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...?