This is crazy. The Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge Dual Logoman 1/1 card sold for over $2.1M on auction. What’s so crazy about it? Well, it depends on who you ask. 

Some are saying that $2.1M for a dual auto, non-rookie card is a pretty massive haul. “Crazy” amount of money. Others, well, they were expecting the card to go for anywhere from $4-$5M. 

Given the market boom that Ohtani has had in the last few months and the fact that a 1/1 Aaron Judge rookie auto sold for over $5M a few weeks ago, it felt like this card was destined to hit the $5M mark. “Crazy” it didn’t, right?

While some are saying (or, joking?) that Judge “brought down the value of the card,” it’s worth noting that Judge’s market is in a pretty big boom, to which I have a theory! 

I think we’ve seen the Aaron Judge card market explode over the past few months because most people can’t afford Shohei Ohtani rookie cards anymore. Simple as that. 

The rise in value has priced a ton of people out of the market and they are now moving on to the next best thing: Aaron Judge.

But, wait, didn’t Aaron Judge “sink” the value of the dual 1/1 auto? I think what sunk the value of that card is that it’s just a B.S. made-up card. Simple as that, again. 

The card has no historical equity. It’s not a rookie card, first of all, and like we’ve seen with the whole “Logoman” craze in recent years: they can just… make another one. 

LeBron James has the famous triple Logoman, but also he has a dual Logoman with Michael Jordan, one with both Jordan and Kobe Bryant, one with Victor Wembanyama – then there’s the one from the 2007-08 Upper Deck SP set. You get what I’m saying, right? 

While, yes, the sale of $2.1M is indeed “crazy,” what will we say about the price when Topps releases another version in next year’s set? Or when they release a “Sluggers” set where they sell variations of Ohtani and Judge’s “historic” 2026 season – see, I made that up but it’s highly believable, right? 

Anyway, cool card, lots of money, I wish I had it, congrats to both the seller and buyer, but it would be nice to have a set standard for these 1/1 cards. 

Topps Bowman Chrome Basketball looks amazing. The Garbage Pail Kid rookie cards are, as the kids say, fire emoji. My biggest beef with the set, though, is that they combined NBA cards with NCAA cards. 

Of course they did this to increase the sales value and volume on the hobby boxes, but not all NBA collectors are NCAA collectors, and vice versa. 

Also, Topps, we have too many sets. The Cooper Flagg market is starting to come back down to earth because literally there are enough rookie autos for every man, woman and child. Still, I’m going to be chasing the GPK cards in this set for sure.

The Athletic (slash New York Times) did a piece on the ever-growing problem of “shill bidding” on auction sites like Alt, Fanatics, eBay and others. 

It’s an annoying practice but, also, it feels inevitable. If you’ve bid on auctions on eBay then you’ve 100% been shill bidded – “Shill bidded”? Sure. There’s no way around it. 

The solve is, well, don’t do auctions. Buy “buy it now” cards, send “best offers,” and go to your local card shop or card show and buy from dealers there. 

“Yeah, but I get the best deals on auctions.” Oh, really? In theory you might. In reality that’s not always the case. Just be careful out there. 

This Kickstarter campaign has raised almost $1M to create a “to scale” doll version of the Leprechaun, the star of the 1993 horror film aptly named “Leprechaun.” 

It will look just like the real life version of this fake life character made to the exact size and scale of a real life leprechaun that doesn’t actually exist. What a time to be alive. 

Target is going to start selling more trading cards. You can expect to see more “prominent displays” and cards in aisles right next to the things you’re supposed to be buying at Target. 

By the way, the NCAA tournament has been a bit of a disaster so far for many of the top NBA prospects. However, on the women’s side of things: this is where I’m contractually obligated to remind you that I’ve been talking about Lauren Betts for two years now. 

And while I think the UCLA women’s team is destined to cruise through to the Finals, you have to wonder what USC would have been able to do with Jazzy Davidson and a healthy JuJu Watkins. 

Enjoy the rest of the tournament!