Some Canadian baseball themed content before tonight's first pitch. Sam Jethroe retired long before the Blue Jays & Expos joined the major leagues, but he has strong ties to baseball in Canada.

He starred for the Montreal Royals during the 1948 & 1949 (stole 89 bases!) seasons and with the Toronto Maple Leafs from 1954-1958.

GO JAYS!!

I bought this card today. The moment was iconic and brings back memories!

Almost no one is talking about something that will have a MASSIVE and overwhelmingly negative impact for collectors and dealers in the United States who purchase sports cards and other collectibles from Canada or other countries (as well as Canadian / international small businesses such as myself who offer rare and unique items to the American market)

The US administration has signed an order ending the 'de minimis' exemption which until then allowed shipments valued under $800 to be exempt from import taxes. After August 29th, all shipments, regardless of value will need to go through formal customs clearance and be assessed duty based on the applicable tariff code.

Impacts I believe this will have in the hobby:

1) See attached notice I just received from eBay - Canada Post and other postal services around the world are not equipped to collect this duty and there is a high likelihood packages sent via these methods will be returned to sender. For small / low cost items, the postal service is the most economical method to ship - Couriers are MUCH more expensive and don't make sense for $10 cards for example.
2) For buyers, this may make international purchases much more expensive - in addition to duties, you may now see customs brokerage fees
3) This will likely significantly increase transit time - packages may take days or even weeks longer than previous to arrive
4) Much longer time for sellers to prepare packages for shipment and far greater complexity than previous.

See the article below for more details - I would encourage you to search "De Minimis" in google news or other news apps to learn more - you'll find lots of articles from a variety of sources

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-suspends-de-minimis-exception-1.7597830

NOTE: Please DO NOT turn this into a political post - I have friends on all sides of the political spectrum in the USA and Canada. I am posting for education and knowledge sharing only since almost no one I've talked to has been familiar this was happening

If any Canadian sellers have effective solutions for a large catalog of vintage items (9000+ vintage pieces sourced from around the world), please DM me as I would love to hear how others are navigating this