Making The Grade is a monthly department here on The Buzz that ran all year long in 2019 -- its first complete season so far. Its a place where newly slabbed cards and a few pick-ups get the spotlight -- a little show-and-tell to get people talking and thinking about cards beyond "What's it worth?"

Sometimes I picked cards for fun, sometimes I chased 10s, but other times I slabbed with some longer-term "investment" thought -- and I don't even do that often. (My go-to is to simply slab stuff that I like.) The card you see up top? You can firmly place it in the red-hot fun file. The card at right? You can put it in the long-term keeper stack along with the guy below him, who had plenty of appearances in the series this year.

As one of a couple of 2019 retrospective posts I have planned -- they're at least on my to-do list at least until other work pops up -- here's a look at the series where I talked about 158 new slabs this past year. You can see them all at the links below.

January -- Making the Grade: Patrick Mahomes, The Mick, Tommy Chong, Whitney Houston, botched cardboard & more

February -- Making the Grade: Patrick Mahomes, Bo Knows, Wendy Peffercorn, Tom Brady, Super Bowl stars & more

March -- Making the Grade: Young MVPs, iconic Hall of Famers, Silent Bob, March Madness, a Future Superstar & more

April -- Making the Grade: Vince McMahon, Steve Austin and WrestleMania icons plus Ronald Acuña Jr. & more MLB stars

May -- Making the Grade: Baker Mayfield, JLo's Rookie Card, Joe Cool, Nuke LaLoosh, Hailie Deegan & more past gems

June -- Making the Grade: The Dream Team, Ronald Acuña Jr., Bart Starr, Mike Trout, Deadpool, Kelly Hu's rookie & more

July -- Making the Grade: Aaron Judge, Jayson Tatum, Ric Flair, Michael Jordan, Ronald Acuña Jr., Billy Ripken's bad bat knob, Chrissy Teigen's Rookie Card, The Big Lebowski's ink & more

August -- Making the Grade: New Vladdy, Acuña, Rally Squirrel, Undertaker, Juggernaut, Michael Jordan, Paige, Kurt Cobain, The Bad News Bears' ace ... and Keith Comstock's beanballs?

September -- Making the Grade: Joe Namath's ink, Dak & Jerry Rookie Cards, Saquon Barkley, Lonzo Ball, 1990s NFL classics, high-grade vintage, The Four Horsewomen of NXT & more

October -- Making the Grade: Ronald Acuña Jr. heaters, Clerks, Ernie Davis, hot ink, Supergirl, Catwoman & real Nuke LaLoosh

November -- Making the Grade: Dak Prescott, Luka Doncic, Magic Johnson & John Cena rookies, Robert Mueller, the first perfect Keith Comstock, Meghan Markle's MLB card & more

December -- Making the Grade: Rare Shohei Ohtani, Star Wars, Pete Alonso, Tim Duncan, vintage, several WWE stars & more

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Need even more? See previous months' Making The Grade posts by clicking here (scroll down)

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Like many collectors, Buzz is a fan of grading and knows that there are many reasons that collectors choose to slab cards. Sometimes it's to enhance the appeal and protect them when selling. Other times it's to protect an investment for the long-term or to protect for sentimental reasons. Or, it might be just for fun or curiosity about a potential grade.

Here's this month's grading diary here on The Buzz ...

The Card: 2017 Donruss Rookie Gridiron Kings #2 Patrick Mahomes II
The Reason Graded: His break-out campaign started off so strong I had to revisit my past pulls from Donruss last year -- I busted a ton -- and I submitted a trio of his cards. You saw one last month, you see this one here and you'll see another in March. (Call that a spoiler.) This insert isn't the most-striking of cards but it looked very clean in my pre-examining of cards so it made the cut.
The Grade: BGS 9.5

Reality Check: None have graded higher but this one is not alone on the pop report. That surprises me a bit as grading seems to be all about standard RCs, rare numbered parallels and the ol' big mojo hits, but it seems that a season like the one he had could be prompting anything from his first year on cardboard to get another look. (Ironically you can still grab boxes of this one and others relatively cheap, too. To me that all spells fun ... and wax will dry up over time.)

Keep reading for the rest of this month's new grades and additions.

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Have you seen the latest cool or interesting items on eBay? If not, you just might see some of those here every week as we're launching a weekly version of our eBay Buzz pieces that pop up from time to time. We’ll spotlight some items that have a story or just wow us with how much interest it might have — and we’re not just talking baseball cards, either.

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A HIGH-GRADE RARITY
The Item: 1959 Fleer Ted Williams #68 Ted Signs for 1959 SP (PSA 9)
The Price: $2,500 Buy-It-Now 
Why it’s Buzz-worthy: Today would have been Ted Williams' 100th birthday and this card is by far the rarest one from a unique and collectable set that examines his life away from the game as well as highlights up to that time. He signed a $5,000 per year deal to only appear on Fleer cards but this one was pulled for some type of contractural reason. Meanwhile, ironically, if you check the PSA pop report this card is the most-graded of any card in the set. (Likely since it's the most-valuable and others are all readily available.) Just 43 copies of this card have graded a PSA 9 -- and fakes exist, meaning you should buy one graded --  and none have graded higher.
Similar Pieces: Other Ted Williams cards on eBay 
The BlowoutCards.com Hunt: Click here for MLB boxes

Keep reading for four more interesting items in this week's roundup ...

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From time to time, Buzz will break a box of something and post the results here. Like this and want to see more? Or maybe there's a box you'd want to see busted? Send Buzz an email at BlowoutBuzz@blowoutcards.com.

The box: 2018 Topps Archives baseball cards (blaster box)
Where to buy: BlowoutCards.com

Packs per box: 8 (seven standard packs, one coin pack)
Cards per pack: 7
Cards in this box: 58 (56 cards and two coins)
Base set completion: 
50 of 300 (17 percent)
Duplicates: 0

Notables on base cards – Gary Carter, Roberto Clemente, Wade Boggs, Buster Posey, Rod Carew, Kyle Schwarber, David Ortiz, Ozzie Smith, Greg Maddux, Will Clark, Justin Verlander, Ryne Sandberg, Aaron Judge

Rookie Cards (10) – Ronald Acuña Jr., Juan Soto, Chance Sisco, Luis Gohara, Tyler Mahle, Francisco Mejia, Brian Anderson, Jordan Hicks, Harrison Bader, Austin Meadows

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The Sandlot's stars.

The basic insert set for this one includes Scotty Smalls, Alan 'Yeah-Yeah' McClennan, Kenny DeNunez, Tommy 'Repeat' Timmons, Hamilton 'Ham' Porter, Michael 'Squints' Palledorous, Benny "The Jet" Rodriguez, Bertram Grover Weeks, Timmy Timmons, Wendy Peffercorn (despite her non-player status) and Hercules the dog who has a taste for Babe Ruth-signed baseballs.

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Remember kid, there's heroes and there's legends: Heroes get remembered, but legends never die.

And then they end up in 2018 Topps Archives.

The 25th Anniversary Collector Edition Blu-Ray of The Sandlot is in stores now and it has a set of Topps baseball cards inside with the nine starters from the iconic squad, but it also includes a bit of a scoop for the not-even-announced-yet product.

The scoop? There's even more to come ...

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The wait is killing me, Smalls.

While the 25th Anniversary Collector Edition Blu-Ray of The Sandlot arrives in stores this week with a few bonuses collectors might want, they're not alone in terms of new stuff for the memorable movie as six stars from the movie will be soon found in toy form thanks to Funko and its Funko Pop! vinyl toys.

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