Playing Solo Mental Table Tennis, Debating the Next Dumb Purchase

We start this week with Leaf Major League Table Tennis. The “I should buy a box!/I absolutely should NOT buy a box” battle is keeping me up at night. 

Observe:

Pro: There may be a market for someone in this set, much like various pickleball cards have shot up in value.

Con: Who could that someone be? I have no idea. I know nothing about table tennis. 

Pro: Some sleuthing has turned up Rachel Sung. $30 autographed card! 

Con: …”or best offer.”

Pro: Amy Wang — Jersey girl! Lily Zhang — 64k IG followers!

Con: How about Giulia Takahashi, who Instagram has suggested we now follow after searching 12 female table tennis players on the platform in the span of 8 minutes?

Pro: …No. But hey, opening a box of table tennis cards might be fun!

Con: It’s nine cards. 

Pro: …with five autographs for $50!

Con: Five MLTT autographs for $50. We still don’t know who anyone is. Did you know, for instance, it’s an American league with teams barnstorming across the country?

Pro: It’ll make a good topic for Mail Day.

Con: I can do that without actually buying the box and just lay bare my internal struggle for all to see.

Pro: Maybe there’s the Next Livvy Dunne in here? Or hey man, with eBay you can sell these cards to anyone anywhere! Big international audience!

Con: Didn’t we exhaust the Livvy Dunne FOMO when we bought that Lone Star Women’s Softball box? Also you know we never sell anything. It’s all in a big tub in the basement. We are wimps. 

Pro: We are wimps.

Con: We are handsome wimps. (Pause) What are we doing with our lives?

Pro: You know what’ll cheer us up?

Me, full again: A MAJOR LEAGUE TABLE TENNIS CASE!!!

I want to address something I said last week, lest you think I am a “Score hater.” From

The Book of Fickle:

“Go Scoreless: Score NFL 2025 is just a brutally awful product”

I’m adding an official asterisk to that. A Ficklestrisk!

While Score 2025 is mostly brutally awful, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Score-A-Treat from last year – it was a product that had a heavy Halloween design, with packs of three cards each, made to give out to trick or treaters. 

But you know what? In retrospect, that 2024 Score-A -Treat set was absolutely stacked with rookies: J.J. McCarthy, Jayden Daniels, Malik Nabers, Marvin Harrison, Jr., et al. I gave all my packs away to trick or treaters like a normal human being, was told I was “cool,” and woke up on Nov. 1 to an unscathed home and front yard. And now Score-A-Treat 2025 is out and it’s a chance to get in on Cam Ward, Ollie Gordon, Ashton Jeanty, Jaxson Dart, Shedeur Sanders, Omarion Hampton… and whoever else might emerge this season. And it’s cheap. 

Prices to buy singles of last year’s cards have stayed mostly where you would think for “niche cards with a holiday theme designed for an adult to selflessly distribute to children.”  But I have a hunch…a tingle… that the 2024 rookies might be worth something, eventually. There are cool parallels in there, they’re meant to be tumbling in a bag with candy bars for hours (so there shouldn’t be a lot of PSA 10s). This is how it starts. 

Just don’t be this guy:

Oh, no crap, pal!

Look, it’s not Topps Holiday. Nothing ever will be. But Score-A-Treat is filed under Big Dumb Fun and imagine if you actually give them away to kids on Halloween? You may get a reputation as the cool house and wake up the next day similarly un-TP’d. 

And all this doesn't mean you shouldn’t speculate on some graded rookies while they’re cheap on the secondary market, either. Worst case? They remain cheap!

Speaking of things for kids that greedy adults have ruined — the TMNT/Hello Kitty crossover at McDonald’s has sold out at stores all around me.

It’s now down to leftover garbage from past giveaways and it is not going over well here, as we are getting Sonic 3 toys and those are met with… whatever the opposite of delight is. 

The good news? I’ve convinced the kids Wendy’s is better… for now. 

My buddy Big Clerc sent me a link this week pointing me in the direction of Upper Deck Government Conspiracies cards. It looked like this:

And then it all went downhill. 

This is an e-pack. That was the first thing. Is anyone still doing digital stuff? NFTs? I don’t even know where the hell the Topps NFTs I bought are — they’ve changed servers and hosts at least 50 times. My misguided purchases of Godzilla packs and Bazooka Joe NFTs are in a literal ether… somewhere. 

My Top Shots? Same. No idea where the money I sold them for is. I had to download apps, add bank accounts… total chaos. It’s not worth the stress to find $68 from (more) misguided purchases. 

And so here comes a possibly fun set of cards from Upper Deck — who I love for their creativity with actual, real, cardboard cards — and not only does it turn out to be a digital release but THEN it turns out to be an X-Files product. I love the X-Files, but I really would’ve loved a relic card of some forgotten conspiracy from the 1980s. One that I could hold in my hand. 

Anyway, hard pass. I’ll buy a box of Goodwin Champions to balance it all out, though. 

Two side notes:

1. Parkside does this too. I get all excited at a cool-looking card… and it turns out to be digital. 

2. I keep calling it Godwin Champions. I can’t be the only one, right?

That is it for this week, people! Enjoy your first week of the NFL season!! See you at the same time next week!