Are There Too Many Sports Card Parallels?

An interesting observation this weekend as I was thumbing through ALT looking at trending cards. Over the last 7 days, as of this past Sunday, the top trending cards across all sports were:

• Clyde Drexler (Basketball)

• Barry Sanders (Football)

• Reggie Jackson (Baseball)

• Lionel Messi (Soccer)

• Mario Lemieux (Hockey)

Now, aside from Messi, all of those players are long-ish retired and fall into the category of “vintage modern.”

Here’s a few overreactive warm takes on what this small-sample-size, potentially coincidental trend reads like to me. 

First, I think people are becoming a bit exhausted and overwhelmed by the number of sets, parallels and just overall sheer number of cards being graded now. 

Consider this, as someone who is an idiot and doesn’t know how to officially look these types of things up, if you just go to PSA and search their records for graded cards you get these results:

• Clyde Drexler: 1,453 results of items graded by PSA 

• Ausar Thompson: 2,841 results of items graded by PSA

OK, so that isn’t the total number of cards graded, but the items. What stands out is that Drexler played 15 seasons in the NBA and over 1,000 regular season games. Thompson has only played two seasons and just 122 games. 

And he already has over two thousand different kinds of items graded at PSA - if I’m reading that right. Fair to say that number will 10x by the time his career is over? At least 5x? 

That’s wild. Remember when they announced that Jayden Daniels will have 64 different parallels for his Prizm base rookie card? That’s just his base Prizm. How many “parallels” did Clyde Drexler have for his 1986-87 Fleer rookie card? Just one (or I guess none, given “parallel” implies two, or something).

It’s apples and oranges, I know, but makes you wonder if we’ve just reached peak overwhelm at this point. 

The other thing, of course, is generational nostalgia might be in a new cycle. If you’re my age, you remember watching Drexler, Barry Sanders, Mario Lemieux, etc., in their prime. And holding that Fleer “true” Drexler rookie card brings back a memory and/or emotion. 

Should I buy the “true” Drexler rookie card in a PSA 10 or an Ausar Thompson Red Mojo Prizm Spongebob Numbered Fractal /25 rookie card only to have my buddy say “yeah but that’s not the Purple Shark Emoji Mojo FloJo Aye Yo /10 Bro” parallel. 

Take this as emotional advice, not financial advice, but my approach is also to buy what makes you happy and less confused. 

Panini was back again with their WNBA Rookie Royalty shenanigans. This past week they launched their digital-only NFT version of the pack [i.e. not physical cards] and started the Dutch auction at $15,000 per screenshot pack. 

Some are saying I was wrong for all the noise I made around the $30,000 Dutch auction for the physical cards, but I stand by my grumpy hot take around “the art of gambling within the hobby.” I’m old! Allow me to be grumpy, please. 

However, I own way too many Zion Williams NBA Topshot NFTs that were once in the several hundreds of dollars and now worth several hundreds of cents to believe that buying these NFTs at anywhere in the range of $15,000 to the eventual floor of $1,411 was a good idea.

Your digital trading card is not worth thousands of dollars because the physical one actually exists. What made NBA Topshot at least unique was that it wasn’t a complete replica of actual trading cards. It was highlight videos of actual moments, for those unfamiliar. 

Anyway, as I wrote above, buy what brings you the most joy - I’m not here to rip anyone who bought the packs, mostly just trying to find my own peace and place outside of the venn diagram where collecting and gambling meet within the hobby. 

Speaking of the WNBA, one of the more interesting things worth watching is the Caitlin Clark market. If you are someone, like me, who missed out on the rush to spend thousands of dollars on the Royalty packs, the news of her missing the remainder of the WNBA season coupled with the cool down post-purchase, her market is becoming a tiny bit more approachable. 

With Sophie Cunningham being out and her market cooling, and Angel Reese being the least popular person in Chicago at the moment, the Paige Bueckers market might rip to another level. 

The Athletic has a nice read on the Caitlin Clark market post-injury, by the way.

Topps announced that Garbage Pail Kids are coming back to Topps Chrome Baseball, which releases later this month. Instead of linking out to the Topps page to get a sneak peek, I wanted to instead link you out to the lead artist who creates these cards for Topps, David Gross. 

Incredible work, Mr. Gross. More like, David…Gro..ss..er? Yeah, David Grosser! Sigh. I’d never make it as a GPK creator. 

You just know this was listed as an “eBay 1/1.”

I’m about to either blow your mind or confuse you with this next sentence, but here goes: Josh Allen released new candy-flavored limited-edition Buffalo wings Snickers sauces.

Remember a few weeks ago when I said that you should set a reminder to make sure you snag Topps Chrome Boxing, which was making its “long-awaited” return to the hobby? Remember? Yeah, I forgot to set a reminder. And, yeah, it sold out. 

If you did grab one, make sure you rip it and share your hits on Mantel! I’m very interested in seeing what people get.