The Journal

Weekend Reading

Our running column for sports card collectors — the blue-chip market’s most telling results, and the history behind them. New editions added regularly.
Weekend Reading · August 14, 2026

Still Twenty-Three

Michael Jordan hasn’t played an NBA game since 2003. Meanwhile, this month his boat fished the White Marlin Open in Ocean City, MD; earlier this year his race team’s driver opened the NASCAR season with three straight wins; and a flawless copy of his 1986 rookie changed hands for $347,700. The number keeps turning up.

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Weekend Reading · August 7, 2026

The Biggest Room

The 46th National Sports Collectors Convention drew well over a hundred thousand people to a hall outside Chicago. Among the sights: one of only three known unopened bricks of 1952 Topps at the Robert Edward Auctions booth — and a plain reminder of why the Mantle it doesn’t contain is worth millions.

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Weekend Reading · July 31, 2026

Both His Names

The summer’s great chase was pulled from a box in Florida on July 30 and sold within a day, privately, for a reported eleven million dollars. A note on what the card actually is, why that figure will not appear in our record, and the small matter of the card not yet existing.

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Weekend Reading · July 24, 2026

Under One Roof

Heritage’s summer sale closed with three of the cards we track crossing the block together — a 1952 Mantle at $1,555,500, an ’86 Fleer Jordan in a perfect 10 at $347,700, and a 2000 Tom Brady rookie autograph at $1,113,250. Half a century of the game in one room.

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Weekend Reading · July 17, 2026

In Good Company

The oldest auction house in the world hangs a Jordan beside its Old Masters; a fifty-year-old firm posts its biggest half ever; and a twenty-two-card subset from 1961 reminds us what all of it is actually about.

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Weekend Reading · July 10, 2026

Keepers

A milestone for the card the whole hobby measures itself against, a holy grail surfacing from a closet, and a modern superstar’s market finding its level. Three from a loud week.

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Weekend Reading · July 4, 2026

The Vintage Market Runs Hot

Records for Clemente and Paige, and what a scorching June says about where the blue-chip hobby is placing its conviction.

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