a team set 30 years in the waiting

about three years ago, i came across this 1996 topps mike piazza card

here's the back:

if you are familiar with the 1996 topps set, you know that the card front and back are a mismatch. the "star power" subsets had a monthly breakdown of stats. here are the two piazza card backs from the 1996 topps set for your reference:

however, i didn't buy the card because of the back situation - i bought it because it has this addition under the topps logo

that graphic (which matches a jersey patch the dodgers wore) denotes the 35th season of dodger stadium which occurred in 1996 (note to topps - this is how heritage buybacks should be named, as this wasn't the 35th anniversary but rather the 35th year that the dodgers played in the stadium. saying a 1977 card has a 50th anniversary in 2026 is just wrong).

sorry for the rant. 

a little bit of research told me that this was a 1996 topps team topps dodgers card, from a factory sealed set! now, this predates the team sets that are sequentially numbered with a team related prefix by ten years, and i was very unaware that this set even existed.

since finding the piazza card, i've had a couple of ebay searches running with no luck until late last year when someone in alaska of all places listed this 

for sale. still sealed! i placed a bid and wound up being the only bidder, winning the set for less than the current blister team sets sell for.

i did consider keeping it sealed, but ultimately opened it to reveal the full set within:

the backs are identical to the flagship backs - here's nomo's card back

with just those two piazza backs being swapped. 

i took a photo of the back of the packaging, because it held more information

the package contained a 16 card team set, plus a bonus 15 card pack and a bonus "big" topps card. here are the team set and the bonus card pack - front:

and back:

even though there are rockies on both sides of the bonus pack, it's not a rockies team set. there are just 13 random cards from 1996 topps in between with no additional logos. in fact, only a few teams were given these team sets - braves, orioles, cubs, white sox, indians, dodgers, yankees, mariners, and rangers - according to tcdb. each set had a special logo (some have a team specific logo like the dodgers and some have a "team topps" logo). to make things stranger, these were sold only at walmart (again, according to tcdb).

here's a scan of the cardboard insert

with a checklist of sorts on the back

so where is this big topps card? i was thinking it would be nestled in there somewhere, but no - it was the back of the package

so it's just a normal nomo card printed on a bigger piece of cardboard. weird. here's the back:

what an oddball thing.

assuming there is a 2026 topps factory dodger team set, i think i will add this to the running list of team set posts i've made. now if only i could find a complete set of the 2004 fleer dodger team set - the one with the blue design....

big little guys

i recently completed another trade with oren, a collector who is familiar to many of you out there in the blogosphere. he sent some great stuff my way, including some 2023 topps allen & ginter clayton kershaw cards of big and little sizes.

those are a boxtopper and a mini parallel, and the mini is an a&g back to boot!

i am always happy to be adding kershaw cards to the collection, but my favorite card of the trade is this one

that's raul mondesi's 1996 leaf signature series silver autograph card. it is the first mondesi auto i have from that set, and while it is not his "base" bronze auto (that is the only one i still need to complete the dodger team bronze set), it is a really great addition to my collection. here's the back:

which notes that he hit two homers on opening day in 1995. while true, my favorite two-homer opening day for rauuuuuuuuul was on april 5, 1999 when he hit a two-out three-run home run in the bottom of the 9th to tie the game, and then hit a walk-off two out two-run homer to win it in the 11th.

oren also sent some parallels, including a 2022 topps stadium club chrome cody bellinger xfractor

and red foil parallels of noah syndergaard

and mookie betts

from 2023 topps stadium club.

one more parallel to rule them all - a 2023 topps series 2 1988 all-star relic mookie betts black parallel

another great trade in the books. thanks oren!

an embarrassment of opportunity

there were three card shows in the twin cities metropolitan area last saturday. the regular monthly club show, a semi-annual regional show at a local church, and a mall show. this would be the south metro, west metro, and east metro. i made it to two of them and could have hit the third but i haven't been too impressed with the mall shows over the last couple of years.

i started off with the church show, just because it usually features some different sellers than the club show (which is a given when they are on the same day), but it was a bit underwhelming in terms of the number of tables. it wasn't too crowded, however, so i was able to belly up to a few tables pretty easily.

first stop was an older couple who i have purchased cards from before. they have a good variety of stuff in their bargain boxes, although they don't have dime boxes. i started with the 6/$1 boxes, and my favorite find was this 2004 fleer greats of the game announcing greats card of kirk gibson and ernie harwell

but a close second was this 1993 upper deck robin yount and george brett insert

celebrating their 3,000 hits. i used to have a 3k collection and i still have a hard time passing up any cards that are based on that milestone for hitters or pitchers.

i had some good luck with the few dodgers i pulled as i didn't check want lists. thankfully, these were all needs

1994 upper deck mike piazza electric diamond parallel

1995 donruss studio mike piazza

1996 upper deck collector's choice raul mondesi silver signature parallel

and 2022 topps pro debut pee wee reese milb legends insert

technically, that reese card would be a red sox card as he was a member of their organization while playing in louisville, but i am making an exception because it's the champ.

i also added a 2022 topps chrome update purple refractor double play card to my collection

courtesy of jonathan villar. in all i wound up with 42 cards for $7, and then i took a look through their 3/$1 boxes. i came away with these 45 cards 

for $15, although the seller at first just asked for $3. i told her that my california math told me it was $15, but i was happy to pay her price. after that, she would call out to me as "california" when i walked by.

i poked around at a few other tables, but didn't bite on anything. then, on my last round of the church gymnasium i spotted a table with a small box that was maybe half full, but the cards in it were being offered for a dime apiece. i saw some inserts from 2023 topps archives and dug in, taking several home with me including these 9

plus freddie freeman's 1969 single player foil insert

as well as a few others from the set.

the box was mostly base cards, but there were a lot of 2023 panini donruss parallels and inserts, too.

i grabbed a couple of dodger parallels - jim gilliam's purple holo

and michael busch's carolina blue holo

those carolina blues are pretty sharp, in my opinion. the tim raines one is really nice.

i suppose this is a parallel, too

even though it is an insert. it's a rapture parallel of the elite series card for duke snider, to be exact.

i did grab a couple of base cards from the box, including a 1995 sportflix tony gwynn card

for the name/number on the back collection. in all, i wound up with 30 cards for $3 from this seller.

it was still somewhat early, so i decided to head to the club show. i will save that haul for a separate post. stay tuned!

he went everywhere

raul mondesi was no longer a dodger when i pulled this card from a pack in 2002

that's one of many team variation cards donruss/leaf included in their 2002 rookies & stars set, showing players with their former teams as well as current ones. it was kind of neat to find a paul konerko dodger card in 2002, but i liked the mondesi the most. largely due to the very visible manny mota heroes patch he sported back in 1999.

while he was a dodger, mondesi was included in a bunch of insert sets, and i finally added his 1995 pinnacle red hot card

to my collection. at the time this card was released, mondesi was my favorite dodger but i wasn't buying pinnacle so i really didn't know about this card until a couple of years ago when i found the mike piazza.  here's another new to me mondesi insert i picked up a few months ago - 2000 topps chrome power players

it's a parallel of the regular power players inserts from flagship, and i was ignorant of its existence for a couple of decades.

back to that leaf card up top - mondesi was a blue jay to start the 2002 season (having been traded straight up for shawn green a couple of years prior), and he has a card showing him in blue jay gear. however, the set was issued late enough in the season such that mondesi's base card shows him with the yankees who acquired him on july 1 that year.

after that, he moved on to the diamondbacks, pirates, and angels before finishing his career with the braves in 2005. six teams in four years is a lot of movement even if it's not quite to the level of what kenny lofton did over his last few seasons. this sort of knowledge comes in handy sometimes when i see the diamondbacks pop up on the immaculate grid.

one more card of mondesi that i was oblivious to until last fall is this 1998 donruss days card

it was apparently some sort of hobby dealer redemption card, and mondesi is one of 14 subjects in the set. thanks to comc for this one - i bought it the same day i learned of its existence. and, speaking of days, only 43 (see what i did there?) left until the dodgers and padres kick off the 2024 season!

card show scrounging

i am not currently working on any vintage sets, and i feed my primary player collection through online purchases, so i often find myself unsure about heading out to the card shows. once in awhile, i decide to go and look for cheap inserts and parallels and maybe find some new product singles for my dodger collection. such was the case last weekend when i went to the monthly card show. i already shared my meetup with brian, so this post will focus on the rest of my time spent there.

"bargain" boxes were not hard to find, but i only found three dealers with dime boxes. the first ones i saw didn't interest me. it was a monster box of base rookies for a dime each. it looked like a lot of recent bowman, and some guy came and bought the box for $115 about 15 minutes in to the show. one of the dime box sellers had the equivalent of four four-row monster boxes with baseball cards. the other had a couple of similarly sized monster boxes, but i think just one of baseball. he's a seller i've bought from before, so i expected to find these boxes. the other bargain boxes i expected to find just weren't there, even though the sellers who had previously offered them were. one of the sellers who has always had 5/$1 boxes (and gave great deals when it came time to pay) had dollar boxes only. the times they are a-changin;. 

i picked through almost all of the second guy's boxes and found some good and interesting stuff. in all, i picked 230-ish dime cards and one $2 card. he asked for $22.

perhaps the most interesting card i found was this one:

no, i did not purchase a t206 drum ty cobb card, but rather a standard sized card from a 2021 heritage auction promotional set.

the best bargains i found were this 2015 topps andrew mccutchen photo variation

and this 2014 topps jose fernandez future stars variation

both are worth more than a dime, for sure.

there were oddball items for my dodger collection - a 1986 jiffy pop disc of fernando valenzuela

and a 1995 king b disc of raul mondei

plus some oddball items that most definitely don't fir in my dodger collection.  such as, a pack of 1981 topps coca-cola royals cards

with willie mays aikens peeking through the back

and a unstuck 1987 topps coca-cola tigers panel with dwight lowry showing

i couldn't tell who else is featured, but the checklist

on tcdb tells me that chet lemon and dan petry reside inside the four panel item.

i found a couple of 1994 o-pee-chee all-star cards, including barry bonds

there were redemption type cards that could be used to obtain some jumbo cards. just fill out the back

and send 5 cards with 20 bucks. i wonder how many of the 5,000 sets were actually redeemed.

here's a 1995 topps stadium club ring leaders phone card

it commemorates the 1993 all-star garme and is worth 3 points

tcdb tells me this is the silver version, although the ring looks gold to me.

how about a 2004 topps mcgruff the crime dog insert?

this is a five or six card set, with carlos delgado being the card you are most likely to find in a dime box.

i did find a few more cards for my collection, including this 1998 pinnacle hideo nomo card

it is the "home stats" version

which i was blissfully unaware of until i entered my dodger collection on tcdb. i have a full team set if you put the regular, home stats, and away stats versions together, but i don't have a complete set of any one of those three variations. nomo is one of the cards i have a full stat version of, so now just need the away stat variation. fun.

there were a few topps giveaway code cards, and i was hoping to find two of these roy campanella cards

that's because both the angels, in order and i have it listed on our want lists. unfortunately, this was the only one. still i did pick up a couple of cards for tom.

in the "patience pays off" department, i had held off placing a sportlots order that included this next card on the off chance that i would find it at the show. it's one of kirk gibson's 1989 upper deck cards

that i already have in various collections and mini-collections. i wanted another one for the "names/numbers on the back" mini-collection and this guy's dime boxes came through. i hit a vein of 1989 upper deck and was able to pull one of nick's dime box dozen cards as well.

speaking of mini-collections, my double play collection grew with a rey sanchez 1995 score gold rush card

and a 1998 upper deck special fx craig biggio card

that features a different image of this dp turn on the back

my lurker collection had this 2004 upper deck jorge posada card 

added to it, thanks to derek jeter there in the foreground. jason giambi on his own wouldn't have prompted me to buy the card.

i picked up this 1982 topps keith hernandez card

for the aforementioned "names/numbers on the back" collection. hernandez is not my favorite player, but this is the perfect sort of card for that collection.

finally, i was able to add four cards to the dodger stadium mini-collection - a 1991 pacific nolan ryan express card

a 1994 select fred mcgriff card,

a 2003 fleer ultra matt clement gold medallion edition parallel

with kevin brown and shawn green murals in the background, and 1 1995 pinnacle artist's proof parallel of milt thompson dunking a beach ball over the center field fence.

such a classic card!

i mentioned up above that i added a $2 card to my stack. it was this 1996 leaf signature series extended autograph card of wayne kirby

who is shown as an indian but listed as a dodger. this completes the seven card team set in the extended series of autographs, and i have eight of the nine dodger autos from the regular issue. time to track down that raul mondesi card, i guess!

as i am sure you have experienced, pulling so many cards as a show poses an issue. the seller took my stack after awhile and put it behind his station. it made sense, but didn't really afford me the opportunity to cull any cards from what i had set aside. in the early goings, i had pulled a stack of 1976 sspc cards, and wound up bringing them home. i thought there was someone in the blogosphere working on this set but i don't recall who it was - let me know in the comments if you or someone you know could use some cards from the set!

the most interesting card i pulled is ike hampton's.

he's shown in his tidewater tides uniform from his time in the mets' system. the card is actually a california angels card, however.

by this time, it was plenty stuffy and warm inside the old bloomington armory. there were a couple of people crowding in who looked a bit like sonny seibert here

sweaty and a bit disheveled. they brought with them the dreaded smells of card shows - something different than the "batting odor" that ken griffey jr is experiencing on this 1992 upper deck comic ball 3 card

or maybe not, as his reaction is similar to what mine was. it was time for me to move on, so i handed over the $22 and went to find brian.

after visiting with brian, i saw the third dime box guy. he always has a couple of dime boxes under his main table which is packed with slabbed and toploaded cards of all sorts. it's kind of a mess, but there are usually some decent cards in those dime boxes. that was the case this time for sure. i wound up pulling 90 cards for $9, and gave two of the cards (remember aristedes aquino?) to brian on the way out. here are some of the other 88 cards i kept.

six cody bellinger cards that i thought i needed

i was right about all of them except the prismic power insert.

2022 topps capstone max muncy red parallel

not sure who is buying and ripping this stuff but thanks for the work you do.

2022 panini donruss andy pages pink fireworks parallel

2020 topps stadium club chrome vladimir guerrero

2017 topps ben zobrist gold parallel

i also grabbed some cards just because they were different and/or shiny. it's fun to find a bunch of 582 montgomery cards in a dime box, like these from set #2

as well as black & white mini diamond refractors like this bunch

by this time, there was some drama unfolding with a kid, his metal mega hitz carrying case, and some cards that he had for some reason set down on the dealer's table so i settled up and headed out. i had considered stopping at the 50-cent vintage boxes brian had pointed out to me, but i kept walking.

there is a different show in the cities next weekend, but i will pass. the next club show is on february 17, so i will probably go in search of some 2024 topps series 1 stuff. stay tuned!