New Hall of Famers for 2026

I have a loose card project for Hall of Famers and each year as a chance to add new cards to the mix - where I end up picking one random card per player / subject to induct into my collection.

With Jeff Kent being elected through a committee at the end of 2025, maybe it was a validation for a player who may not have been a well loved guy - but the slugging numbers as a second baseman couldn't be denied.

Kent has had a bunch of cards from the tail end of the junk wax era onward - I grabbed his 1999 Topps #330 as the card to add to my Hall of Fame collection, but the 1997 Bowman #65 sort of ends up a color match with the black borders.

Maybe Carlos Beltran was on shaky ground for a little bit as he got exposed as the supposed ringleader in the Houston Astros cheating scandal - but despite any sort of resistance from the peanut gallery now, his playing career has him a Hall of Fame legend.

Maybe I had the 1999 Upper Deck SP Top Prospects #15 in-hand as the card for my HOF project - but the 2006 Bazooka Blue Fortune #150 parallel kind of pops [even for a more basic, non-glossy, non-foil card] and has a one-time teammate [and Hall of Famer] Jeff Bagwell as a star-on-star bonus.

I did not think Andruw Jones would ever get enough support to be a Hall of Famer, where I was still looking at how his career fell off after leaving the Atlanta Braves - in my mind, he was destined to languish in the hall of very good at best

Maybe I still feel like he could have finished the last portion of his career better - but the momentum really built up where the numbers guys really did their work to shift the narrative, where Jones may have been one of the best all-around centerfielders of all time, rather just another guy who played the position and has some good years.

Maybe the Jones card on the left ends up my pick to click as far as being added to my HOF collection - though I wanted to show off a Japanese era card I dug up from a card shop bulk bin while I was in Japan last November, where he was someone I recognized as a foreign player and a one-time MLB star.

COMC order #7 - 1957 Topps Don Zimmer #284

Originally a card I read about in passing through a Dime Boxes post - I regret not making a keeper out of a copy I found thumbing through a vintage portion of a seller's binned single cards at a card show back in 2023.

I ended up with my own copy from COMC - where perhaps I was searching for random cards that I might be able to add to my account on a whim.

This was added to my COMC account in the middle of November 2023 and it took about two years to get it in-hand with the other cards I got - maybe the passage of time from then until now is a little peculiar to me, where I let all that time pass, but it's almost like I was good letting the card sit at COMC.

COMC order #6 - A variety pack

2007 Upper Deck 1989 Reprints Casey Stengel #89UD-CS - I saw this card somewhere and had to have it, with the image of the legendary manager looking at a baseball that is supposed to a crystal ball of sorts.

I am not sure how many times the image has been reprinted on a card - I saw it on one of the base cards from an early 2000s Upper Deck retro themed set, but that did not deter me from keeping this card on a wantlist somewhere.

I wasn't sure if a copy of the card was worth paying a premium for - but finally grabbed one I saw on the COMC Web site for about $4.

2020 Topps Legend Variation SP Legend Variation Reggie Jackson #206 - I have never gotten a beat on the Topps legends variations and kind of feel like I'm missed out on a thing, but I've gotten a few over the past 5-10 years I guess.

This can end up as either a binder material centerpiece as a highlight for my inking it up collection - having had the pleasure of attempting to get Jackson's autograph after he was a player, I am sure he is telling these late 1970s era fans to keep their distance and to calm down, as he grabs a ball to sign.

2021 SkyBox Metal Universe Champions Fresh Foundation Paige Spiranac #FF36 - between the time I added a copy to my account, to when I had it shipped with my COMC order, it looks as if I picked up another copy.

COMC order #5 - Ichiro

I passively end up making keepers out base cards / inserts and parallels of prominent players to reflect the fabric of a decade / era - this may not mean I actively collect everyone as if they were all my personal favorites, where being obligated to mindlessly hoard 'numbers' seems overwhelming.

On the other hand, besides my regional favorites, I've settled on a short list of 5-10 guys from a decade / era I've chosen to really focus on - from the 2000s through 2010s, Ichiro was an all-around national star to gravitate to, where there is lingering sentiment to this day.

Admittedly, Ichiro had gluts of MLB cards issued where I am content to leave most alone unless they fall into my lap - however, it becomes a mission to look for cards that end up a little different, notably his 1990s pre-MLB issues from Japan.

In my COMC order, I tried to build up a micro-mini run of random ones that caught my eye a couple of years ago - maybe there was a little bit of FOMO, where the cards would have been listed at higher prices once he got elected to the Hall of Fame and any one card would be harder to consider as impulse pick ups.

I tried to pick out some unique ones, even if they more basic cards - where it wasn't the just the usual hitting, fielding or standing around during a baseball game images.

COMC order #4 - Al Schacht

I had picked up a vintage card of Al Schacht in 2022, which I thought was a real neat, quaint odd card for a someone mostly trying to catch up with the here and now - maybe in 2023, I saw another different vintage card of Schacht during a card show rummage, but it didn't register as something I had to pick up and probably pair up with the other already in-hand.

Maybe I regretted not making a keeper out of the second Schacht card, so on a random search on COMC - I had the card in my memory banks and see if I could seek out a copy to add to my account / port.

COMC order #3 - Michael Jordan

1992-93 Topps Archives Michael Jordan #52 - I picked a copy of this card up after regretting skipping past one during a card show rummage three years ago.

While the card sat in COMC account - I got another copy from a card show rummage, which was added to my first all-time Top 100 keepers collection.

Maybe it would have been nicer if Topps had tried to mimic an original back for the Topps Archives cards - where the front matches the back as far as mimicking the 1984 Topps [baseball] set design.

1994 Classic Minor League All Star Edition - Michael Jordan #1 - I have had at least three or four Jordan baseball cards in my collections, but may have seen this posted on another card blog [Dime Boxes?] one time, so I was inspired to hunt for a copy to make a keeper.

Jordan's dalliance in pro baseball in 1994 was peculiar where he hit .202, which was right at the Mendoza line. - but it's kind of an impressive feat to have the season he did, for a guy who never played baseball past high school and had to learn some basic things about being a pro ball player.

COMC order #2 - Todd Helton

I passively end up making keepers out base cards / inserts and parallels of prominent players to reflect the fabric of a decade / era - this may not mean I actively collect everyone as if they were all my personal favorites, where being obligated to mindlessly hoard 'numbers' seems overwhelming.

On the other hand, besides my regional favorites, I've settled on a short list of 5-10 guys from a decade / era I've chosen to really focus on - Helton is one of those former players who ends up a non-geographical guy for me whose cards I can look for, where it becomes a mission to claim or rummage for his cards I assume I don't have.

Go figure in my COMC order, I only ended up with a couple of Heltons - it could have been a trio of them, but the card that was missing in my order was actually a Helton card.

1998 Leaf Fractal Foundation Gold Leaf Rookie /3999 Todd Helton #184

Helton has his share of rookie era issues, but it's not as big of priority to chase and pay a premium for any one particular card - when his true rookie card [1993 Topps Traded #19T; Team USA] ends up pre-dating his professional career.

2001 Donruss Class Of 2001 Scrapbook /525 Todd Helton #SB-7

Maybe unique design jersey / relic cards might be fun to track down on the cheap - even when it's a type of card that other collectors don't value at all, they fill out my player collections.