Night Owl Cards

    Christmas greetings.   My very first -- and, so far, only -- 2025 Topps Holiday card arrived in the mail a few days ago. I've said a few times that this year's Holiday set doesn't appeal to me because the design doesn't do enough to forget that the set is basically a repeat of flagship -- which was the issue with the first few years of Holiday.   However, the parallels are rather fun and this card is special. Not only is it my first Holiday card from this year but it is Jhonkensy Noel's first appearance in Holiday -- see the rookie logo -- which means this is a First Noel card.   It's too bad that Noel is currently without a team but he's useful in my collection right now. Added together with the other Noels in my collection, I have four total, which allows me to do this:     🎶Noel     🎶Noel     🎶Noel     🎵 Noel!     🎶Born   🎶is the     🎶King of     🎵Israel     Merry...

    As expected, I received some more 2025 Heritage in the mail at the end of last week. First, Rod of Padrographs sent me a bunch of his extras and then later the same day, the Fanatics "megabox" that I ordered back in March finally showed up.   After going through all of that, I am just short of halfway through on the set at 45 percent. As always with Heritage, this is deceptive since there are an ungodly 100 short-prints and I have like eight of them.   But I'm still enjoying the cards, despite all the drawbacks of modern sets, and I can see myself perhaps acquiring a hobby box at some point (maybe after prices go down) to continue building the set.   I've still got some observations and thoughts on this year's set, so I'll break all of this up into Rod's sends and then my box from Fanatics.     ROD'S CARDS   I received three stuffed nine-pocket pages of cards from Rod, not all 2025 Heritage but most of it was. It really helped make a dent and...