Issue #15 | April 25, 2026
Comped
The Numbers
Back to mixed results
–Baseball Up the most of the sports
–Basketball 8 week streak
–Football listless with the draft ongoing
–Soccer World Cup in 47 days
–Pokemon Make that 15 consecutive weeks of gains
–One Piece pops off
–S&P 500 continues streak of wins
–Gold risk is off
–Bitcoin continues its rally
I’m most interested in the dip in gold this week. My in-the-deep-end economist training was that generally speaking when you have gold down but everything else up, that means risk is on.
Risk-on brings capital flows back into the stock market first, then trickles down into everything else as long as the bets keep hitting.
Gold down tells us that President Trump vs. Iran in the diplomatic war over Hormuz is more bark than bite, as far as markets are concerned. Here’s to hoping that’s correct and we can put this behind us as soon as possible.
One interesting note, in the past month, the three biggest winners as far as sports card and tcg indexes are concerned are Pokemon (+12.74%), One Piece (10.45%), and Star Wars (7.27%)????
The News
Pick 1.01 to the Raiders
1) I love the NFL Draft. By nature, what I truly enjoy most is building teams, so I have countless hours logged in fantasy draft seasons of Madden. Miss those days.
Just like Draft Day shows as one of the best movies of all time, (lol) there’s all sorts of behind the scenes wheeling and dealing. I love that.
Being that this is the first 1.01 for the Raiders since JaMarcus Russell in 2007, I thought it would be fun to compare the highest card value for JaMarcus in 2007 vs. Fernando in 2026.
“Hold on”, you may say, “that can’t be fair since Mendoza only has college uni cards out. Those are usually way less valuable than NFL ones” Very astute of you. But let’s do it anyway, full send. Here’s the date sold, card, and value:
Fernando Mendoza (Jan 2026): 2025 Bowman Chrome University Superfractor 1/1: $78K
Jamarcus Russell (June, 2007): 2007 Donruss Elite Auto 1/1: $1K (1,592 inflation adj)
JaMarcus Russell was a much bigger deal that Mendoza. How far we’ve come.
The sheer dollar amount in The Hobby is staggering, when you think about all the players, and all the sets and parallels we have now…
2) Which thoughts may lead you to be concerned about overprinting in the modern age.
An article by Athlon sports shares your concern, citing that the 2025 Topps Flagship NBA release alone was 429 million cards (full article here).
3) Speaking of crazy money, in case you missed it Mr. Beast is rumored to be buying The Seattle Seahawks for $6.4 billion🤯.
The Framework
Imagine trying to rainbow every year of a player
I’ve spoken about this for a couple weeks already to my Slabnomics Investor Tier subs, but I am convinced that long-term future opportunities in ultramodern cards hinge on choosing the right parallels.
There is too much money sloshing around in too many baskets to make sense long term. In 20 years are people really going to care about the Plum Blossom SP?
What I believe will happen, is market contraction will pull money out of “risk-on” assets (Plum blossom, Topps logofractors, animal prints, etc.) and money will consolidate in the tried-and-true (Gold and silver first-and-foremost, although there’s a silver problem in modernity).
To put it in simple market cycle terms: When times are good, money flows everywhere. When times are tight, money flows out of risky, fringe assets and into traditional assets that are widely accepted (these are called “safe-havens” in the investing world).
Whenever markets sharply go up, there will always be the gloom-and-doom crowd who want to warn everyone that they will come back down; it’s an easy “contrarian” argument to make, even though it’s not contrarian at all, it’s plain common sense. But I digress.
The point is, instead of fretting about when markets will go up or down, focus on timeless players in timeless parallels. That way if the market keeps going up, your asset does as well. If the market takes a turn, you’re in the kind of asset that is safeguarded from market downturns.
One of the best exercises for re-wiring your brain for better buying is replacing the question in your mind of “should I buy this card” with “what card should I buy?”
We continue to make more money when snoring than when active.
Warren Buffett
Keep Building,
DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. The content reflects the author’s personal opinions and analysis and should not be construed as a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any assets. Sports cards and collectibles are speculative investments with significant risk of loss. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The author may hold positions in assets discussed in this newsletter. Readers should conduct their own research and consult with qualified financial, tax, and legal professionals before making any investment decisions. By reading this newsletter, you acknowledge and accept these terms.