, when the IndyCar season begins.  

It's been three days since the Olympics ended and the days have felt off.  Thankfully tonight our beloved Dallas Stars play tonight to return some sense of normality.  The biggest win for me is that IndyCar starts again this weekend.  Race day is Sunday March 1 and to my recollection this is the earliest the season has begun since my fandom started in May 2007.  

Oh yeah, this is a sports card blog, isn't it?  

The last two nights I've bindered up the 2024 and 2026 Topps Chrome Olympics sets that I purchased from eBay and Sportlots, respectively.  It was enjoyable and there's still more to do.  Years ago, I became a Shoebox Legends copycat and started a buyback frankenset.  I'm no longer a classic set builder, but have passively worked on the Parkside Indycar sets the last two years.  At some point in December, it hit me that I should put together a 2025 Topps Holiday frankenset and now I think most of my sets may be frankensets.  I'm going to do that with the 2026 Olympic set, so you'll see some posts on that in the future.  

I also wanted to mention that I used some new pages when bindering up the sets.  A YouTuber whose opinions I respect mentioned that he was using them and doesn't think he'll ever use any other ones.  I bought one box on Amazon and after using them, I agree.  I've been using Ultra Pro pages in general since the 1990s, but no more.  I am now on team BCW LaserWeld sheets.  They are clear, they lay very flat and are just overall aesthetically pleasing.  If you like your cards in binders, consider them.  

The start of the 2026 IndyCar season means that soon, likely by the end of March, I will have new cards in hand.  Parkside cards produces "Pronto," an on-demand set similar to Topps Now or Panini Instant.  They offer a discounted season subscription and I will buy one so that I have a complete set.  

The third race of the season is here in the streets of Arlington on March 15.  Turn 10 of the track is maybe fifty yards from my wife's office.  Yesterday I went to work with her just so that when we left I could ride on the track.  The city streets are still open but it's wild to see all the barricades and fencing.  

I won't be attending the race.  Road and street circuits are not enjoyable viewing for me because you see so little of the race.  However, I plan to go on Friday and hopefully will be able to get some cards signed during the autograph session they have at every IndyCar race.  This is also the inaugural race and is being promoted very well locally, leading me to believe there may be other signing sessions throughout Arlington in the days leading up to the race.  I have my cards and paint pens ready to rumble!  If I have success, y'all will be among the first to know.  

If you made it this far, thank you for sticking with my ramblings despite the lack of card content.  I really appreciate you.  

Please don't forget, I'd love to know if you prefer the summer or winter Olympic games, and why.  

What Could One Pack Hurt?

I had no plans on a post today.  I don't want to be like Kyle Lewis (or insert your favorite flame out), come out guns-a-blazin' and then just disappear in a short amount of time.  Then I went to Walmart. 

While there, I figured I'd look for some of the 2026 Topps Chrome Olympics, though I knew the odds were stacked against me.  As expected, nothing.  I saw some Topps Series 1 hanger packs and I figured picking one up wouldn't hurt.  There was no clear price but I figured for $5 I'd do it.  Much to my chagrin, when the cashier rang them up, it was $7.  That disappointment was just the beginning.  

I will be testing the Walmart no returns on cards policy because every card came out with a dinged corner.  Honestly, I'll just take store credit over another pack after all this.  My assumption is that the other packs will have similar damage.  Why can't Topps use the old cello wrappers like they did in the 1980s?  Packaging them in those, with the tightness, could have prevented this.  

These were the team cards in the pack.  I also got an Oakland A's one that I discovered when I went to put the cards back into the pack.  

I know less and less players as every season passes.  I don't collect or even follow home run derby...er...baseball.  Is there anyone good in this group?  I ask because I've never heard of any of them.  

This significantly smaller group of cards is the base cards of guys I've actually heard of.  I think a couple of them are pretty good and one of the collects cards himself.  

I've also heard of these three guys!  Heck, I even have a pretty good Cal Raleigh rookie card - his Topps Heritage Black Border parallel.  I probably should have sold it toward the end of last baseball season, but I'm not the best about selling.  I do like the "Profiles" insert set because it's nostalgic for me.  I don't recall the year those originally were done but it's certainly when I still had some interest in baseball.  I've typically liked the Topps Fire cards I've seen and that's what the Paul Skenes reminds me of.  Maybe I should go pull out one of my old Pirates hats that have been hibernating for at least a decade.  

Good moment to you wherever you are, thank you for checking this out and have a wonderful rest of your day! 

Twenty Five Years

 “We’ve lost Dale Earnhardt.”

Those words from Mike Helton, 25 years ago today, still haunt me.  

I was late for work that day (I was a college kid working part time at Walmart), but I had to see the end of the race.  Then it happened.  I waited for word that Dale Earnhardt was okay so that I could head to word.  I was even later than I thought I’d be because those words never came.  It was at work that Don, who was the door greeter (remember those?) told me it’d been announced that he died.  I was dumbfounded.  It didn’t seem real.  

It hit me that it was real when some asshole came to check out with me, every Dale Earnhardt diecast in his cart, and said “If I can’t 10x my money on these I’m bringing them back” and then laughed about it.  If not for knowing I needed that job to get by, that dude would have received a rage-fueled ass whipping that he’d still think about from time to time. 

He wasn’t “my guy.”  When I got into NASCAR in the mid-90s, Earnhardt was the guy that all the rednecks cheered for and I was not a redneck.  So I didn’t like him.  But over the next handful of years he grew on me and had become one of my favorites, even after edging out “my guy” for the 1998 Daytona 500.  Hindsight is always 20/20 and I’m happy he got that win.

I originally wrote the lines above for an Instagram post.  As I've decided to give blogging a try again, I figured I may as well post here too.  It's funny how things work sometimes.  In Night Owl's post yesterday, he said "I'm not a natural boaster and generally feel inadequate much of the time (though I'm getting better the older I get). I always assume others have more/are better." 

After nearly 40 years collecting cards, I often feel that way about my collection.  Looking through my Earnhardt collection made me feel a bit less that way.  I know there are cards that I have that many others would love to have in their collection.  So while the purpose of going through my cards was initially for an Instagram post, it was also therapeutic in a way and put a little spring in my step.  

Anyway, on to the cards.  When I talk about them I'll be referring to numbers, in order like you'd read. 

The first two cards are 1/1s.  Earnhardt's driving career ended 25 years ago today and that before the card manufacturers threw out as many 1/1s as they could.  Off the top of my head, I only know of one 1/1, non-printing plate out there.  I believe it was a High Gear "Solo" (get it?).  It sold within the last handful of years.  I know who has it.  I also know it won't be available any time soon.  

The first 1/1 is a Press Pass, post career 1/1.  Happy to have it, but it's not from my NASCAR fandom years so I'm not as in love with it as perhaps I should be.  On the other hand, I am much more happy about the "Team Pinnacle" plate.  It's driving-era and it's Pinnacle.  I love me some Pinnacle to this day.  It blows my mind that the dufex technology they used can't seem to be duplicated today.  

The third card is a card I wanted for years.  However, only one came available before this one and they wanted a stupid price.  About a year ago, my copy came available.  One of the corners has a ding.  The signature on the card isn't very bold.  Those two "imperfections" are the reason I have it.  If not for those, I never could have afforded it.  It's serial numbered out of 50, celebrates NASCAR's 50th season and depicts Earnhardt's celebration after winning the 1998 Daytona 500.  Absolute grail card for me. 

The fourth card is easily the most sentimental card for me.  It is both the first Earnhardt autograph I obtained, and I consider it a gift from my wife.  She isn't big on buying cards for me.  When she does, it's typically blaster boxes at Christmas and I've let her know the things I'd be interested in.  She also despises gift cards as gifts.  However, she gave me an ebay gift card one Christmas and I put it toward this card.  She doesn't buy me many cards (which I'm okay with), she doesn't usually give gift cards...and combining those two things make this a special card to me.  

The final card doesn't look impressive and I acknowledge that.  However, it is an EXTREMELY scarce and desirable card.  I believe what I saw in the past was that the estimated print run is less than 25.  Be that as it may, you will rarely find a copy of this card available.  I lucked into it a few years ago in a Facebook NASCAR group.  The seller had a partial set he wanted to sell, but didn't want to separate the lot.  About a year later he relented, reached out to me and after sleeping on it overnight pulled the trigger.  I've never regretted it.  

Some of you may be familiar with the first one, as it was a part of a Classic 5-Sport set.  That set was one of the first to introduce me to racing cards and brings back all the feels of teenage collecting when I look at it.  The two relics are some of the earliest relic cards produced.  Not just in racing, but in all of sports cards.  

I love the aesthetics of the relic card.  The card design, combined with it being a red parallel and a red and white relic makes it beautiful in my eyes.  He may have been "The Man in Black" but it just wouldn't look as good if it was a black and white firesuit swatch.  

The card below it is Upper Deck, die cut, a "checkered flag" parallel and /100.  What more could you do to make the card better?  I have no clue.  

The one vertical card is a Press Pass "Golden" parallel numbered to 50.  While that makes it desirable enough, it's also copy number three - Earnhardt's (most well known) car number.  

Oil Slicks parallels have print runs of 100 and are some of my favorite cards.  Press Pass missed by not making for more than a handful of years.  

Another favorite parallel is the early years of "MPH."  Look at that holofoil shine!  Press pass did a disservice in later years, really removing the shine from them, though keeping them numbered.  

I like these because I don't know much about them.  They are 24KT Artist Proof parallels.  Obviously enough is known about them for PSA to grade them, but I never had any luck figuring out the distribution on them.  Were they pack issued?  Were they backdoored when Pinnacle was shuttered?  In a way, not knowing everything about them adds to the appeal for me.  

This one isn't a card, but instead a ticket stub from the 1998 Daytona 500, which Earnhardt won on his 20th attempt.  This was a gift from my friend Logan.  He was at the race, held onto it for all those years and had it graded all before he gifted it to me.  Having cards (or ticket stubs) is great, but it's even better when there is a story behind it.  

If you made it this far, thanks for checking it out and reading all my rambling!  

A Trip Down the Blogging Memory Lane

I've been thinking recently about blogging again.  I still follow some bloggers on social media (mostly bluesky) that I used to read daily like Night Owl Cards, Baseball Cards Fan and Not Another Baseball Card Blog.  At times, I believe I've seen The Chronicles of Fuji and some others on Twitter, not that I'm there much these days.  

It's sad to see so many bloggers have stopped posting.  I hope they've just stopped the posting and not collecting.  I hope they are still with us.  I know Shoebox Legends is still collecting, evolving his collection and adding some great cards because I watch his YouTube videos.  

I can't blame anyone for leaving.  I did it.  I did a different blog/website that I am no longer paying for but for some reason is still there.  I didn't enjoy it anymore.  I thought it would be easy to put together a website and post that could bring in some money for revenue.  I was wrong.  I discovered that when money becomes a part of what you're doing and you feel obligated to post regularly, it takes the fun out of it.  Sounds kinda like worrying about selling cards, no?  

Then I did YouTube for awhile.  I ran into the same feeling after awhile that I had felt with the website.  I felt obligated to post videos regularly.  It felt like a job that I was doing for free.  One of the things I was looking for was interaction and I just didn't feel I was getting the interaction I was hoping for.  Collecting is fun, but it's more fun when you're sharing with others and talking about the cards and hobby.  

I've been on Instagram for years and ran into the same thing.  I felt somewhat obligated to post and didn't receive the interaction I was hoping for.  

Which brings me back to this blog.  Should I make a return?  Would it be the same?  Are there people still in the blogosphere that want to interact with me?  Are there new blogs?  So many questions.  

What I do know is that I've spent the last couple hours looking through this blog.  There are so many stories I told that I've forgotten about.  I've seen a couple posts from the weeks before I got married (we're at seven years and still going strong) and it was fun to remember those days, some of the details and how I was feeling.  

Tonight, I learned what I'm sure many others have known for years...our blogs are part of our collecting history and journey.  They are a time capsule.  They likely don't chronicle the whole journey, but they certainly chronicle large chunks.  

As I get closer to 50, I need these trips down memory lane and these happy memories.  It's good for me.  I haven't made a decision on whether I should start writing again but at the same time, maybe I have.