Daily Reflection

Presented By All Touch Case There’s been a lot of buzz around the Topps Industry Conference this week. Watching it all unfold from a distance – amid a frenzy of exciting hobby updates – I couldn’t help but notice what wasn’t being said. There was a clear opportunity to acknowledge what a lot of people are already feeling but don’t always have the language for. The pace and pressure of the hobby have fundamentally changed,

Tomorrow, March 25th, marks the one-year anniversary of Collectors MD quietly entering the world. There was no press release. No big launch. No marketing campaign. Just a simple idea that had been sitting with me for a long time: something in the modern-day hobby needed to change. Not the love of collecting. Not the nostalgia. Not the friendships or the stories that bring people together year after year. Those things are beautiful. But the environment around collecting had fundamentally changed. The hobby had become faster. Louder.

As Collectors MD approaches its first anniversary, I’ve found myself reflecting on just how much has unfolded over the past year. Alyx has always said I’m his biggest cheerleader, but this isn’t about praise. What stands out most to me is the honesty, the vulnerability, and the courage it took for him to turn something deeply personal into something that now helps others. The growth of Collectors MD didn’t come from an idea alone. It came from lived experience; from struggle, from

There’s a version of collecting that feels like progress. A constant state of motion – packs, boxes, breaks, auctions, listings, packages, notifications, screenshots, new releases, bigger cards, better hits. Enough noise and activity to convince ourselves something meaningful is taking shape. But movement without direction is just motion, and accumulation without intention is just excess. For a long time, I told myself I was participating in something I was passionate about. That I was evolving as a collector. That

When I think about why I started collecting, monetary value isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. It’s the feeling. I think back to being a kid, opening packs with family members – sometimes just one, sometimes a whole box – to discover what was hiding inside. I remember getting lost in the the rainbow foil, the holographics, the shiny finish, and that sense that even the simplest pull could feel special. Back then, cards weren’t

There are certain sets that don’t just bring back memories. They bring back a feeling. For me, 1990 Fleer is one of those sets. It captures everything I loved about collecting during that era – the bright colors, the weird little quirks, the endless subsets, the stickers, the stars, the rookies, and the simple excitement of opening a pack with no agenda other than seeing what was inside. Some of the more famous error cards in this set have become

With March Madness officially in full swing, it’s easy to get pulled into the excitement. Brackets, survivor pools, pick’em contests – it all feels harmless on the surface. And for some, it is. But if you zoom out, almost anything can resemble problem gambling in a vacuum. You’re putting something on the line, handing control to uncertainty, and hoping things fall your way. That could be a bracket, Super Bowl squares, fantasy sports, investing in a 401k, starting a

Each December at work meant closing the books. Every dollar reconciled. Every budget line defended. At home, it was the opposite. Unopened credit card statements sat untouched. Shipping boxes piled up and disappeared into the closet. I had no real idea what I’d spent on cards. The avoidance wasn’t accidental. It was deliberate. The denial was professional grade. At the office, I demanded accountability from myself and everyone around me. Performance metrics. ROI justification. Budget variance analysis. The same discipline I

Some of my earliest memories are simple, but they’ve stayed with me in ways that are hard to explain. I remember visiting my grandfather as a young boy and sitting on the living room floor with a plate of pineapple pound cake. I can still taste it. That distinct sweetness, moist and dense; something about it has always stuck with me. I’d play with my LEGOs, consumed in my own world, while my grandfather sat in his recliner

Over the last 24 hours, the hobby has been flooded with headlines about legal challenges surrounding modern breaking practices. Stories like this tend to spread quickly. Opinions form fast. Social media fills with debate about who is responsible, who is wrong, and what should happen next. But beneath all of the noise, there is a deeper reality that many collectors have been quietly experiencing for years. For most people, collecting remains exactly what it has always been;