it's rickey is the title

dodger legend rickey henderson has two cards in 2025 panini select - one in the base, concourse level checklist showing him as an oakland athletic, and one in the super (?) short printed diamond level showing him as a los angeles dodger. guess which one i bought?

there haven't been too many of these pop up for sale that i have seen, and i found this one priced with a low buy it now. prices seem to be settling, although the parallels for this card are going for a lot more. here's the back:

the other dodgers included in the diamond level series are hyeseong kim and hall of famers albert pujols and pedro martinez. i might go for base cards of the latter two, but it was rickey that i really wanted.

the only other card from the set i have so far is roy campanella's

campy's concourse level card is much easier to come by than rickey's dodger card in this set, and if i want to add any of rickey's dodger parallels, they will have to come via reasonable buy it now postings. with those, i'll have to be "right on time" because, you know, it's rickey.

bonus content! this showed up today!

i’ve opened a couple of packs and will have a post up this weekend most likely. the 2026 season is nigh!

mall rats and giveaway winners

yesterday morning i took some time to check out the near-to-me mall show that sets up a few times a year. they always include the weekend before christmas in their schedule and i wanted to only show up at the very start of the show for a couple of reasons. one, there was a club show on saturday which is more predictable in terms of product, and two, i want to avoid malls this time of year during later hours and actual weekends. however, i wasn't able to get there until the early afternoon.

to my surprise, the mall wasn't that busy and there were a lot more tables set up than the last mall show i attended in october. unfortunately, there were very few diggable boxes of any interest to me. hence, the "rats" in the title post.

i made a couple of laps and did manage to find some cards to bring home, and in hindsight i am not too disappointed! while i purchased cards from four sellers, i am only going to share cards from one of them.

this 2023 topps chrome james outman card

is a "radiating rookies" insert

and i was told it was a case hit. same for this 2025 topps chrome mookie betts lightning leaders card

i pulled these from a monster box of toploaded cards with no pricing. the guy behind the table said that he would price cards from the box at one or two bucks, typically. i built a short stack that included this 2025 topps heritage alcs/nlcs yellow parallel

and a couple of parallels from 2024 topps stadium club - sepia jackie robinson and gold foil roy campanella

the campanella isn't numbered, but the gold foils look like they should be. this 2023 topps gilded collection rookies cast in gold card of james outman

is numbered - /199.

as for non-dodgers, i did grab some of those, too. here's a gold parallel from 2025 topps update of the brent rooker/lawrence butler combo card

it's a nice looking card, and the back

namechecks big mac and golden gopher great terry steinbach, along with jimmie foxx and the immortal bob johnson.

here's a 2025 topps vintage stock parallel of marco gonzales

with the back

all dressed up for christmas.

i had no reason to choose this 2025 topps josh rojas card

which is a memorial day camo parallel, numbered to 25

but it didn't rocket up the cost of the rest of the cards, so i left it in my purchase.

last card i will show is this 2025 topps lucas erceg team color border parallel

and speaking of teams and parallels...

earlier on friday, i randomized the list of names/teams from my giveaway post earlier in the week. i was a bit surprised to see so many entries and decided to bump things up to four winners as a result. here are the standard three randomizations:

with the winners being tony, tom, mark, and crh614. be sure to email me your addresses at gcrl at comcast dot net  (even you, tom, just so i can be sure i have the current one). 

keep in mind that these are "above and beyond my normal number of mailings" mailings, meaning that there will be other mailings sent, too. if anyone else in the list above wants to send me their address, i'll pull a couple of cards for them as well.  

all told, the stack of cards i pulled from the seller were priced at $30 which was just above $2/card and i thought a pretty good deal given the scarcity of some of the cards i pulled. he didn't have any change, so i added a couple of scrub autos from his box to get to $40. one of the autos i grabbed was this 2025 topps edgardo henriquez card

the other one is going out to one of the randomized winners.

diamond priority

keeping with my renewed focus on team set completion, i spent some time earlier this year revisiting a set that sat unfinished for 14 years. back in 2011, topps issued some new parallels to their flagship set to celebrate their diamond anniversary, and the diamond parallels were pretty sharp in my opinion. 

as of the first of the year, i was only missing those parallels of the "legends" variations - in the case of the dodgers, that meant the typical brooklyn era hall of famers and one los angeles dodger goat. without further ado, these are the parallels that completed my 2011 topps (series 1, 2, and update) diamond anniversary parallel team set:

jackie robinson

roy campanella

duke snider

sandy koufax

and pee wee reese

koufax also had a legends variation in update, but i had the diamond parallel already.

with that set out of the way, i also decided to complete the cognac parallels. 

pee wee reese

and jackie robinson

were two of the bigger cards i needed, but i also went and tracked down some lesser remembered dodgers like vicente padilla

cards like his are sometimes tougher to find than the big names, but in this case i didn't have much difficulty at all. here are the other cards i needed to complete the team set:

hong-chih kuo

chad billingsley

casey blake

ivan dejesus jr

kenley jansen

and sandy koufax

in this instance, i also needed koufax's card from update

pov when the mailman delivers a card i need to complete a team parallel set!

i am not sure if i will work to complete any of the current slate of parallels in team set form, but i have enjoyed knocking out some of these from the 2010's, so who know.

a vintage chase of a different sort

with only two cards to go in my 1955 bowman set build, i don't have a lot of vintage to chase at the moment. i thought about reinstating my "sampler sets" of those topps flagship sets that i have not completed (1952-1956, 1958-1964, 1966-1969) and i just might do that although i think i still have most of the cards that comprised that part of my collection so there probably aren't a whole lot of cards to chase there either - mostly dodgers that migrated to my team collection.

what i have done is seek out some topps vintage stock cards for my collection. after seeing some from 2025 topps series 1, i was intrigued enough to pick up a couple of examples. here's clayton kershaw's card

just like last year, topps reimagined the current design for a simpler time. here's the back:

kind of christmasy.

i also picked up chris taylor's card

because it uses completely different colors than kershaw's, although the back is the same

and then i had the opportunity to add one of the checklist cards

that had another color scheme. here's its back:

which happens to be the only one of the three that is readily legible.

i also went back and found some vintage stock parallels from other topps releases for not a lot of money. here's a 2018 topps brandon mccarthy card

and a 2020 topps update terrance gore card

while i was happy for the short-timer gore to get a dodger card, this is probably one of my least favorite dodger cards in recent years because of the photoshopping and the design. but, i turned a blind eye to that fact when i found the vintage stock card for a very low price.

from 2022, here's tyler anderson's 2022 topps update card

in vintage stock form, and here's a dodger checklist card from 2022 topps flagship

that came from sluggo quite a while ago. that card is interesting because it appears that topps played with the image to make it look like an older photograph. vintage, if you will, in terms of irregular exposure. 

of course, 2024 was the first year that topps took vintage stock parallels in a whole different direction, and i recently added another example to my collection by way of jason heyward's card

i'm still annoyed by the addition of his number 23 to his jackie robinson day jersey.

another vintage pickup of mine has been a couple more dodger vintage embossed buyback cards from 2003 topps all-time fan favorites. you'll recall the 1979 steve garvey card i acquired, and now here is a 1975 topps roy campanella card (with yogi berra)

that includes the non-foil stamp. here's a photo that tries to show it in more detail

love seeing the "la" cap on campy!

similarly, here's a 1978 topps tommy john card with the stamp

with a photo for your benefit

the placement of these stamps seems to have been pretty willy nilly. for the record, the campy is listed as having 11 copies and the tommy john is listed at just 10. rare vintage adjacent pickups for my collection!

i really do doubt that i will chase any more vintage sets to completion. i would like to finish my 1953 topps dodger team set, but even needing only four cards (255 dixie howell, 258 jim gilliam, 263 john podres, 272 bill antonello) might be too much. luckily there are "other" vintage forms to keep an eye out for!