Happy end of 2025, everyone! Today, I am excited to announce the winners of this year's End-of-Year Awards. This is the fifth consecutive year that I've hosted the awards, and I'm proud of this little tradition!
Let's begin with our baseball card awards!
Best Topps set of 2025:
Winner: Topps Heritage
Topps Heritage ran away with the vote here, garnering over 70% of the final tally. I thought this year's flagship Topps design was solid, but even that couldn't compete against the 1976 Topps design. Personally, I've given up on collecting Topps Heritage (at least until I finish the 2009 Topps Heritage set which I've been working on for nearly two decades now)!
Best Bowman set of 2025:
Winner: none
Bowman Chrome and Bowman flagship together garnered over 50% of the vote, so while the official verdict for this category is that there is no winner, it's clear that there is at least some love for some of the Bowman brands.
Best Unlicensed set of 2025:
Winner: none
This one wasn't as close as the Bowman vote. 60% of voters said there shouldn't be a winner for this category this year.
Best Insert or Parallel of 2025:
Winner: Topps Holiday parallels
In a surprise (at least to me), the Topps Holiday parallels won out over the 1990 Topps inserts. I will admit that this year's Topps Holiday set is quite nice, so I do think it's deserving of an award! Even the base Holiday cards are nice and festive, I love the combination of the snowflakes in the background and the candy canes and tinsel that travel up the team name portion of the card.
Card of the Year:
Winner: 2025 Topps Series 2 First Pitch: FP2-3. Rickey Henderson
And there it is, your card of the year this year! This year's winner is a card of a retired player, a stark contrast compared to last year's winner (Paul Skenes' rookie card from Topps Update). Personally, I love that the voters are willing to reward hot rookies and retired stars (and everything in between)!
Best Innovation in Cards:
Winner: None
Last year, the "scratch and sniff" cards from Allen & Ginter won Best Innovation. I was a little surprised to see that Topps didn't continue producing similar cards for 2025. Unfortunately, Topps didn't seem to do much to move the innovation needle this year (nor did Panini), and the voters have spoken loud and clear here.
Now, on to the blogging awards!
Funniest / Most Entertaining Blog
Winner: Chronicles of Fuji
Chronicles of Fuji wins this category for the second year in a row. A well-deserved honor for sure. Frankly, Fuji deserves his own special award for best blog reader/commenter. He's one of the few people who constantly take the time to comment thoughtfully (without any commenters, how would any of us know our stuff was even being looked at)?! Major congratulations to Fuji!
Favorite Blog Series:
Winner: Flea Market Finds (by Chronicle of Fuji)
With over 64% of the vote in the category, Fuji makes it back-to-back awards in back-to-back years! Once again, a big congratulations to Fuji who won this category for the second consecutive year (both time sfor his Flea Market Finds series).
Favorite Under the Radar Blog:
Winners:
- 1988 Topps Podcast
- 9 Pockets
- A Most Adequate Collection
- Card Boredom
- Card Buzz
- Cards Over Coffee
- Dillard's Dugout
- Nothing if not Random
- SR75 Cards
- The Diamond King
I'm not sure that all of the above blogs truly count as "under the radar" at this point, but I am pleased to report that there are a few up there that I hadn't personally known about before the End-of-Year Awards nominations were due. I love learning about new blogs!
Favorite Blogs to Read:
Winners:
- 9 Pockets
- A Pack to be Named Later
- Baseball Card Breakdown
- Baseball Cards Come to Life
- Card Boredom
- Cardboard Catastrophes
- Cardboard History
- Cards as I See Them
- Cards Over Coffee
- Chronicles of Fuji
- Diamond Jesters
- Dillard's Dugout
- Johnny's Trading Post
- Nachos Grande
- Night Owl Cards
- Nine Pockets
- RIP Baseball
- SABR Baseball Card Blog
- SR75 Cards
- The Collector
- The Diamond King
- The Topps Archives
Now that is a wonderful to-read list of baseball card blogs! There are a few more names that'd personally to the list, but you can't go wrong starting with what you see above. I suppose I should note somewhere, so why not here, I don't cast any votes for my own awards (it seems unfair if I were to also vote). So, thank you to those that added my blog's name to the above list of great blogs!
And now, the final award winner for 2025!
Night Owl does it again! He's now five-for-five in terms of winning Blog of the Year, and honestly, it's easy to see why he wins each year. I'm not sure anyone puts as much research and effort into their posts on a weekly basis as Night Owl. I will say, Night Owl does have some competition in the voting now. Will the wise owl maintain his dominance for a sixth straight year next year, or will a wily newcomer knock him off the throne? I have no idea, but if I were a betting man, I'd bet on Night Owl winning every year until he retires from blogging, the man's a legend for a reason.
Congratulations to all of the winners of this year's awards! I hope you all had fun voting, and I appreciate everyone that took the time to do nominations and/or to cast a ballot. I also encourage you to check out all of the blogs mentioned during the awards ceremony. Happy end of 2025, and hopefully, you'll see the sixth annual edition of the blog awards in 2026!
When Fuji blogged about the Rickey Henderson card being his card of the year I believed him and it's nice to know there are a lot of people who felt the same (maybe they were moved by his words that they voted that way too). Congrats to the winners.
ReplyDeleteAwesome. Yup, still plugging away. Someone wants to take my crown, go for it, I'm getting too old to care. But I'll keep writing. ... Thanks for doing this again.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations to all the fabulous bloggers!
ReplyDeleteBig congratulations to Fuji and Night Owl for the well deserved awards, and to everyone else mentioned here for the great work they put in!
ReplyDelete