The family and I headed to the mountains of North Carolina for a much-needed vacation and to celebrate the 4th this weekend. As we did some shopping to stock up for a week in the mountains, we of course couldn't help ourselves and grabbed a couple boxes (the Walmart here had a really diverse selection — but mostly football). Made for a nice evening at the kitchen table. Charlie and I ripped a Donruss blaster and a couple Bowman Mega boxes; not a big spend, the kind of low-stakes fun rip I'll always recommend when you just want the fun of opening something. The Donruss blaster was Donruss being Donruss: loud and fun inserts, standard parallels, a few Rated Rookies, and a couple of numbered Montgomerys (more on that later) — nothing that'll change my life. The Mega box did not disappoint.
The headline pull: a Trey Yesavage Mega Futures SP (#MF-3) — a Mega Box–exclusive insert that falls 1:80 packs per Topps' published odds (Checklist Insider). Pulling a true case-hit-level card out of two boxes is the kind of variance that makes you walk a victory lap around the kitchen. Yesavage is the Blue Jays flamethrower everybody's been chasing since his postseason, and he's the subject of The Card Worth Knowing below, so I'll save the deep dive.
The other two keepers came out of the Donruss blaster, and both — fittingly — wear Chicago's south side: a Colson Montgomery on a gold parallel numbered /299, and a Braden Montgomery Rated Prospect on a Donruss Optic orange-shimmer parallel numbered /79. Colson's already manning shortstop on the South Side; Braden announced himself in the loudest way possible — a two-run walk-off homer off Raisel Iglesias in the 10th to sink, of all teams, my Braves 6–5 in his June 9 MLB debut, making him just the fifth player since 1900 to go walk-off in his first game. Two different players, same last name, same rebuild, pulled side by side out of one $25 blaster. You can't script that.
Now the part that isn't fun. The reason I keep half an eye on the calendar instead of just the next rip: the current Collective Bargaining Agreement expires at 11:59 p.m. ET on December 1, 2026, and the two sides are about as far apart as I've seen them. Owners are pushing a hard salary cap; the union has spent sixty years refusing one. A lockout this winter is now the widely expected outcome (ESPN, June 2026). I'll say it plainly: a work stoppage would be terrible — for the game, and for this hobby. No games means no new highlights, no rookie call-ups to chase, no reason for a casual fan to wander into a card shop in March. The hobby runs on baseball being on. We broke down what a stoppage could mean for card values on the blog — read the lockout primer here. Let's get into the issue.
If you've got cards sitting in a PSA queue right now, you already feel this one. PSA's global backlog has ballooned to roughly 14 million cards — the largest in company history — after the company temporarily paused its cheapest Value tiers on June 2 and collectors responded by flooding the system with an estimated 4 million additional submissions before the door closed (Baseball America; PSA Service Level Update). The irony writes itself: a pause meant to relieve the backlog briefly made it worse.
PSA grades around 90,000 cards a day and says it's targeting a return to roughly 5 million units in the queue — a dig-out it projects could take up to four months. It's now publishing a public Backlog Tracker, updated bi-weekly, so you can watch the number move. Here's where turnaround actually sits today:
| Service Tier | Status (as of late June 2026) | Est. Turnaround |
|---|---|---|
| Value ($39–59) | Paused since June 2 | — |
| Regular | Open | 40–60 days |
| Express | Open | 15–20 days |
| Super Express | Open | 5–10 days |
Source: PSA submission updates & PSA Backlog Tracker, accessed June 28, 2026. Turnaround times are estimates and move with the queue.
What it means for your money: when graded supply backs up like this, two things tend to happen. Already-slabbed cards of hot players hold a premium because no new PSA 10s are hitting the market quickly, and raw copies of those same players can soften a touch because the easy "buy raw, grade it, flip it" path now takes two months instead of two weeks. The arbitrage everyone leaned on just got slower and riskier.
Let's not sugarcoat it: June was a slog. The Braves are still 46–25 and sitting on a comfortable lead in the NL East, but they've dropped 8 of their last 11 — including, of all things, a series loss to those same rebuilding White Sox whose Montgomerys I just pulled (CBS Sports). The swoon is mostly an injury story: Ronald Acuña Jr. re-aggravated the same hamstring and is reportedly a long way from returning, Spencer Strider is on the 60-day IL with elbow trouble, and Drake Baldwin has scuffled badly since coming back from an oblique strain. Even a 101-win pace feels shaky when the training room is that full.
The good news drops Tuesday. AJ Smith-Shawver — out since Tommy John surgery last June — begins a minor-league rehab assignment, with a start lined up for Single-A Augusta on June 30 (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution). He's got up to 30 days on the rehab clock and is tracking toward a post-All-Star return to the big-league rotation. A young, controllable arm rejoining a banged-up staff is exactly the kind of reinforcement this team needs to steady the second half.
Sources: CBS Sports · AJC · MLB.com standings, accessed June 28, 2026.
The reason to know Yesavage right now is the one sitting in my Mega Box: he went from "interesting arm" to "must-chase" on the back of a record-setting nine-strikeout MLB debut, and the card market noticed immediately — nearly 450 of his cards changed hands on eBay in the 24 hours after he debuted (Sports Collectors Daily). He's a true power-pitching prospect on a contender, which is the exact profile collectors pay up for.
Here's the part that matters for how you play it. The card I pulled — the Mega Futures #MF-3 — is a Mega Box–exclusive short print at 1:80 packs, so it's genuinely scarce. Early sales are forming around ~$20 raw, with PSA 10 copies asking $135–$175 (early eBay listings, late June 2026 — thin volume, so treat these as a forming range, not a fixed comp). That spread is the whole story: a $20 card becomes a $150 card the moment it's slabbed a 10 — which, given the backlog above, is now a two-month round trip. For the broader floor and ceiling on Yesavage, look at the cards that have longer history. His 2026 Bowman #41 paper base rookie is dirt cheap — recent eBay sold listings sit around $1.72 raw, with graded copies estimated near $12.84 in a 9 and roughly $38 in a PSA 10 (and note: essentially no PSA 10 sales on record yet, so that's an estimate, not a comp) (SportsCardsPro, accessed June 28, 2026). The real value lives in the autographs: his 1st Bowman Chrome auto averages about $153 raw, and a 2024 Bowman Draft Chrome Red Refractor auto /5 in a PSA 10 sold for $3,350 back in August 2025 (Prospect Card Radar). The numbered parallels — Aqua /125, Green /99, Gold auto /50 — have all firmed up as he's risen.
The thesis in one line: a 1:80 Mega-exclusive of a young arm who's already flashed front-of-rotation stuff is a real card to hold, but the gradeable autos are where long-term conviction belongs. And remember the Market Pulse above — if your plan is to grade the MF-3 or that base RC, you're now looking at a two-month wait before you find out if it's a 10.
Sources: Checklist Insider (MF-3 / odds) · SportsCardsPro · Prospect Card Radar · Sports Collectors Daily. MF-3 figures are early eBay listings (late June 2026, thin volume); all prices move daily.
Dates per Beckett & WaxStat release calendars; release dates are subject to change — confirm at topps.com/release-calendar.
Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA) was founded in 1991 as part of David Hall's Collectors Universe, introducing the tamper-evident slab and the 1–10 grading scale that became the hobby standard.
Thirty-five years later, that same company is sitting on a record ~14-million-card backlog — a reminder of just how far the grading business has come from the early-'90s skepticism that a third party could ever tell you what your card was really worth.