2025 Stadium Club Light Blue Ken Griffey Jr.

Couldn’t pass picking this one up on release day. As a kid growing up in Cincinnati you couldn’t help but be a fan of Junior. Can’t wait to get the color match mag to put this one on display!!

Over the last 200 days, I’ve met some pretty cool people who genuinely love the hobby and enjoy talking about it as much as I do. Along the way, I’ve also discovered a lot of cards I either completely forgot about—or didn’t even know existed—thanks to my daily scrolling through Mantel, which naturally turned into new cards I had to start hunting down.

And yes… I’ve absolutely been influenced by @JRFickle and his suggestions 😂

I picked these Amber Glenn autos up a couple of months ago after JR first wrote about them in Mantel’s Mail Day email. I can’t help but wonder how many of you—or maybe even JR himself—I lost countless auctions to while trying to grab a few more of her autos.

All that said, I’ve really enjoyed the journey over these last 200 days and I’m looking forward to many more to come.

Looking for some honest advice from the hobby crowd.

I’ve been a lifelong Reds fan and always enjoyed watching JJ Hoover pitch. He recently opened a card shop just outside of Cincinnati, and I’m planning on making the drive up to check it out.

I’m not really the type to walk up and ask for autographs or geek out when I’m around pro athletes. I try to stay composed and treat them like anyone else I meet — I imagine it probably gets old being hounded all the time.

So what do you all think?

Do I bring a card and shoot my shot for an autograph, or just treat him like any other LCS owner and talk hobby?

Curious to hear how others would handle it.

What’s your biggest sales regret of 2025?

I’ll start… selling my 2025 Topps Home Field Advantage Shohei Ohtani way too early. Then I decided to build the HFA set, and of course the card doubled in value.

That’s the hobby for you — lessons learned the hard way. What’s yours?