The Flip Show at the Findley Center in Hoover was a hit. Massive crowds, a sprawling table layout that ate up most of the open event space, half a dozen-plus tables for buying, and a solid mix of unopened product, singles boxes, and higher-end cards — I'd put it around 80/20 sports cards to Pokémon/TCG. I kept it light on purchases: a few low-end Braves singles and a Topps Chrome mega box that turned out to be a dud. No regrets — good crowd, good energy, worth the trip.

On top of that, I was back in on another huge Topps Chrome PYP break this week — landed Nick Kurtz. The headline hit of the break wasn't mine, though: someone in the group pulled the gold Logoman redemption, and it turned out to be a Skenes/Skubal dual #/4. That's about as good as a PYP break gets for anyone in the room, even if it wasn't my slot.

More on Kurtz below — the case for holding is better than the box result alone suggests.

Two headlines this week that say a lot about where the hobby's infrastructure stands right now — one bad, one very good, depending on which side of the business you're on.

PSA's active backlog climbed to 12.4 million cards as of the July 28 update — up from 11 million just two weeks earlier on July 14, and back above the 12 million mark it had briefly dipped under in late June. PSA points to a mix of higher-tier submission volume, a wave of shipments arriving under the 45-day eligibility window tied to its earlier service-tier shutdown, and convention-season submissions piling up at once. The company did open a fifth grading facility in Plano, Texas, to help throughput, but the trend line for now is still pointed the wrong way.

Source: PSA Backlog Tracker, July 28, 2026 update

Whatnot raised $545 million in a Series G round that values the live-shopping platform at $20 billion — up from $11.5 billion after its October 2025 raise. The round was led by ICONIQ, Lightspeed, and Avra, with new money from Kleiner Perkins and Wellington Management. Whatnot says it's already topped its full-2025 gross merchandise volume (more than $8 billion) in just the first half of 2026.

Source: PYMNTS, August 7, 2026 · Fortune, August 7, 2026

Timely one: Topps opened presale for 2026 Bowman Chrome Baseball on Topps.com today (August 10) at 12 p.m. ET, with a street date expected around September 9–10. Full pricing and checklist weren't locked at presale open, but last year's hobby box format is the reference point — 60 cards across six packs, two guaranteed autos, and a roughly $300 Topps.com price. This is the marquee prospect Chrome release of the fall and the set where the next Kurtz-type 1st Bowman story gets written, so if you're chasing a specific prospect, presale is worth locking in before allocation runs out.

Sources: Baseball America, August 2026 · DK Network, August 9, 2026

Kurtz is exactly the kind of card the "buy the rookie of the year, not the rookie of the month" crowd has been vindicated on. He debuted April 23, 2025, won AL Rookie of the Year, and punctuated the season with a 4-homer, 6-hit, 19-total-base game against Houston — just the 20th player in MLB history to hit four home runs in a single game. Through his first stretch of 2026 he was hitting .290 with 46 home runs and 127 RBI before landing on the injured list with a thumb injury, a huge counting-stat pace for a player who's barely a year into his career.

His official rookie card is the 2024 Bowman Draft #BD-56 — raw copies sit around $275, with PSA 10s having sold as high as $1,207. Autograph parallels move the number into a different stratosphere: a 2024 Bowman Draft Chrome DP Auto gold refractor /50 sold for $4,627.77, and even a green refractor /99 autograph brought $1,350.

Sources: Sports Card Investor · ESPN, July 25, 2025 · MLB.com

Sources: Topps Release Calendar · Cardlines, August 2026 Preview — dates subject to change; confirm on topps.com before ordering.