this would have made more sense during the olympics

i've acquired some gold, silver, and bronze of my own without dedicating years of my life to an intense training regimen. all it takes is several saved ebay searches. over the last several months, i've come across a couple of sellers who offered up several parallels from the 2004 upper deck legends timeless teams set, and i pounced on quite a few.

i added a couple of gold parallels to my master set build, including tim mccarver's 1964 subset card

and mookie wilson's 1986 subset card

these are numbered to 5, and i don't really have any plans around this particular parallel. for the bronze parallels, which are numbered to 50, my main goal was to have at least one from every team subset. my recent purchases got me quite close to that goal.

bob gibson 

is card #1 in the set, and it's always nice to start at the beginning. 

this jim kaat card

was the first bronze parallel i've found for a 1965 twin.

jim lonborg

was my first non-dodger pc, so adding his card made a lot of sense to me, and it is the only 1967 red sox bronze i have as well.

lou brock

is now one of four 1967 cardinal bronze parallels in the collection

and i didn't "need" denny mclain

as i already had a couple 1968 tigers in bronze form, but because it's a memorable moments card i pulled the trigger

this steve carlton

is my lone 1968 cardinals bronze

but boog powell

is one of the six i have for the 1969 orioles

here are two bert campaneris bronze parallels

and one vida blue

the blue is the lone 1975 a's bronze card in my collection

i added cecil cooper's card

just because he's cecil cooper

same can be said for george foster

but this one was a happy find as it represents the 1979 reds in the collection

manny trillo

is the only 1980 phillies bronze card i have, and i found it on sportlots!

i had no bronze parallels of the 1983 orioles, but came away from my most recent transaction with two - cal ripken jr

and john shelby

as a dodger fan, i couldn't leave shelby behind.

dwight gooden

lou whitaker

and dave winfield 

were the remainder of my non-dodger bronze additions, but they were opportunity acquisitions and not needed for the one from each team effort.

al downing's 1974 bronze parallel

is a duplicate so i now have a card to represent that team in the "set" build. i added some other dodger bronze cards, but they feed the dodger collection first.

ron cey

steve garvey

tommy john

steve yeager

bill russell

jerry reuss

ron cey

i added a second kirk gibson

to the collection to represent the 1988 dodgers in the set.

i am missing only bronze parallels from the 1987 and 1991 twins teams, so you can be sure i will be keeping an eye out for any of those that might pop up.

i did also add a few more dodger gold parallels while i was at it - al downing

ron cey

davey lopes

pedro guerrero

and ron cey

again. as i said up top, i don't have any illusions about picking up all or even most of these but i will bite from time to time.

as for the silver part of the post, the "base" autographs are sometimes referred to in that way, and i've added three since my last update. first, the late merv rettenmund

and the late luis tiant

and finally another steve garvey

that garvey goes into the dodger collection as i already had one in the pc.

there are still a bunch of parallels out there for sale, but for now i am content. until i see some bronze twinkies.

the almost daily dodger - pedro guerrero

my ears perked up a couple of weeks ago when i read that pedro guerrero was going to be the marlins' hitting coach. it turned out to not be the pedro guerrero i first thought of - the dodger player who shared the 1981 world series mvp with steve yeager and ron cey - but rather a former dodger farmhand who had previously worked in a similar capacity with gabe kapler, who is the marlins' gm these days.

i was reminded that i had added a card of the pedro guerrero i knew about to my collection earlier in the fall - his 2005 topps all-time fan favorites refractor parallel

i like this card so much.  the base version was my favorite dodger card that i added to my collection back in 2005, and it was featured prominently in my original blog header. 

i keep an eye out for these refractors, and have pulled the trigger on a couple more. i picked up another one of dusty baker's refractors and put it with my 1978 topps "master" set. it fittingly is numbered 078/299 as the card features the 1978 topps design

i also added another of rick monday's refractors to put with the set, but it's not numbered as nicely

most recently, i added a different dodger's atff refractor to my collection, but i'll save that for a different post. stay tuned!

mirror refraction

if it wasn't topps or upper deck, i pretty much ignored it during the 1990's. as such, i missed out on the bowman craze, although i did finally buy a pack of 1992 bowman in 1997 for too much money. and yes, i know bowman is made by topps, but it is separated in my mind even as i consider stadium club to be "topps stadium club" and finest to be "topps finest" unlike most collector reference materials. at any rate, i have no recollection of when i first learned about bowman's best, but i do know that finding refractor parallels was not easy.

these days, there are traders like sluggo who send me things, and one card that arrived recently was this 1997 bowman's best mirror image refractor parallel

it's more of a craig biggio card than a wilton guerrero card, but i'll take it! and wait - there's more

chuck knoblauch and donnie sadler are featured, too.

projecting rookies, or even young players in general, is always tough, and neither guerrero nor sadler came close to the accomplishments of biggio or knoblauch, but they still had careers that spanned several seasons. these cards are snapshots in time and i am glad to have this one in my collection

the other dodger rookies in this set are paul konerko who was paired with mark mcgwire, and adrian beltre who shared space with chipper jones. not sure if i will ever find those refractors.

thanks sluggo!

mailday at tiffany's

one fine day last month, there were a couple of trade packages in my mailbox. both full of dodger goodness, and both featuring this guy

that's chuck tiffany on his 2005 bowman chrome refractor. it came from oren, a generous reader of blogs who i've now traded with a couple of times.

similarly, night owl sent this card

a 2005 topps update & highlights chuck tiffany gold parallel. not bad cardboard representation for tiffany, who was traded by the dodgers to the devil rays in 2006 and unfortunately never got beyond double-a ball. he did pitch for both the vero beach dodgers and vero beach devil rays which not many folks can say.

oren sent more fantastic parallels, including a black border matt kemp card

from 2014 topps heritage. i'm not sure if these were limited to a print run of 50 back then like they are now, but even if not it's the first one i've seen.

here's a parallel that is definitely limited in number - 557 to be exact

that's nomar garciaparra's 2006 topps heritage chrome refractor, and it is very much appreciated!

sticking with the shiny, here's a 2021 topps chrome platinum anniversary tommy john aqua wave refractor parallel

and my first glimpse at the 2023 version of chrome platinum anniversary with bobby miller's base card

i am sure these cards refractor up nicely.

i had to laugh when i opened oren's package, because he included this 2021 topps chrome mitch white blue wave rookie autograph card

and i had just picked one up at the card show i attended in houston a couple of weeks earlier. what are the odds?

and, while i did pick up a karim garcia autograph at the same show, it wasn't this one

which is from 1998 donruss signature series. oren also sent wilton guerrero's card

plus his millennium marks parallel

for good measure. looks like wilton needed some better guidance on where to sign the cards!

a tip of the catcher's mask (courtesy of this 2006 topps updates & highlights toby hall gold parallel)

to you oren !

meanwhile, night owl completed a couple of team sets for me by sending these two 1997 topps stadium club members only box set cards of mike piazza and todd hollandsworth

as well as this 2023 topps stadium club jd martinez card

i had purchased the stadium club members only sets directly from topps in 1995 and 1996 but didn't bother in 1997. it's as if i knew the cards would be readily available on the secondary market decades later. as for the martinez card, it may as well be manufactured by panini. no team mention on the front and no distinguishing apparel. the palm trees are nice, though.

night owl came with the parallels, too, including this red foil parallel of michael grove's gorgeous 2023 topps stadium club card

a red foil parallel of jackie robinson's 2022 topps stadium club card

and, just to mix things up, a royal blue parallel of mookie betts' 2023 topps card

there was shiny in this group of cards, too, with betts showing up again on a 2023 topps chrome update all-star game insert

and this holo prizm card of clayton kershaw

from 2022 panini chronicles - spectra.

night owl provided some new relic cards for my collection as well, with this 2005 upper deck espn sportscenter swatches card of jd drew

(yes, it is a dodger card because of the logo to the left of the swatch) and this 2014 topps michael young trajectory relics card

and finally, not a relic but a commemorative city connect patch of walker buehler from 2023 topps

to commemorate another great trade with night owl - thanks greg!