Update My Wants...And Poisoned

A few shares today - yay - and we might as well start with an amazing offer and help from POISON75, a great reader of the blog who was kind enough to offer some help on my 1992-93 O Pee Chee set build. Not sure I should call it help, or almost a complete obliteration of my needs as I am now down to just a few cards missing, but to show you how awesome he was, here is what came my way...

I love the retro design cards sporadically included in the 396 card base set. Had been missing some, but now I am just down to three cards left and none are retro design cards.

I had been missing some of the big names like Brett Hull, Jagr, some might consider Patrick Roy a "star" as well I guess.

Super Mario is always a great addition too - and with trophy to boot!

I can't say enough about how amazing the community is on here, and the offer to help out was greatly appreciated. I was able to find some cards off of the want list posted on his blog which is here, and sent them across - anyone who hasn't had the opportunity to connect, take it now and big thumbs up for the package and assistance!

Let's share a quick wrestling related trade first. I had come across the fact, while putting a set away that I thought was completed, that I had a silver parallel Bayley in by base set of 2019 Topps WWE RAW. As awesome as that was to find, it meant I needed a proper Bayley base card. Well, a PWE trade with with TCDB member philhigh and we have...

A completed base set, and a few inserts as well to make it a more full envelope going each way. Really nice to have that set actually completed now.

In other me related card news...well, as lots are apt to do - we have another set to add to the slow build list - 2023 Topps Update as we get enough here to chalk up almost half the set. There were some dupes and traders in the bunch, but rather than show those few, I was impressed by the amount of keepers, so will put those together in a few shots instead...

The standard 2023 design gets a final use with the Update set and with 330 base cards to it, here we have about 140 of them knocked off the list.

Taking a look at what was here and what wasn't - I'm not going to say it's just rookie cards missing as there are some here, and some of the missing cards have nothing to do with rookies - so there may still be more to this set in the lot, but time will tell.

Still, a nice bunch of cards to start - andever some Jays...

I guess this is one way to get Mike Trout into the Jays collection - thank you Topps for making these cards if only for that reason. I do wish that, instead of the MLB logo, they split the area on the front and put the photo for each team logo instead, but small complain on a great bunch of cards today.

Story

The 2026 Lot comes with a reminder today - every card has a story. A story of how it was received, how it became part of a collection, how it travelled to get to where it is, a story that one can only guess many times, what the full story is. I am left with such questions on two different cards from the lot today.

This one is easy to identify as "what" it is. In 1994, Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers were huge, new, and everywhere. I was 14 at the time, and the timing of when the show was on in the morning, when little else was on, left it prime to be watched. I thought it was fine, but didn't go out of my way to watch it. I did like the green ranger and white ranger storylines, which were so different for a "kids" show.

Why is there only the one sticker? Sure, I am assuming that is the case as there is plenty of cards left in the lot, though I can say, there isn't a large run of stickers that I can spy. How did a single sticker come to be, instead of a full pack? Did someone collect along the way? No idea, but at least I know what it is.

This, I had no clue on. So, I did something I have never done before, downloaded and used Google Lens on my phone to search the web for information on what the heck this is, and - success!

Apparently, this is a card from a game called The Ressistance: Avalon which was published in 2012. Obviously not the English version, but it's a King Arthur themes bluffing style game which has a number of game cards like this. Here we have Percival - and the card's two lines of text are "Percival" and "Knows Merlin" underneath it, which is obviously game related.

An intriguing pick up, but begs questions like - why only one cards? How did it get into a card lot like this? Who is the poor soul who stopped being able to play their game because Percival went missing? Where will Percival go since I will just use him to package some trades?

Well, either way, the stories for these cards will not end with me....

More Snow In June

 As expected, we continue getting snow with the 2023 Topps Holiday baseball set, and that's a good thing considering I am now working on the set, and with the additions today move above the 50% mark on completing the base set with 106.200.

Haven't seen any of the short prints, and I am not expecting, and that is okay. I don't really see the draw of having photoshopped candy canes, or Santa hats on certain players, though at least it ties into the theme. Having the fake snow plastered across the background is enough of a tie in for me.

Solid number of additions, given the cards in this bunch, but the highlight is the triple Jays...

Like the Springer sprawl - though prefer the non-holiday version so the snow doesn't distract from a great card.

If anyone else has needs for the set, I still have a bunch of duplicates, but here is a snap shot from the traders added today...

As you can see, some in multiples. Always entertaining offers, so reach out if I can send anything your way, whether you have anything for trade or not, as I really need to start moving some cards out of the trader boxes.

No Need To Be Square

 Hello, first time attendee to the blog, another from the 2026 Lot - we have 2022-23 Donruss Optic basketball.

A surprise to none, it is the same design as Donruss for the year, just in Chrome form - so the cards don't scan nearly as well and the players look more like standouts in a dark gloom of a background. The cards look much better in hand, but one thing is clear on the cards...

I know it's part of the design, but why do we need the floating little white box under the Donruss Optic logi in the top left corner? I mean, is this the donut hole from the "O" that just feel from the logo, but didn't get cleaned up? What is the point of the little box? I swear, I'd expect there to be parallels either with a different colour block, or variations of the cards where the block is missing - I mean, this is Panini...

Getting use to Panini backs, these are standard enough, and luckily, no floating blocks to be seen, so I don' have to feel like I'm playing Minecraft or something. 

Lowry as a Heat...no thank you....you are and always will be a Raptor.

My first foray of cards into the set, and with it being 200 cards, not including the short printed/rookie cards of the final 50, a couple more grabs like this and I can get someone a nice start of the set if needed.

From The Grinch

Always a good day when a trade let's you finish a set, and this trade with TCDB member iamthegrinch. One of the few trades I initiate, the Paul Bearer card below was the last card in the 1999 Comic Images WWF Smackdown set I needed to finish the 72 card set.

Wasn't going to just trade and send a single card in a PWE, so we were able to expand it a bit, and I got some more wrestling cards in the trade accordingly.

It allows me to share My back in his pre-Ryback state as Skip. I wasn't a huge Ryback fan, but was 1,000 times better than Skip.

Still not a Chronicles fan by anyway, but happy to get them and nice to see...Rob...Van....Dam...

Thank you for the trade!

Change Of Mind

Sometimes, I don't plan to collect a set, but enough comes along in a lot that I figure, I like it enough - so let's go for it. We'll, that is what we have today with baseball's 2023 Topps Holiday set.

I went back and adjusted for the earlier cards I picked up, and then added some from today as well...

Those are all keepers and bump to about 1/3 done on the base set with more, I am sure, to come. I still prefer the designs with say, snowy edging instead of snow across all the background, but just personal preference there of course.

Nice pickup for the Jays collection with Gaus.

As for the duplicates...

Snow or not - I like that Albies card, great action shot.

No surprise the bump up I percentage with putting some cards to the collection instead of for trade.

Contending

 Not showing all the cards from 2020 Panini Contenders which all came from the 2026 lot today, but this will give a good sampling...

Aaron Rodgers as card number one - we have the usual Cobtenders design. I don't know what the significance, if any, for the game number is. I did however get 3 copies of the Gronk card for what it's worth.

The Titan uniform could easily go for a CFL Argonauts uniform.

Big Ben, and backs that lack stats. 

No inserts or parallels, but about 100 cards with a few dupes, but a good part of the base set. Should be good trade fodder for when I get active enough to reach out and initiate trades on TCDB. Which I promise will happen one of these days...