Juan Soto Has No Place to Call Home

Is anyone having a better December than Juan Soto? Hard to imagine anyone else is (aside from Mantel, after releasing the new mobile app), but one of the things I have been thinking a lot about is, with Soto being just 26 years old and an all-but a lock for the Hall of Fame, who are his collectors? Like, literally, who?

He’ll enter this season as a member of the New York Mets, which will mean he’s about to become a PC favorite for Mets fans. At least going forward. But are they going back and grabbing early Soto cards? 

Now, you assume that Mets fans haven’t been collecting Soto for the PC prior to this offseason; reason being that he started his career with a rival (the Nationals) and most recently was on their cross-town rival (the Yankees).  

What about Nationals fans? As of now, they are three-teams removed from rooting unconditionally for Soto and now he’s on their conference-rival Mets. Will they continue to grow the PC (Mets logo and all) if they do still have one?

Padres fans, well, not sure they feel much love for Soto. Especially after they gave up a ton to get him for 2.5 seasons and then in return got very little back for losing him to the Yankees. 

When it comes to Yankees fans, well, you’re not a “true” Yankee until you have a Yankee moment. It didn’t matter if in some alternate universe Scott Brosius had finished his career in Boston and won 3 titles for the Red Sox, that dude had “Yankee moments” in 1998 and 2001; he forever has a standing invite to any Yankee fans’ weddings for infinity and beyond. 

That’s not the case for Soto. “Hey, Soto, it’s a cash bar!” - a Yankees fan, probably. 

So, here we are, Soto is the highest paid player in the Majors, on his way to the HOF, and may end up being one of the all-time greats. But, is it possible that he is without a home in the eyes of sports collectors?

Welcome to Travis Hunter season. Congrats to him on winning the 2024 Heisman Trophy and congrats to you, steady-handed collector for holding onto your Hunter auto and (hopefully) offloading it after the announcement. 

I’m certainly not trying to be a hater, but one thing that’s super clear is that Bowman 1st cards in College Football don’t hold the same weight as they do in MLB - mostly because they aren’t apples-to-apples (one is a college card, the other, well, isn’t). 

Hunter, as a two-way superstar, may buck that trend. We’ve seen trend-buckers in recent years with Victor Wembanyama and Caitlin Clark’s Bowman 1st autos continuing to increase in value; so if he holds or climbs, don’t hold it against me. 

Secretly hoping, generally, that Bowman University 1sts start to catch fire. It’s a cool set. 

Did anyone end up buying the Topps x Chris Berman Boomer’s Baseball boxes? I’m all for oddball sports cards - if you’re not new here, you probably just nodded along as you read that - but I’m not sure this set was necessary? It is essentially a booster box sold at the price of a hobby box, without the guarantee of an auto and then if you wanted to build a rainbow parallel set of, say, Gunnar Henderson because he’s your PC then you have to fork over north of $500 (probably well north!!) just to do so. 

I’m a fan of Chris Berman – his nicknames are fun – and love the nostalgia factor but I think we need Topps to stop rumbling and stumbling their way toward releasing one-off random sets like this and maybe instead they should start doing something like putting Berman-approved nicknames on SP case hits in an existing set like Topps Update. 

This week in “WHAT ARE THOSE?!”  we take a look at the new 2024 Kakawow Diverse Trading Cards Season 1 set which includes the first ever autograph card from – /puts glasses on – Maye Musk who is – /puts bigger glasses on – the mother of Elon Musk. 

Her “rookie” cards include the “1st ever” auto inscription which, if I’m reading this correctly, she used the same inscription on each of the near-100 cards for the set she’s signed. Which means we have no idea which card is truly the first. 

Also in the set are cards from the likes of Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony, AJ Dillon and Chris Paul. These are very Allen & Ginter meets Goodwin Champions. There’s some pretty fun art cards in the set, but I kind of feel like Kakawow slides perfectly into the Disney, Harry Potter, Marvel, Warner Bros. category which they are famously known for. This set seems, again, unnecessary. 

Sorry, I’m being a buzzkill aren’t I?

In cooler hobby news, love this story of the aforementioned AJ Dillon and his quest to collect the full 33-card Mosaic rainbow of his teammate Tucker Kraft. If you haven’t thrown out all your Tucker Kraft cards already, make sure to help him out! 

Sorry, went negative again! 

With 2024 Bowman Draft releasing you know what that means: you’re broke, again! No, no, it means it’s time to start prospecting. 

There’s a few popular names in this year’s set, including Travis Bazzanna (1st overall pick) and Jac Caglianone (6th overall pick) - who are both on the box this year. But I’m very interested in who else you are hunting. John Elway, maybe?

Of course there’s two columns of players - column A, which includes the draft picks from your favorite team and then column B, which are the investment players. It can be exhausting keeping up with both, but we love a good hunt.

Pop over to Mantel and let us know who you’re chasing (and who you’ve already pulled) in this year’s set.

Finally, don’t forget to download the Mantel app. It’s super, super cool, with tons of new members joining since last week. See you over there!