I've said before how much of a fan I am of the Topps Now NHL stickers. They have had a Serial numbered to 10 parallel since they started, but this year they added a 1/1 Gold parallel. I did not expect to ever get one, considering how rare they are, but today I did! Brayden Point's 1/1 Gold was the first card I saw when I opened this week's mailer!  While this is my second NHL 1/1, this one is a bit more special because I pulled it instead of bought it. This is a big thrill for me and today would have been a great card day if I didn't realize I screwed up and missed National Hockey ..read more

 It was a light month for scanning. I just didn't feel like doing it to be honest. I only scanned two pages, both from the brand new Indy Car card set from Parkside. Of course, since Indycar hasn't had a traditional card set since 2007, most of the people in the set are brand new to my collection.  There were actually more, but I also have a hobby box which I pre-ordered and I would rather use a photo of the person rather than of the car so I saved them, knowing I likely have a card of the person waiting to be scanned.  I hope I will find more motivation shortly. Ever since I ..read more

 I only did a handful of scans in January, and not a single one of them was anyone I had never scanned before. February would be different. I scanned 332 cards and of them, 42 were new cards...kind of. Sometimes I will hold back a scan instead of using it as the official first scan of that person- usually for one of two reasons. #1 is if the person's name is spelled wrong or shows the wrong person. (For instance, I've had a card scanned of Klim Kostin for almost three years now but won't use it as his sample card because they spelled his name "Klostin". The other main reason I will hold o ..read more

 Only one new addition to this Spotlight series this year, and that's Quinton Byfield, young star on the Los Angeles Kings. The second overall draft pick a couple of years ago, he suffered some injuries at the start of his career but has recovered now and become a key part of the Kings squad. I'm not a huge fan of the Kings so I have not spent a lot of time watching him play but he seems very good.  I have 11 cards of him, of which 8 have been scanned, and I am going to post them all.  This card is actually my newest addition, from 2021-22 Ice, and this card is much nicer in ..read more

 I have not been writing or scanning much lately, but I have not been inactive in the hobby. I spent most of January working on my Excel stuff, and I got that finished- finally- and for the first time ever I now know exactly what I have in my collection...for everything and everyone. How cool is that? It was a lot of work and left me more than a little burned out, but I just have to maintain it now going forward, which I will make sure I do.  Feeling like writing, the first priority had to be my annual series where I spotlight Black NHL players in my collection. In previous years I'v ..read more

 I cannot lie, I like big numbers. And after 36 years in the hobby with no breaks, the numbers really add up. They can get very large when you are as obsessed with this hobby as I am, have been, and probably always will be.  At 4:41 in the morning on Tuesday, January 16th, 2024, I learned for the very first time exactly how big the numbers are.  I've mentioned in the past that I was typing everything into Excel, and, believing that I had typed everything in, I set about proofing my work by going through the paper listings for my card collection, which I have kept since 1998 and ..read more

 So, today I get on my computer and see that I have a DMCA violation hit on a post from 2018.  That makes no sense because everything I post I created myself...I only post scans I make, I don't lift things from the internet. After jumping through  google's hoops- they don't make it easy to figure out, which I am quite sure is on purpose, I discovered that it came from EA Sports, the video game company, and they got me for a post I did where I showed what cards I got from an NHL Repack I received as a gift from my brother.  Most importantly from all this.... THERE WAS NOTH ..read more

 2023 was not a huge month for me for scanning. Since I spent the vast majority of the month sick, I wouldn't touch any cards so I basically had only the first 3 days and the week between Christmas and New Years to get any scanning done. In that time I managed to scan 536 cards However, roughly 1/5th of all cards scanned happened to be new people, 120 total. I purchased a WNBA box on Black Friday which gave me a lot of new people, the Flight box I got for Christmas, and which I already scanned in full, gave a lot more. The 1994 Baseball Finest I posted about doing while I was sick also ..read more

 It's time for the annual look back at the people who appear in my card collection who have passed away during the year. Unfortunately this is the largest year so far, with 60 people appearing, and sadly it's not just due to me getting more of my collection scanned, we just lost a lot of basketball and hockey people this year. NASCAR lost people today, including earlier today. There are yet more who appear in my collection but have yet to be scanned as well. The previous record was 54 people, set in 2020 and 2022. Let's hope for less next year.  Walt Austin 1938-2023 Bob Baun 1936 ..read more

A ..read more