This is wild, yet expected. Victor Wembanyama officially owns the “most graded” PSA card among all active NBA players.

His 2023 Prizm base rookie card officially topped Zion Williamson’s 2019 Prizm base rookie card with over 43,400 cards graded to Zion’s more than 42,500

If you dial the way back machine, and dig a little deeper into this list, you can somewhat make a little sense of it. Ja Morant, whose 2019 Prizm base rookie card is third on the list, along with Williamson were the beneficiaries of the COVID boom. We were young, dumb and vulnerable; well, mainly bored. 

We were so bored that we graded over 22,000 Colby White 2019 Prizm rookie cards. That’s how badly we didn’t want to watch Lost again…and again. 

Cards were currency, you remember those days – we don’t need to relive them. 

There’s some bad news in this list, generally speaking. You aren’t going to retire young thanks to your pile of Wemby gem mint base rookies. Sorry, your mother wanted me to remind you. 

However, the old mantra of “the hobby is alive and well” starts to provide a little light. What brought a massive hoard of people to the hobby was COVID, what’s kept them there is Victor Wembanyama. 

It’s like they say when someone has lived somewhere longer than 5 years: “you’re a local.” Well guess what, you’ve been in the hobby for over five years now - some of you for many, many, many decades – and guess what; you’re a local. 

We’ve made mistakes, we’re all sitting on Coby White coasters, but it’s the friends we’ve made, the laughs we’ve had, and the jobs we’ve been forced to keep along the way that matters most. 

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Via @riphamiltonrips/IG

Speaking of Wemby, this massive Triple Logoman Flawless card featuring LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Victor Wembanyama was ripped by the rippers at Rip Hamilton Rips.

I know I may sound like an old fart, but honestly I love watching people pull these in breaks. Congrats to the owner of this card, a very cool piece of history you have there. 

Yeah but who would win in a fight: 1,000 Wemby Prizm rookies or 1 Flawless Triple Logoman?!

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This is also wild. PSA graded over 1.56 million cards in April, and over 951,000 of those were TCG cards. Of which I know so little that I had to double-check and make sure it was in fact TCG and not “TGC.”  

And then I got into the whole “is TCG and CCG the same thing” thread on Reddit. Once I had a good grasp on that, someone dropped OCG and so I shut it down and called it a night.

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Topps announced their new “Bowman Red Rookie Redemption” program and literally all I can think of is this is basically Schrute Bucks. 

It’s fake money. And if the player you own “does something good” – like wins ROY or MVP or Cy Young – then you will receive more Schrute Bucks Fanatics Fan Cash. 

Good luck, everyone!

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The proposed and looming tariffs that are hanging over the wine and spirits industries might not hit collectors that hard. Of course, the cost of adding to your collection is going to hurt quite a bit but if you’re looking to offload some of your collection you might just be the belle of the ball. 

You could sell some of your existing inventory and still be able to undercut retailers who are needing to account for additional costs due to tariffs.  

If you don’t collect wine or spirits, here’s how that would play out in sports terms: imagine if Topps was like “hey, we need to up the price of 2025 Topps Finest hobby boxes by 40% to $500 per box” and you’re like, “oh, hey, I have a bunch of those boxes in my wine cellar, randomly, and I paid $300 for them.” And then you go and sell those for $450.

Topps can’t touch that price because they’d be losing money but you’re sitting on those boxes that you bought 5 years ago (this is make believe, just go with it!) which means you can rake in the money. 

The only problem is, now imagine if the only way you could sell those boxes was to find some random dude on Facebook who swears he knows someone who went to high school with your cousin. 

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Finally, a big ol’ “welcome back” to the WNBA. This is arguably the most important season for the league since its inception with the looming collective bargaining agreement negotiations between the league the the player’s association. That could lead to a lockout in 2026 or potentially (hopefully) to the players getting their due. 

In the meantime, here’s my “meet me back here this time next year” question of the day for you: how many Caitlin Clark Prizm base rookie cards do you think will be graded by PSA? 

Head over to Mantel to drop in your guess.