The man of the year is here as far as my collection is concerned Trenton Brooks. After making his MLB debut with San Fransisco in 2024, he became the first non-Giles brother to play for the GHHS Eagles in 2025, then fulfilled that childhood dream by playing for their hometown MLB team (in this case, The San Diego Padres). Big congratulations to Trenton for that! He is a good boy with whom I had a wonderful TTM autograph success years ago. So happy for him.
But the bad news is that his success in Triple-A was swamped by major league pitching, and he didn’t find his groove in San Diego. He came up short in multiple high-leverage situations and was ultimately cut from the roster after hitting .146 through 25 games. Ouch. Hopefully he will get another chance in 2026. [Update: He’ll play overseas next year, having recently signed with the Kiwoom Heroes of the Korea Baseball Organization (article). Wishing him the best in the KBO!]
But no matter what happens with the rest of his career, he got Topps cards! These days I don’t bother much with current cards, as I’m busy enough hunting down refractors from over twenty years ago, but when a kid from my high school is included in a national baseball card issue, I get sucked into the Topps-But-Really-Fanatics world of brand new card collecting.
So of course there are things to complain about (nonsense, so many parallels!) but also nice things to chase (woe, so many parallels!). The last time a Guy From Granite got a Topps card (or Bowman or Panini for that matter) was in 2018 when Travis Taijeron had a rookie autograph in Chrome Update, but no base card. Semi deja vu this summer when Trenton Brooks showed up in Topps Chrome in 2025 with a rookie car but without a base card. Unfortunately for me, he’s depicted as an SF giant. But that didn’t stop me from chasing the rainbow.
I did pretty well, not counting 1/1s, the only things I’m missing are the real orange /25, both black /10s and both red /5s. And the purposefully damaged card in the mail that I alluded to in a post a while ago was his black and white mini diamond parallel (unnumbered but somewhat cool, only available in “Hobby Delight” boxes of 2025 Topps Chrome), which I plan to upgrade at some point. At least one printing plate sold for more than I wanted to pay (and from China – I shy away from international sellers these days, even excluding non-US sellers from most of my eBay searches), so it’s not likely this will ever get to 100%, but I’ll keep an eye on it (I haven’t seen the superfractor show up yet) and try to fill in the rainbow as much as I can, but I won’t overpay for the sake of price.
I was a little concerned that Trenton wouldn’t get a starting rookie card, but I was happy to see him appear on the 2025 Topps Update checklist as a member of the Padres. So now there’s another rainbow for me to chase, and it’s now a card of my favorite team, hitting that sweet “double bullseye” for me. And since this isn’t a car (and since it didn’t generate much rookie hype), this project shouldn’t get too pricey. But I’m sure there are a lot of stupid 1/1s in there that will tempt a seller to list them at a ridiculous price.
I broke my rule of not participating in breaks by participating in a 5-player break that contains no basics, only parallels/variations. What have 5 cases given me? Just a single basic bitch rainbow foil in parallel, estimated value of a dollar or two. And it arrived with a superficial mark, so I’ll probably want to upgrade it at some point. So yeah, that reaffirms to me that I shouldn’t waste my time/money on breaks.
But since then I’ve been able to grab a few singles towards the rainbow, often for just $2 or $3 each, though I’ve cracked double figures once or twice.
I’m still actively adding cards to this rainbow, so I’ll have to do an update once I’m done with it.
While I’m undoubtedly a fan of shiny cards, my favorite of the bunch is probably the vintage stock parallel, with its defoiled retro design.
I checked out the photo on Getty and it turns out it’s from his first (only) MLB home run, so that’s pretty cool.
There’s also a “golden mirror” variant with a pre-game photo, but it’s a stupid edited photo from his Giants days masquerading as a Padres card, so I haven’t gone after it that hard yet, but I imagine I’ll come across one eventually. [Update: yep, it’s in the mail.]
But wait! There’s now a third Trenton Brooks Topps card on the market – another car-only offering. 2025 Topps Chrome Update has another new car – this is technically its “rookie debut” card with that date in small letters on the front. So the bad news is that he’s back in his Giants boys, and in the ugly City Connect uniform at that, so I probably won’t chase it too hard – none secured yet – but I’m sure I’ll pick up a few here and there. [Update: I’ve got a couple in-hand now, with another on the way.]
Again, expect an update on these three Trenton Brooks rainbows sometime in 2026 once the dust settles.
This might be my last gasp for modern maps for a while. I doubt Trenton will get any additional mainstream cards, but who knows. As far as other active guys who went to Granite Hills, it seems Dillan Shrum called it a career after sitting out a few years in AA and not seeing action until 2025. Good luck to him in his life after baseball.
Hey, writing this post alerted me to one conscript from 2025! Sweet, a new Guy From Granite that I may add to my collection. Austin Smith is the latest former Eagle to turn pro, being drafted in the 10th round by Toronto last spring. It doesn’t seem like he has any cards yet, but I’ll try to keep an eye out for it. That could be tricky, because there’s another guy named Austin (N.) Smith who was carded in 2015, plus another active guy also named Austin (B.) Smith. Those guys are both pitchers, though.
The guy on my radar is an outfielder Austin A. Smithwho held his own in Florida State League A-ball in 23 games after hitting .353 in his final season at USD. Let’s hope he can follow Trenton Brooks as the next kid from my high school to beat the bigs.
That’s it for this year. Thanks for reading!
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