Licensing

May the 4th be with you. That's the extent of the Star Wars talk today....sorry....

Happily, more baseball from the 2026 Lot today, and a reminder of how licensing can impact the look of sports cards, and for me, whether there is a higher likelihood of collectability. 

2019 Bowman looks all fine and good - fully licensed, decent enough design, and all base cards here, but a set I am not personally collecting - but just a simple choice on it. Then we have 2019 Donruss. Sure, I will keep the one variation card for Martinez which is an alternate photo, but nothing too spectacular, but the fact that we don't have any team logos, etc all washed out of the photos - it definitely impacts how much I like the cards and set. It looks like a bunch of guys playing in a beer league...playing in fancier stadiums, sure, but beer league attire.

I can appreciate the attempt, and nice to see Max a few years ahead of his Toronto stint, but nothing more here for me really.

I forgot I was actually working (slowly) on the 2021 Bowman base set, but Gaarcia is a nice addition to that set build for me. As for the 2023 Topps - nice to get a bunch of future stars labelled cards, but nothing I am working on collecting here.

That Cal guy ended up doing alright though....