Hal Brennan
I write and edit everything on skenes.cards. Hal Brennan is a pen name — the byline for this site's editorial desk rather than one person's government name.
Why this site exists
Paul Skenes generated more rookie-card demand than almost any pitcher in recent memory, and the market moved faster than most reference sites kept up with — is the 1st Bowman Chrome auto actually his rookie card?, which parallel is the one worth chasing?, is this graded slab worth the premium over raw? skenes.cards is my attempt to answer those questions properly, in one place, and keep the answers current as the market moves.
The perspective is a working collector's, not a press office's: sorting, grading, buying and selling real cardboard is how you learn which products people actually rip, which parallels are genuinely hard to pull, and which "hits" are worth the postage. What the byline stands behind is checkable — every price on this site is a live marketplace number, and every set fact is sourced, never guessed.
How I decide what goes on a page
Five rules, applied to everything published here:
- 1
No made-up prices — ever
You will not find a "book value", a price estimate, or a projected return anywhere on this site. Card values move weekly and any number typed into an article is stale the day after. Where the market matters, the page shows live eBay listings with real current bids instead.
- 2
Availability is checked daily, not written once
Every product listed here is re-checked against its live retailer listing every morning. Sold out is labelled sold out rather than quietly left up, and dead listings get swapped or dropped automatically.
- 3
Card logistics over hype
Which set a card actually falls in, prospect auto vs. official rookie, parallel and refractor ladders, print windows — the details that are annoying to track down and stay true for years. That is the spine of the site; the buying advice sits on top of it.
- 4
Money is disclosed on every page
skenes.cards earns through affiliate links (Amazon Associates and the eBay Partner Network) and display ads. Nobody pays for a ranking, a review, or a spot on a list, and no brand sees a page before it publishes.
- 5
Corrections get made, not buried
If something here is wrong — a set name, a rookie-year claim, a broken listing — send it in and it gets fixed, with the page date updated so you can tell.
What I cover
The site is organised around a single player and the cards he appears on, which keeps it deep rather than wide:
- The value question — what a Skenes card is worth, the highest-value cards ranked, and whether grading pays off.
- The rookie question — his official rookie cards vs. the 1st Bowman Chrome prospect auto, plus a year-by-year breakdown of every release he has appeared in.
- Set structure — how his 2024 Bowman Chrome, Topps Chrome Update and Topps Update cards are built, plus the parallel and refractor ladder that confuses everyone at least once.
- Free tools — a grading ROI calculator, a centering tool and a collection value tracker. No sign-up, no upsell; they run entirely in your browser and the numbers you enter never leave it.
- What's actually buyable — the release calendar, the collecting guide for people starting out, and the authentication guide for people about to spend real money on a chase card.
Get in touch
Corrections, a card I've misclassified, or a listing that's gone dead: send it over. More on how the site is run and funded on the about page.