Shadow Shots

 Peeking into the shadows on baseball cards. Hoping to find something interesting.....will we?

1) I pulled this one because I like the shadow of the ball.

2) Godzilla

3) One of those Mahjong characters.

Your turn.

WARNING: WARNING WILL ROBINSON.....WARNING

 Not sure if that catchy post title got your attention or not. But if you are reading this it probably did. Sorry to disappoint, but this post has NOTHING to do with "Lost in Space". Well..... that is unless you are talking about the gap between my two ears. 

Did you SMILE? I know it should have been DANGER :)

I don't know, maybe a dozen posts ago I made mention about 2025 baseball cards being released in 2026. Ahhhh. One week in and this is what has dropped (at least the checklists). 

Topps T205

Topps Chrome Sapphire UPDATE

Topps Now

Topps Now Road to Opening Day

Panini Flawless

Bowman Draft & Bowman Chrome Draft

Topps Heritage HIGH #s

I believe the following have checklists have now dropped, just have to locate the pesky things checklists.

Ginter X

Leaf Electrum

What else is coming you ask?

Panini Select

Topps Museum

Bowman Draft Super (whatever that is)

Leaf Pulse

Leaf Opti-Chrome

This doesn't is cover the (2025) ones being released or supposed to be released in March. 

Now go out and enjoy the weekend otherwise I will send Dr. Smith after you.

Some incoming cards

 Real quick, ComC last night bumped my order expected shipment back to 3/10/26 (LOL), and then today moved it back to 3/13/26. Also, after a delay I finally got my refund to my paypal account today for cashing out. 

1/8/26 8:23 pm EST, UPDATE: They say they have shipped my order.

Okay, for "real" hobby stuff here are a few items that came in last year in December.

The needs above plus 2 others I didn't scan came from fellow blogger Mr. Jester. Thanks Matt!

I scooped up these needs from a trip to my LCS.

The goodies above here came from Mr. Bubbles himself. Bob also sent along some bubble cards too plus another 3 cards that didn't get scanned. Thanks Bob!

These last two cards came from fellow OldCardTraders, 2 different people each sending one of the above. That Johnston cookie was first and came inside my first Christmas card of last year. The other card also came inside a Christmas card and knocked out one of the high priority Braves needs in the upper right panel. Been a long time since someone took one of those out.

Rounding out the night are some minor leaguers from the Z-man.

Thanks Mark. 

I have more incoming packages that I haven't scanned yet (been kind of busy). I'll get to them eventually and might post some of them, lol.

Have a great night!

Wacky Wednesday (plus a NEGATIVE ComC comment)

 I didn't mention in yesterday's post that ComC changed my expected ship date again, this time moved back to 3/9/26. Then last night it was changed again......to 3/13/26. I really think they believe that if they keep bumping it back (even put additional 50K people ahead of me) that I will quit saying bad things about them. Yeah....they ain't happening.....EVER. I will be saying bad stuff (for as long as I blog).

Here are some interesting cards to peek at tonight.

 Enjoy the rest of the night.

A big Ebay win. (BIN)

 As I mentioned last night I was stoked to get a great deal on this set. Yes....set in it's awesome sweet condition. 2001 Topps Tribute set. The very first year of the brand. 

Here is the 90 card set in all of it's glory.

Again, I am stoked to have knocked this set out, and for what I consider to have been for a quarter of what it would have normally cost. Those are the deals I love. Never really thought I would get this one. 

Ebay wins

 A couple of Ebay wins to highlight this week, but first some more BS.

On 1/3 TCDB Bravesfan1 had 33,227 and I had 32,742. I added 10 cards, and he added 130. This was yesterday. So now I am 605 cards behind him. I still don't buy it. 

Okay now to the first Ebay win for tonight.

Some new Topps Tribute for a decent low price with some big names. I was happy to win this auction. Just not as happy as the post for tomorrow night. 

Later.

Shadow Shots and ComC news

 Welcome to the New Year! Before peeking into the shadows let's do the year end TCDB update.

Atlanta Braves: -485

Gaming: Up 13 spots to #98

Non-sports: Same spot #27

Baseball cards: Up 1 spot to #12

Total cards: Up 1 spot to #25

Now for the shadows.

1) Lots of choices here, could be a whale diving, but I'm going with a ship anchor dropping.

2) definitely a big of some sort

3) a bird.

Now last night at 9:47 pm I got an e-mail from ComC (mind you my original ship date was 12/26/25 which was 13 days ......as they advertise with their "new rates" , albeit I check every day and it states a 3/8/26 ship date).  With that said I copied and pasted the e-mail from last night.....  scroll the right arrow to see they sent this on 1/2/26.

COMC.com 

From:staff@comc.com

To:jfmjr1@aol.com

Fri, Jan 2 at 7:54 PM

Hello John,

  

Thank you for your purchase. Your order is being packaged and is expected to ship on with an expected shipping date of 12/26/2025.

 

It will be mailed to the following address:
John Miller
3 Pecan Radial Place
Ocala, FL 34472  

 

If this address is incorrect, please reply to this email and change the email's subject line to "Address Correction" so we can make that adjustment.

 

You can view the full details of your purchase #84911411 in the uploaded PDF or on our website.

 

Please let us know if there is anything we can do to better serve you!

~ The COMC Team

Buy & sell on COMC:
https://www.comc.com

Get support:
https://comc.zendesk.com/

Follow COMC on social media:
https://comc.com/rt/LinkTree

Yeah, they still expect to ship it on 12/26/25 (8 days ago) and they let me know on 1/2/26. I say we in the blogosphere start a 100 spot grid  to take bets (per square) on how much longer they will remain in business. 

Here is the revised current status (originally it was 12/26/25).

Status:
Tracking:	Not Shipped Yet
Date Requested:	12/13/2025
Estimated Ship Date:	3/6/2026
Items Ahead of My Order:	578,894

ANOTHER UPDATE TODAY WHEN I CHECKED STATUS, NOW SHOWS SHIP DATE OF 3/9/26.

THESE PEOPLE.....

Enjoy the weekend! Four more weeks of shadows.

Happy New Year!

 Hopefully, everyone is enjoying the start of 2026. I certainly appreciate waking up on this side of the dirt today (I do everyday too). Once again I am foregoing my typical usual January 1st post....Sort of. I'm not posting the birthday athletes, but I am doing a "State of the Blog" which is basically just what I have planned for the coming year in regards to our hobby and what I post. The goals if you will.

1) Because I failed to obtain at least 1 T206 cards for my collection, this year I plan on TWO. I hope the prices drop some.

2) POSTING:  I have several more weeks worth of scanned and ready to go Shadow Shots, but once those are posted that it is for the year. Readership and comments for those weekend posts just don't justify my time. I will probably replace Saturday posting with a Friday post instead. I have something in mind. I have also decided what to do with that boatload of duplicate Greg Maddux cards. At some point in the coming weeks I kickstart "Just Another Maddux Monday". I plan on posting a page (9 cards) each Monday and the followers of the blog comment for a chance to win those cards. Randomized of course. Many rookies scattered through out and once in a while throw in a surprise non Maddux card into the mix. 

3) My PC (player collections): With the major cutback I've done the last two years on super bulk buys, I believe I can get my updating done all within one year. Speaking of which it goes without saying that finishing this last update in 2026. I finished the M's on 12/31/25 which would be normal. I spent the day today going through the 21K PC cards in the garage (didn't get to all of them but will tomorrow) and pulling out the N's, O's, and P's. The P's have a lot of guys, but not nearly as much at the next round which will be the R's, S's, and T's which will actually take up much of the first half of this year. Leaving the W's as the last BIG one to knock out. Still plan on cutting out a lot of the guys I've been hoarding and hopefully that will all be dome in 2026.

4) I didn't get to many card shows in 2025, so I want to get to at least 7 shows this year, and I'd like to take a couple of road trips to south Florida and checkout some of those shows and LCS's. I was planning on two specific ones this month, but I'm thinking of doing one of the Tampa area shows instead. 

5)  Last but not least, get a lot more of what I have collected inputted into TCDB. I've been doing the PC guys as I go along and will continue to do so. I still have about 20-30K cards for set builds to get sorted and put in. That needs done this year for sure.

That's it. I wish all a fantastic 2026. Enjoy our hobby as much as you can. Greg knocked out a good bit of the bad crap within the industry the other day, so need for me to add to it other than to say this.....

FANATICS SUCKS!

Wacky Wednesday: New year's Eve

 Hump day and this one is a Holiday. My words of encouragement: If you drink...don't drive and in 2026 be alive! I wish everyone out there a great new year. 

Tonight is trivia night so hopefully we can follow up our time with back to back wins. 

UPDATE: No trivia tonight. My brother and I play just around the corner at the "Dugout Sports bar & grill". It is New Year's Eve, I get up there and a sign on the door, closed at 5PM. It's a pub, it's New Year's Eve.....What????? Oh well such is life lol.

 

Be safe everyone, be wise, and most of all be happy!

The November Tampa card show finale

 Before you go getting your hopes up....I did not save the best for last. They were the last of the scans. So let's get at them.

Minted in Cooperstown parallels.

A few of those I think TBT inspired by 78....maybe, lol.

You may but probably don't remember that I had mentioned this seller had a bunch of vintage boxes too. I only went through the one I the top as I was filling that second box.

Yeah, these Kellogg's are pretty much cracked all up, but hey I grabbed them all anyway.

Grabbed the few Hostess too. I'm sure there may have been more in the other 6 or 7 boxes, but time was thin and the box was full.

And finishing the scans with a bunch of Topps Now cards. That completes that trip finally. I can now focus on getting the rest of the incoming from Ebay and other bloggers and trade partners.

Catcha lata!

Tampa stuff part 2

 Is everybody ready for the New Year? I am. Back in September when I was sick for the entire month with the flu I had missed both the last Deland Toy, cards, comic, collectibles, and paper show as well as the last card show in The Villages. I am looking forward to attending both (fingers crossed and praying). 

Now let's knock out the next round of PC/Set build cards from a couple of months ago.

Picking right up where I left off with some of those ASA tribute cards of Willie Mays.

Some horizontal goodies.

A whole bunch of cards for my Patriotic binder. Now if I could just find time to organize it before the 4th of July sneaks up on us. It's a big one #250!

Finding a bunch of those World Series parallels was nice. 

One more round (a little shorter) to go and then I can get back to some incoming cards.

Shadow Shots

 Feeling kind of lazy today. Let's make quick work of this one.

1) I see a cat

2) I see a tornado shadow on his uniform

3) I see an elephant actually playing an actual trumpet. Okay maybe it's bear cub.

Enjoy the weekend!

Merry Christmas!

 Jesus is the reason for the season. With that said I hope that everyone had a blessed day with goodies, family and friends, and cards too. 

Normally, I would be posting up all of my Christmas binders/Holiday sets. I'm not doing that this year. I had the binders all FIVE of them out last week (in fact I forgot to put my 2025 set in a new binder yet which will make 6 Christmas binders). 

I figured that with all of the not so normal events of December that I could use a break from my normal to give a me a chance to catch up on some other things. And I have been "catching up" on other things which has me feeling gurd. GURD.  

I will however take advantage up this last week of the year and do a close out on a few things.

1) The blog/hobby goals

2) The numbers regarding Braves released.

My hobby goals each year are pretty simple and normally I score myself A+. This year I get an F.

Why you ask? 

Goal 1: obtain 1 T206 card for that set build, and for the very first time I did not. 

Goal 2: Complete the PC update a year ahead of schedule, eh! I know I kind of took at least 2 months off which certainly hurt that goal. I really was ahead of the game and this goal was possible, but nope I am right where I am usually at at 14 months in. Half way! I will be finishing the M's by years end. It does look like I will finish before the October 2 year mark, but those P's R's, S's, T's, and W's are sizeable.

Goal 3: Kick start the original themes for Wacky Wednesday and Shadow Shots. This I did do A+ here, I did make mention that I wanted to get my Franken Friday going, but made no promises on that one. As for the 2 aforementioned themes.... I should have enough in the binders to go another 2 years, but I'm pretty sure I will suspend both of those sometime during the coming year. The numbers just aren't there (ie: views and comments). 

I also wanted to make sure I cut back (way back) on bulk buys which I certainly did that as the "super deals" weren't found that often. 

Now to the numbers....Braves numbers. last year at this time the Braves were sitting at 12, 209 and I predicted with the "late" releases it would shoot up to at least 15K. I was correct. There are 16,512 for the 2024 Braves so I will need to find some time to see if I got them all updated on my want/needs list. I figuring I'm short a thousand or so.

For 2025 the Braves are currently sitting 14,291, and I feel strongly with the "late releases" will match the 16.5K from 2024. 

Now for the BLOG. By years' end I should be at 268 posts which is 40 more than last year, 2 more than 2023, and 2 short of 2021. Basically I did my normal for the last decade. Prior to that it was always 300-365 or more. I've been content posting 5 days a week and don't see that changing anytime in the near future.  

I wish everyone an AWESOME 2026. I will put out my blog/hobby goals probably on Jan. 1 next Thursday so I guess I had better start thinking about them.

Wacky Wednesday.

 Merry Christmas everyone. My shared meals and present swapping started yesterday and "wrapped" up today. On Christmas day, the only thing for me to do is say Happy birthday Jesus! I'd say I'll sleep in, but that is really unlikely as not only am I a night owl I'm also an early bird. 

With today being hump day let us peer into some interesting (for one reason or another) cards from the past.

There y'all go, enjoy the time with friends and family and your Holidays be blessed.

Tampa PC and set needs. Part 1

 Here we go, finally back to the bulk of what I bought down in Tampa.

Mind you I did not need the 2025 Bowman paper base cards above. I just wanted them. I also didn't need the Giambi, but just wanted it in case I didn't have one in the PC.

Same for the Puig. 

Those colorized are weird looking, so I grabbed all of the ones for my PC binders.

Speaking of PC, I dumped a few more players last night: Yoan Moncada, Dustin May, and Max Muncy (Greg, I'm sure you're happy about those).

Didn't need the 74' Cobb either, but snagged it anyways. It is in real good shape.

Pretty sure I had multiple copies of that Classic Piazza in both colors.

Fun note that Einstein was the very last card I put in the boxes I bought.

That will wrap part 1 of the PC/set cards from Tampa. I have 2 more posts of them. Looking forward to getting past them, so I can finish up with the rest of the incoming/ebay from the last 2 months. I still have a bunch left to post.