In my continuing quest to plug the gaps as far as any baseball card set issued during my youth, I recently landed the 1980 Burger King Pitch, Hit & Run set. Like the Burger King team sets of the late 1970s/1980, this set's design was produced by Topps and used the flagship design from the year of issue. As a youngster, I was well-aware of the Burger King team sets, but I don't recall knowing about the Pitch, Hit & Run set. It's possible that I had outgrown the advertising used for this set (I was 14) and it passed me by. I know I was too old to participate in Pitch, Hit & Run activities. Still, this was a huge oversight on my part, this set is 100% filled with the players from my youth and it also features one of my all-time favorite aspects of cards from this time -- updates and variations -- spin-offs from the flagship set, whether related to changing teams or for no good reason at all. My favorite aspect of sets like O-Pee-Chee is alterations f...
We're in February now and you know what that means -- the first new cards of the season. I think Topps is still issuing 2025 sets but the first for real-for real 2026 set is scheduled for release a week from Wednesday -- Series 1 of flagship drops on Feb. 11. Every year since connecting with the collecting community on social media I've had to fight the urge to find the first cards of the season as early as possible. When blogs were THE THING it was a race to find those cards and I'd lament never getting the jump on spotting them first. When Twitter was THE THING I'd marvel at how collectors would display the first cards of the season even before the release date. HOW? And I'd try desperately to get to Target or Walmart to find my own. Sometimes it would take 5 or 6 tries to spot the new cards. In more recent years I've paced myself, ignored the "fomo" feeling and calmly collecting the current sets at my own rate. Each year for the last three...