Kyle Busch Memorial

 Absolutely shocking news from NASCAR today. Early this morning they said Kyle Busch would be missing this weekend's race due to sickness, later in the afternoon, he had died. The entire NASCAR world is in shock. I am in shock. Kyle was 41 years old, a few months younger than me. His son just had his 11th birthday party on Monday and his daughter is only 4 years old. He was a GREAT father to those two and it's hurting most of all to think that they are not going to have their father. 

I have to admit I was not his biggest fan on track but I respected him, and there is NO question that the sport itself will miss him. He's been all over the sport in it's entirety since he was 15 years old. NASCAR even put in the age rules that are in place now to prevent him from dominating as a kid. 

He was very popular with the card manufacturers, which is not surprising considering his record and popularity. My records show that I have 410 cards of him, of which I have gotten 307 scanned. That ranks him 24th overall in my NASCAR collection. While that's too many to fit into a post I will post a selection that documents his career. 

There are hero cards from his brief time at Roush in the Truck series as a teenager, but I don't have them. 

His earliest card I do have is this one, from Racing Champions, where he got his start in Busch series driving the #87 for NEMCO Motorsports which significant backing from Hendrick Motorsports. (Joe Nemechek was with Hendrick at the time)

He ran a full season in the #5 Hendrick car in the Busch series, winning Rookie of the Year easily. 

In 2005 he moved to Cup full time replacing the semi-retired Terry Labonte in the #5 car and would find early success, winning as a rookie. 

Rookie wins are fairly unusual but he got two during the season. He would win one more race each in 2006 and 2007, including the first COT race at Bristol in 2007...

Then in 2008 he moved to Joe Gibbs Racing and would go from a rising star to one of the all-time greats in the history of the sport. 

He would stay with JGR until 2022. 

He took home the 2015 and 2019 Cup championships. 

In 2023 he moved to Richard Childress Racing, where he scored the final 3 wins of his career, 63 in total, which is 9th on the all-time list. 

He would continue to race in the Busch/Xfinity and Truck series, including winning as most recently as this past weekend, just 6 days ago...

With 102 Busch/Nationwide/Xfinity and 69 Truck series wins, he is the all time record holder in both of those divisions. 

In addition to his driving career, he also owned Kyle Busch Motorsports which gave many drivers active today their big break in the sport.

Despite only living 41 years, he competed in NASCAR for 25 years and is unquestionably in the conversation for the best who ever did it. 

New People April 2026

 After a crazy high number of cards scanned in March, April was much slower with only 445 cards scanned. New additions were up though with 819 new cards. 

64 of the 445 cards scanned were new people, with 24 of the 64 being hockey players, and the vast majority of them coming from the Star Rookie Box Set, which my family gave me as an Easter gift. The biggest person appearing for the first time this month is Matthew Schaefer, surely going to win NHL's Rookie of the Year award and be a major factor in the league for the forseeable future. 

Something happened this month that is pretty rare- a person's first appearance in my collection is with a 1/1 card, and that is Woody Guthrie. The Historic Autographs 15th Anniversary set includes 2 1/1 cards per box and 4 cards that are SN to 6 copies each- two of them were non-people cards but the other two were old time baseball players (Lefty Grove and Hack Wilson) and they both appear here too. 

It's easier to acquire cards than it is to scan them, and 103 people joined my collection for the first time this month.

There's a lot of NASCAR people in here thanks to a GREAT trade I made on the Database that got me a large chunk of the 1992 Winner's Choice set, which I had completely missed previously. Most of the players in the Star Rookies Box Set also appear here...of the 25 cards in the set 19 of them were new to my collection. 

Technically I only added 102 new people. I didn't realize there were two NBA players named Jaylin Williams. One was born in 2000, and one in 2002. I got the card scanned of the older Jaylin Williams and I realized that it was not the same face on the card, so it must have been a different person, which is true. So although I actually got his card for my birthday back in October, I discovered he existed this month and the screencap reflects that. The older Jaylin is in the Nuggets system, while the younger Jaylin is a part of the Thunder team that won last year's NBA Championship and will likely win this year's as well. 

Collection first- 3 cards, 3 decades, all Active career

 As I'm working on my monthly upload, I discovered a first in my collection. Sergio Rodriguez, a somewhat obscure NBA player but a European legend, is the first person in my collection to have 3 cards and only 3 cards where all of them are from his active career but are from three different decades. 

Rodriguez had a 21 year professional career, but only 5 of them were in the NBA. (2003-2024) He came over in 2006 where my first card of him was issued. He went back to Europe in 2010 and stayed there until 2016. He came back for one year with the 76ers and that's where my second card of him came from. He then went back to Europe and played until 2024. His third and final card in my collection came from the Donruss EuroLeague set from 2023-24, which would turn out to be his final season. 

It's actually kind of weird how this worked out, because I have only these three cards of him, but he has LOTS of cards. The Database shows that he has more than 400 available. I just don't have them. 

I thought it was interesting enough to get a post out of it.