It's the worst set of the year by any stretch, in terms of inserts, value, card quality, etc... But in my opinion Stadium Club has THE best photos of any set out there. The cards are just COOL to me.
This was from 2 blaster boxes - nothing special but I'll add them to my SC binder.
Need help and advice! Recently switched from a OnePlus 12 to a 15. Love the phone but one issue is driving me insane.
When connected to my Lexus via Bluetooth, the audio constantly "skips" or stutters about 4-5 times per minute. Some notes:
- My old phone, and my wife's Samsung, do not have this problem at all
- My phone does not have this problem in a different car (Honda) and does not have this problem in my Bose earbuds
- I've tried everything you can think of from the car side
- My old OnePlus had this issue a long time ago but changing the AVRCP versions around seemed to fix it.
- I've tried changing all the Bluetooth settings around in Developer Options but can't seem to fix it.
- BIGGEST DETAIL AND WHY I'M SURE IT'S THE PHONE: The issue isn't there if my phone is ONLY playing audio. But if it's running Maps, or getting texts, or when I open the phone to look at something, it almost always makes the audio skip.
Thanks for any troubleshooting advice!!
All for the PC. A huge value card is always nice to get but there's something fun about a mail day that's all across the board like this 😁
Well, I was at an MLB game with my kid and the team store had Chrome megas for sale, so I impulsively bought two of them and a blaster. This is the summary of the "hits"... thank God for the MVP cards at least. 🙏
My Little Leaguer has gotten really into cards this past year, and one fun thing we've done is make custom packs and give them out to other kids at the ballgame. We went to see Angels/Royals yesterday and gave out several packs, and it was great for my kid to see how happy and surprised people were when he'd offer them a pack. Good life lessons for sure.
I usually pull out a whole bunch of base of the specific team, then maybe a few "nice" base like Chrome of the same team, then a few cheap foil inserts of other MLB stars (Stars of MLB, Titans of the Game etc), and then a team card and at least 1-2 cards of the best player on that team.
Highlight was finding a visiting family from KC and giving them a pack with a Jac and Bobby Witt Jr in it, then watching Bobby Baseball hit a HR right after!
Great seller! Saw I was personally collecting a player and asked if I was interested in a really nice auto card. Set a fair price and shipped the card super quickly, arrived in perfect condition. Would definitely buy form or trade with again!
Great seller to work with on here. Made a good deal on a small lot of cards, shipped them quickly with good packaging and I'm super happy with them. Would definitely buy from or trade with again.
My second biggest PC is Kyle Stowers, who's not a huge name, never played on my favorite team, and isn't super valuable. But I'm closer to a couple of rainbows with this PC than I've ever gotten with any other player.
It all started because I know someone related to Stowers, and then by pure luck I wound up pulling a couple of really nice numbered cards of his. So then I entered a few breaks for him (very cheap!) and hit a few times too. So at that point I figured what the heck, let's try to build a real collection at this point.
Who's the most random or less-obvious player you've collected? Share some PCs!
Stowers going on the IL is awful news and the timing really sucks. To keep the positive vibes going and wish him well / back to full strength as soon as possible, I'm sharing my PC of Kyle Stowers cards.
Anyone else collect Stowers or Marlins? Would love to see some more cards or memorabilia!
My two biggest individual PCs are these guys. Big thanks to u/IslayHaveAnother and u/Astrozee for being great people to trade with!
Recently did a trade + sale with this user and everything was smooth. He paid quickly and also sent the trade card fast, it arrived in perfect condition. Thanks for a great card trading experience!
The Carter alone goes for $10 on eBay but happy to get these to someone who PC's the Expos!
Saw a post on here from a guy doing a midday rip. So I said I'd join in the fun too.
No hits, of course.
Recently sold a card to this user and it was a great transaction - fast payment, fun to discuss cards with, and they let me know once they arrived in the mail. Great user to trade/sell with!
Recently sold a card to this user and it was a great transaction - fast payment, fun to chat about cards with, and they let me know once they arrived in the mail. Great user to trade/sell with!
Booked a hotel room through the Cap One app and I have to cancel, can't make it due to a family emergency.
When I go to cancel it says it's non refundable, but I thought the advantage of booking through the app / with this card was that you can cancel if needed? Or get travel reimbursement?
Does the travel reimbursement only apply to travel methods (airfare, etc)?
Pure degeneracy. Ripped a ton of Chrome with a buddy (only half of it was mine) and I FINALLY got some nice hits. Really pleased actually.
Not surprised that all the autos are trash, but the Mason Miller one as a bonus makes up for them. And the Harper is the first "big" hit I've ever pulled.
Will Robertson auto is for sale - $250
LONG READ — TLDR: Topps is a monopoly and they're making really cool cards, but they're making TOO many of them.
Let me start by saying that I like a lot of these cards. I loooooove Raywave refractors even of junk players. The color foils look great. Pulling an auto, relic, Golden Mirror or rare insert is always fun.
But after looking through the parallel guides, checklists and official odds sheets for 2026 Topps Series 1, Series 2 and Chrome, I feel like we modern collectors are confusing an enormous quantity of different “rare” cards with actual scarcity/value??
Across these three releases, Topps gave us:
54 named Series 1 base parallel treatments
60 named Series 2 base parallel treatments
53 named Chrome base Refractor treatments
Thats 167 different base parallel treatments from only three releases.
Of those, approximately 135 are serial-numbered or have a stated limited print run.
And when you add those announced print runs across the full base checklists, you get approximately:
1.996 million known-limited Series 1 base parallels
At least 1.779 million known-limited Series 2 base parallels
Approximately 907,000 known-numbered Chrome base parallels
So that's approximately 4.68 million numbered or otherwise stated-print-run base parallels.
Not base cards.
Not unnumbered Rainbow Foils, Holo Foils, Diamantes, Raywaves, X-Fractors or Geometric Refractors, Golden Mirrors or image variations, etc... Just the known-limited versions of the regular base cards.
The official Topps odds sheets are even more overwhelming. My audit found approximately 1,030 distinct treatment entries across the three products: 345 in Series 1, 345 in Series 2 and 340 in Chrome.
Those are not 1,030 players or checklist cards. They are 1,030 different ways a card can be presented as a parallel, variation, insert color, autograph version, relic version or special-edition chase.
A /25 can be scarce while “rare cards” are abundant
This is the distinction I think the hobby is missing.
Yes, an Orange /25 has only 25 copies.
But the same player may also have an Orange Refractor /25, Orange Wave /25, Orange Geometric /25, Orange X-Fractor /25, Orange flagship foil /25, Orange insert /25 and multiple unrelated autograph or variation cards numbered to 25.
Then there are all the /50s, /75s, /99s, /150s, /199s, /250s and /399s.
For a Series 1 base subject appearing across the complete rainbow, the stated limited treatments add up to approximately 5,703 copies.
For a Chrome base subject, they add up to approximately 3,024 copies.
So a player with one flagship card and one Chrome card could theoretically have more than 8,700 limited base parallels from those two products alone—before we touch insert parallels, image variations, autos or relics.
It's not traditional junk wax, it's fragmented scarcity manufactured at industrial scale (by one greedy ass manufacturer, essentially).
The overall production numbers are wild...
BaseballCardPedia has estimated, using pack odds, approximately 1.38 million copies of each Series 1 base card and 991,775 copies of each Series 2 base card.
Across the two 350-card sets, that would be roughly 830 million flagship base cards, not including factory sets.
A separate odds-sheet analysis estimates 2026 Chrome production at approximately 72.95 million cards, including:
48.9 million base cards
10.4 million inserts
13.05 million parallels
940,079 numbered base parallels
80,675 numbered insert cards
560,571 autographs
If those estimates are close, we are talking about more than 900 million cards from these three releases alone, before adding any flagship inserts, parallels, autos, or relics.
And these are only three products,.I'm not even talking about Update, Chrome Update, Heritage, Archives, Stadium Club, Finest, Bowman, Bowman Chrome, Sapphire, Logofractor, Cosmic Chrome and however many other releases or exclusive configurations appear.
Funny enough though, 2026 Chrome may be “better” than 2025 (and still is a problem)...
The Chrome production analysis found that Topps reduced the number of unnumbered parallels by about 40% from 2025.
That's an improvement. There may be fewer boxes artificially packed with meaningless shitty cards.
But the same analysis estimated:
It shifted production from obvious junk parallels into cards that look and feel more valuable: serial numbers, tougher inserts and additional premium treatments.
Maybe that's better for the ripping experience today, but I am not convinced it will be better for long-term values.
*** So I wonder....will 90% of these cards eventually be worthless? ***
“Worthless” may be too strong if it means literally zero dollars.
But I would not be surprised if 90% of today’s supposedly special cards eventually lose a ton of their current premium.
There are only so many collectors, only so much money and only so much display space.
And then there is the breaker problem
I cannot prove that Topps sends “loaded boxes” to influencers, and I do not think that accusation should be stated as fact without real evidence.
But the structural problem is visible.
Topps Chrome has an actual Breaker Delight configuration: 12 cards, two autographs and exclusive Geometric parallels, including a Tie-Dye /2 and exclusive Geometric autograph versions.
So the breaker channel does not merely open more products because it has more money. It receives products and chase cards designed specifically around breaking.
Fanatics owns the manufacturer, controls significant distribution, operates breaking and marketplace infrastructure, works directly with major influencers and decides which chase cards appear in which channels.
Even without proving that an individual box is seeded, that level of vertical integration should make collectors uncomfortable.
The casino designs the game, manufactures the tickets, operates part of the casino floor, promotes the winners and sells many of the tickets through favored high-volume players.
So....
I do not think this is identical to the late-1980s Junk Wax Era.
Back then, manufacturers just produced enormous quantities of essentially identical cards.
Today, manufacturers produce enormous quantities of different versions presented as scarce.... And that may actually be MORE effective, because collectors can look at a serial number and convince themselves their card is protected from overproduction.
But a card can be individually scarce while its entire category is oversupplied.
A /25 is only meaningful if collectors continue to care about that particular /25 more than the dozens of other scarce versions of the same player.
My prediction is that most will not.
We'll probably look back on this period and realize that Topps did not eliminate junk wax. It simply added foil, serial numbers and refractors, and taught us to pay a premium for it.
So fellow hobbyists, are we collecting genuinely important cards, or are we just buying lottery tickets whose prizes are being manufactured faster than long-term demand can absorb them?