got yer ginter?

i already shared the 2025 topps allen & ginter cards that i found in a hanger pack courtesy of a nearby lcs, but i also picked up some cards from that release from other sources.

i had preordered a couple of blasters directly from topps, and they arrived shortly after the official release date. i'll show some of the more interesting (to me) cards, including the livvy dunne base card

it's reminiscent of years gone by when kate upton made an a&g appearance. it's nice to see topps expanding the checklist a bit to include players like cesar tovar

who haven't been seen in modern releases for a while. i sort of understand orel hershiser reappearing in card sets this year as he has a hobby connection, but to see the late tovar included was a very welcome surprise. he has a ssp card in 2025 topps series 2 that celebrates his feat of playing an inning at every position in a single game, so perhaps having him in more sets is tied to that appearance.

old stalwarts remain on the checklist, of course, including mr. cub, whom i found in miniature variety

along with george brett

complete with that particularly overused image.

there were more minis to be found - here's one of the other non-baseball subjects

it's actress emma roberts, and it's an a&g back

i understand that she is a collector? or at least a breaker?

caden dana is a baseball player, and this is his gold border mini parallel

some of the insert sets are minis, as usual. here is the new mexico state bird

beep beep.

and here is a jellyfish

i found some high numbers, including a vladimir guerrero 

for my player collection

as for dodgers, i found hyeseong kim

and river ryan

ryan's card seems to be more yellowed than kim's. i noticed this with a few of the cards but i don't think it's a thing.

i had good dodger mini success - finding mookie betts' black border parallel

plus a kirk gibson chrome parallel

and a shohei ohtani 1889 n22 mini

the omnipresent wicked curves inserts including don drysdale 

and yoshinobu yamamoto

while i found freddie freeman and the rest of the 2024 dodgers celebrating their sweet victory

over the yankees in 2024.

that wasn't enough for me, so i bought a couple of lots of ginter off of ebay. with the first lot, i wound up with more dodgers

i included the duplicate of ryan to show how different his card stock looks. gary sheffield was a bit of a surprise to me but i'm always glad to see cards like his show up assigned to the dodgers.

i also found hideo nomo's mini parallel

plus a black border of kim's.

i now know that kentucky's state bird is the cardinal

is it missouri's? well, i don't have that card but it is not.

the other lot i purchased was focused on the full size inserts, and i added the sandy koufax and don sutton wicked curve cards to my collection

i spy jim gilliam behind koufax and i am pretty certain that steve garvey is the player behind sutton. so certain, in fact, that i've added a second sutton card to my collection to document the nl iron man in the background.

as for the sweet victory cards, i added the kirk gibson dodger card celebrating game 1 of the 1988 world series and the mookie betts (with an uncredited cody bellinger appearance) card that celebrates the dodgers' 2020 title

here's the back of gibby's card

of which i have added a duplicate to my "games i attended in person" mini-collection.

gibson also got a card for his 1984 world series title

and, to show that i can have non-dodger related content, here's scott rolen celebrating the cardinals' world series title

in 2006.

not all of the cards were world series victory celebrations. this andruw jones card

celebrates the 1999 nlcs. most are world series focused, however, and this chris sale card

lives in my name/number on the back collection even though he's standing in dodger stadium celebrating the 2018 dodger loss

a couple of wicked curves cards that struck my fancy were bert blyleven's

he's got good stirrup game, and catfish hunter's

i miss the oakland a's.

once i got through those lots, there were still some cards i wanted, so i went to sportlots. i bought orel hershiser's wicked curves card

and blake snell's

as well as that of clayton kershaw

along with his silver portrait parallel

i also needed kershaw's base card

plus several more dodgers, like mookie betts

and gibson

and these four

and these three, too.

and, if you think i have brian cranston's card in my dodger collection...

...you're gd right.

finally, i used ebay again to pick up some of my primary targets from this set. steve garvey has both a mini framed relic and a full sized relic, so here they are

along with the gold filigree parallel of the full sized relic

one of the lots i bought inlcuded one of the garvey full size relics, so i was able to add one to the dodger collection which doesn't happen often. buying multiples of the same card to feed different collections may seem strange to some, and i would expect there are a lot of folks looking at me like this

but my enthusiasm for doing so is not curbed. keep on collectin'!

(i didn't want to see) apathy in the uk

i was in the uk for a couple of weeks last month, and i decided to keep an eye out for trading cards. i didn't have to wait too long before i spotted some, as there was a significant display of 2026 topps premier league cards in a grocery store in porthmadog - in fact, two different displays

and again in the window of what i would consider a neighborhood market

i didn't purchase any of these cards, but it was interesting to see them and note how visible topps is making them.

i later spotted some tobacco cards displayed on the wall of one of the english pubs we went in. 

as far as i could tell, these 1937 player's coronation series: ceremonial dress cards are actual cards - not a promotional or modern poster. it's a partial set (there are 50 total cards in the set) and they don't seem to be worth too much, but i would guess that the cards have been in place there for decades.

i found no topps baseball uk edition cards which is no surprise since the last issue of those cards was in 2022, and i understood that it was an online product, not necessarily available in brick and mortars. speaking of which, i found no hobby shops that carried cards. there were a couple of shops we discovered on our adventures that looked like they could have had sports cards, but they drew the line at funko pops, apparently. the last time i was in britain, i saw some pokemon cards at a convenience type store, but i didn't see any of that this time.

i do have a couple of recent uk edition pickups to share from that last release to show off:

walker buehler black parallel

these are numbered to 125 which is different from the flagship black parallels

freddie freeman and mookie betts base cards

and a clayton kershaw big ben parallel

which is numbered to 99

this is one of the more unique parallels in uk edition, but i feel that i should remind everyone that big ben is the bell inside the tower, not the tower itself which is formally named "elizabeth tower". 

i think i would like to find a union jack parallel but i haven't done so yet. i do regret that these were not purchased in the uk. sadly, i believe the last cards i have purchased in person outside of the united states were o-pee-chee cards in the early 1980s or perhaps some hockey cards in the early 90s. 

i didn't see a whole lot of baseball things of any sort while we were there. a few dodger hats - one person wearing a dodgers shirt - but when i said "go dodgers" to one of the people wearing a hat, they looked confused. several yankee hats were noted, but were largely worn by what i assumed to be tourists from asia. i did see an older gentleman at the british museum wearing an expos hat which made me smile. i didn't even see any of the wbc gear for great britain. i wouldn't have minded picking up a shirt with the classic default font. it's worth noting (because it relates to this post) that i came across a couple of old tour posters featuring the sex pistols, from whom i took inspiration for the title of this post.

at the conclusion of our trip we flew from london to boston before returning to the twin cities, which sort of stunk because of the layover and having to go through security again after clearing customs, but it did afford me an opportunity to say hello to pedro martinez in the tsa precheck security line at logan. not sure where he was headed, but that quick moment was better than any card i might have found abroad.

as rick steves says, "keep on travelin'!" to which i will add "keep on collectin'!"

bonus content - happy 37th anniversary to kirk gibson and his game 1 walk-off

i've had that black parallel of his 2013 panini hometown heroes curtain call insert in my scanned folder for not quite a year waiting for tonight!