I do think it's a bit strange that unupped shards have no use at all. Still, I've got to say that I'm not a big fan of this at all. We're given one oracle visit a day, that's the whole point of it.
How? It's not like 26 visits will get him a Nymph, or even any card at all. He'll probably get more money if he sells all those Relics.
While that may be true of the relics, it's absolutely not true for the shards. This would mean potentially 26 False God predictions, 26x free electrum (which isn't always a small quanitity...), 26x chances to win free cards (Nymphs included), etc. That is a big deal, and way more valuable than the ~156 electrum you'd get from selling unupped shards.
If this was implemented, relic/shard farms would be everywhere, and people would have an extremely easy way to exploit the oracle. Imagine the sheer amount of oracle visits people could collect, every single day...