Mantel Throws in on the Paul Skenes 1/1 Bounty

There’s a new dawn on hobby bounties and I’m all here for it. 

Sure, it’s nice when Ken Goldin or Dave & Adam’s Card World offer you six or seven figures for pulling a massive card, but this new experience-driven bounty trend is starting to pick up steam - and, honestly, I love it. 

Everyone is chasing the Paul Skenes 1/1 “Debut Patch” out of Topps Chrome Update and it’s not only because it’s a potential 7-figure card, but because if you do pull it then it unlocks a sweet suite experience with Livvy Dunne at a Pirates game and a VIP experience at a Seth Myers taping, and even the Pirates themselves offered up a massive haul inclusive of two season tickets behind home plate for the next thirty years. 

Hell. Yeah. 

Look, you’re already going to get a Scrooge McDuck-sized king’s ransom for that card and riches beyond belief, but the hobby sometimes takes the sport out of the hunt; and to be able to let someone enjoy the pull and not immediately turn the card over for a big fat check is a fun new hobby development. 

Wait, don’t tell the Mantel team, but I’m adding to the bounty! If you pull the 1/1 Skenes rookie card, and share it first on Mantel you’ll get the following: a Mantel hat, a Mantel hoodie, and, you know what, everyone on the Mantel staff will share one of their favorite collectibles with you - to help load up your personal Mantelpiece! And then you can cash in one of the other bounties for the actual card, because I don’t think Mantel can compete with what Goldin, Dunne or the Pirates are offering.

Look, I have no sway over at Mantel but once this goes to print it’s gospel. Shh. Good luck!  

Is Lily Yohannes the next rising star to keep an eye on?

Some seem to think so. After deciding to play for USWNT over the Dutch Football Federation, the 17-year-old – born in the US, but residing in the Netherlands with her family – is being compared to wunderkind Lamine Yamal who took the soccer world by storm this past season.

Yohannes has a rookie card in the 2023-24 Topps Chrome UEFA Women’s Champions League boxes, with her Sapphire 1/1 netting over $2.2k just last week. 

It’s certainly speculative, seeing as she’s just 17 years old and every year we say “hey, we’ve found the next future superstar in soccer” but, tbh, what might work in her favor is that the next FIFA Women’s World Cup won’t be until 2027, and she’ll have another 2+ years to train with her team.

The pressure is on, but not immediately on. 

If you’re looking for another fun card in women's sports to keep an eye on, over at Mantel a member shared their latest haul, a Cammi Granato PSA 10 2004 Upper Deck Young Guns card which is currently the only Young Guns card featuring a woman. 

Another cool collectible in the women’s sports space: JuJu Watkins got her own Funko Pop! She is the first active NCAA basketball player to have a Funko Pop, and we’ll be buying a few of these.  

Some big news broke this weekend as someone paid $314k for a John Hilton rookie card. Shame for Mike Schmidt collectors, given the high barrier to entry for his rookie cards.

Another crazy-thing-I’m-keeping-an-eye-on-that-is-probably-stupid: I’m watching whether or not Topps has learned anything about their Victor Wembanyama and C.J. Stroud trial runs, and if they will give collectors their due when it comes to chasing Caleb Williams rookie cards. 

Williams has an exclusive deal with Fanatics, who owns Topps, so we won’t be seeing any autographed rookie cards in Panini products (i.e. Select, Optic, Prizm, Donruss, etc.) - similar to what we experienced with Wemby and Stroud, who also have exclusivity deals with Fanatics. 

Of course, those deals led to Stroud and Wemby getting limited edition rookie-campaign collectors boxes released by Topps, which at the time of their respective releases were really prime gets and featured early autos of the two stars. 

Then, welp, came the avalanche of Topps (non-logo) rookie cards. Wemby and Stroud were everywhere, loaded with autos, numbered cards and short prints in both boxes and Topps Now products, which ultimately started to cannibalize the limited edition collectors boxes. 

If Williams gets his own limited edition box you would hope that there is some exclusivity around it - that there are some cards, designs or, hell, even experiences that you can only get when buying this set. 

And if anybody from Topps is reading this- if/when you do release a Williams collectors box, please don’t drop an avalanche of cards that chip away at the collectibility of the set. 

Then again, some might argue that the 28th best QB in the NFL probably shouldn't be getting a limited edition rookie box, anyways... 

Finally, we know the news is a few weeks old, but we still think Bobby Witt, Jr., using PSA slabbed cards as his invite to his wedding for his groomsmen is awesome, and wanted to acknowledge that fact. We need more of this in the hobby, and not just for superstar baseball players. 

How cool would it be to send friends and family invites or mementos from events or big life moments in a PSA slab?

Love this idea.