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....

tales of an autumn trade

even though it's not quite officially winter, the temperatures here in the twin cities have not been autumnal at all. even when i returned from an extended trip abroad, it was colder than normal. one of the bright spots, however, was an envelope from madding at cards on cards in my pile of mail.

jackie robinson's autumn tales insert

from 2024 topps update was one of the highlights of the envelope. the back of the card tells the story of robinson stealing home in the 1955 world series to ignite the dodgers. topps decided, however, to not reuse an image of robinson stealing home in that series but rather a photo of him scoring the game winning run on june 18, 1952 against the cubs, courtesy of a gil hodges sacrifice fly. the giveaway to me was the number on the front of robinson's jersey. the dodgers only wore those numbers on their home uniforms during their last few years in brooklyn, and i've seen the images of robinson and yogi berra often enough to know that robinson stole home (yes, yogi, he was safe) at yankee stadium.

here's another good one - a shohei ohtani and yoshinobu yamamoto holiday foil parallel

i have to think that at some point topps cools it with these japanese player combo cards, but i suppose it is a way to have more ohtani cards so never mind.

kerry sent me my first look at 2024 topps stadium club with this clayton kershaw base

i'm not really a fan of the design, but i had also ordered some of this product directly from topps so now i have a fair amount of it. you'll see some of that stuff in future posts i am sure.

the other stadium club card in the envelope was a nice green parallel of ohtani

it's numbered to 199. there are green chrome refractor parallels in this year's stadium club, but those aren't numbered. go figure.

kerry still goes for some panini product, and sent me a couple of jorge de paula cards. this one is a blue ice parallel

from 2024 panini chronicles - crusade, and this one is a green laser parallel

from 2024 panini donruss. i've stopped adding panini dodger checklists to my want lists, but i will still gladly accept the cards!

kerry even went into the wayback machine and sent a 2001 pacific eric karros base card

that i needed, and also sent a needed dave hansen gold rush parallel

from 1994 score. i am down to just three or four more needs to complete that team set.

the most obscure items kerry sent, however were stickers from 1991 panini. here's the dodger logo

and here's kal daniels

when's the last time you saw a kal daniels reference on a card blog? i was pretty excited when the dodgers acquired him from the reds, but after a pretty good first year in los angeles, his knees decided that they had different plans for his career.

thanks kerry! i've already put the next envelope in the mail!

get pumped!

part-time dodger announcer eric karros is here to pump.......you.......up!

because the playoffs start tonight for the dodgers. they face the padres again and hopefully dave roberts has the team better prepared than they have been the last couple of years. i have a lot of respect for the padre lineup and pitching staff and i know they will be fired up for sure.  here's a 2024 topps chrome jackson merrill card

i am curious to see what merrill, the national league's best offensive rookie in 2024, does in this series but i hope these two guys

fare better. i picked both cards - the merrill and the 2024 topps shohei ohtani/mookie betts rainbow foil parallel - from a bargain box at one of the shows i went to recently. 

ohtani is getting his first shot at postseason play and i am excited to see what he does in october. 

summer sortin' had me a blast

i have a bunch of cards to sort through and haven't dedicated the time to do so in recent months. or is it years? anyway, i was envious of fuji who noted that he was doing a big summer sorting project and now i have become one of the beneficiaries of his work!

i received a bubble mailer full of dodger (and selected other) goodness that ran the gamut from oddballs to parallels and even a custom pinback.

i was able to add some cards to my collection from 1986 sportflics including a tri-star card of fernando valenzuela that also features vida blue and john denny.

denny is a good outlier for me to use on the immaculate grid from time to time thanks to him being a non-steve carlton phillie cy young award winner who was featured in the 1978 topps set. i try my best each day to complete the grid using players from that set.

there were a number of fernando items, including stickers like this one from 1984 topps

that is a sears catalog worthy pose!

fuji also sent me my first 1993 topps micro dodger cards, including darryl strawberry, orel hershiser, and eric karros

i've had some of these in the past of other players, but these are the first keepers for me.

these next two items aren't new to me, but i did want to show how clayton kershaw went from a ryan reynolds lookalike on his 2012 panini triple play sticker

to a more hirsute individual on his 2013 panini triple play sticker

it's a transformation similar to what was seen for some players between early 1970's topps flagship sets - 1970 and 1971 richie/dick allen comes to mind (yes i know the photo on his 1970 card is an older photo).

these next three are all new to me - 2013 panini prizm mike piazza diamond dominance

and yasiel puig fearless

inserts, plus a 2018 panini diamond kings jackie robinson portraits insert

obviously, those cards are all lacking logos, but i think i prefer that to whatever it is that todd hollandsworth is wearing on this 1995 signature rookies card 

it kind of looks like a rec league jersey, but hey - the card is 1 of only 25,000!

there were cards with logos, including one that is just the logo

from 1987 donruss opening day.

with fuji being a padres fan, i wasn't surprised to see some steve garvey cards make the mailing. here's a 1986 donruss pop ups card

that celebrates garvey's (last) all-star game which was played at the metrodome in 1985.

my favorite item of the package was this pinback

that was constructed using his 1982 donruss diamond kings card. this is right up there with the coaster that p-town tom sent to me using a 2012 topps mini matt kemp card in terms of custom coolness.

finally, there were a handful of cards from the 2021 topps complete set (gold star edition) for my collection, including corey seager

and the championship fireworks

it's been a long time since i received a gold star from a teacher!

thanks mark! enjoy the last few days of your summer vacation!

the almost daily dodger - eric karros

here we have a 1997 pinnacle totally certified card of eric karros

you can see that this is a "platinum red" card, which leads me to my disdain for this set.

i first found cards from the 1997 pinnacle certified sets in bargain boxes at shinder's in the late 1990's and only recently fully came to understand these cards, thanks to tcdb. there was a 1997 pinnacle certified set, that included parallels called "certified red", "mirror red", "mirror blue", and "mirror gold". then along came 1997 pinnacle totally certified with the "platinum red" card you see above considered its "base". there are also "platinum blue" and "platinum gold" parallels. each of the totally certified cards are serial numbered - platinum red is /3999, platinum blue is /1999, and platinum gold is /30.

whatever the case, i am one card short (wilton guerrero) of the regular certified dodger team set, but have only three of the seven dodgers in platinum red form for the totally certified team set. i do have one platinum blue parallel, but no parallels of the regular certified set.

the karros came to me from a bargain bin at a card show a few months ago and prompted me to really figure out what i actually had. it's worth noting, since this post was supposed to be at least slightly about him, that his son jared made an appearance for the dodgers during the freeway series and pitched two scoreless innings against the angels. i believe there have only been three father/son dodger combos to date - al and jim campanis, ivan and ivan (jr) dejesus, and dick and dick schofield. maybe the karros boys have a shot to join that list.

you know i read it in a magazine

in friday's post i showed a card from the 2021 topps x sports illustrated set, a collaboration between topps and sports illustrated not seen since the early 2000's when fleer and si produced some fantastic cards together. the main difference between the two collabs is that the topps release only used covers.

in addition to that billy martin card, i had acquired the dodger team set which consists of duke snider

tommy lasorda

clayton kershaw

and mookie betts

that mookie card is fantastic and i will never forget his game 6 home run that sealed the 2020 world series for the dodgers. if i had a vote, i would have voted for mookie as the mvp of the series.

anyway, this was a fun set that i had hoped to see continue in 2022. there are so many baseball covers that could have been turned in to cards, but i guess maybe the sales were too low for topps to keep it going. the snider was the second card in the set, and has a print run of 4,386. that pales in comparison to the first card in the set - mike trout - which had a print run of over 17,000 cards. they were released at the same time (there were two cards per week available online) so i assume some bought the snider as part of a package deal.  the other dodgers' print runs are 1,113 for lasorda, 1,495 for kershaw, and 2,590 for betts. the lowest print run of the set looks to be a carlton fisk card at 949 copies sold.

in a tangentially appropriate way, here's a 1995 sports illustrated for kids eric karros card

that entered my collection last spring thanks to a coworker of mine. 

now if i could just find that 1990 rick monday card from the padres magazine...