smooth sailing out of los angeles

as a team collector, i don't typically avoid dodger cards in bargain bins unless i am certain that i already own them. i do pause, however, when i find parallels of guys like dennis santana, which was the case at a show last year. i wound up bringing home these 2019 panini donruss optic and 2019 topps parallels

but i would have preferred them to be of a current dodger. 

santana seems to have found his groove in pittsburgh which makes me happy. the dodgers in recent years have been quick to jettison young talent that they have developed in exchange for other teams' talent. in santana's case, they dealt him to the rangers for a minor league pitcher who toiled in the dodgers' minor league system through last season, and is now a free agent. i get that they are dealing from a surplus, but i still appreciate the older dodger way that allows me to collect and cheer for "homegrown" players for an extended period of time, as with clayton kershaw or will smith.

other dodgers whose departures i understood but to some degree regretted include joc pederson 

that's a 2016 topps update 500 home run futures club insert. spoiler alert - joc won't get close to 500 homers, but he hit some big ones for the dodgers and i am glad he is no longer in the national league west so i can root for him a little more.

cody bellinger, seen here on a 2022 panini prizm illumination insert

and a 2022 topps 1987 insert black parallel

was another one that was tough to see move on in free agency even though his performance with the dodgers in his last years had not warranted a big contract. i hope he has a nice season for the yankees but is at home in october. i do think the game is more fun when the yankees are good, but i really want the blue jays to get another crack at a title.

i was ready to be a ryan pepiot fan, but adding a proven starter in tyler glasnow was a deal too good for the dodgers to pass up. pepiot's 2022 topps chrome update purple refractor

was the last one i needed for that dodger team set of parallels.

just a couple of weeks ago, it was announced by the rays that pepiot was headed to the il and replaced on the 40 man roster by michael grove, seen here on a 2023 topps chrome sepia parallel

grove is also injured at the moment. i was ready to be a fan of his as well, but now all i will have are random cards to find at shows.

another example of a short time dodger that had a lot of cards available for me to collect is miguel vargas. this is his 2024 topps yellow parallel

and i am sure i will be finding vargas dodger cards in bargain boxes for years to come. will i buy them? time will tell. adding tommy edman and michael kopech in the trade that sent vargas to the white sox was a great move by the dodger front office, so i hope that vargas finds his way in chicago and lives up to a bit of the hype that surrounded him in his earliest dodger days to pay back that championship level deal that is currently a bust for the sox.

gavin stone, seen here on his 2023 topps chrome update refractor

and landon knack, shown on his 2025 topps gold parallel

are still dodgers as of now. they are both on the injured list, and who knows what will happen once they are healthy. there's not a lot of room on the pitching staff at the moment, so it's possible that these two become trade bait once they prove themselves healthy. i hope not, especially knack who i like, but i get it if it is the case.

and then there are guys like dalton rushing. 

his 2025 panini donruss card is one of many that i already have of him, and who knows how long he will be a dodger? blocked by his fellow university of louisville alum will smith, who is signed to a long-term deal, and too good to be in triple-a, he's not getting a lot of playing time. so far this year he is playing very well when he does play, but is it just enough to entice another team to make an offer that fills a different dodger need later in the season?

we will have to wait and find out who will join the likes of santana in the former dodger makes good elsewhere camp, and then subsequently haunts the bargain boxes and collections of team collectors like me.

more days of archives

here's another late to market post, sharing my second wind roundup of cards i've added from 2025 topps archives to advance my dodger collection, mostly. 

to finish up the 1964 dodger cards, i added dalton rushing

and chan ho park

both are spring training shots typical of the eras in which these players played. 

i have most of the 1996 cards added as well - here's teoscar hernandez

clayton kershaw

and will smith

all at dodger stadium. not sure if i mentioned it before, but it annoys me slightly that the inset "phantom zone" (as i call it) photo is not skewed the way it was on the original '96 cards.

here's more of the dodger team set using the 2005 design - hyeseong kim, river ryan, mookie betts

and yoshinobu yamamoto

i like the betts card very much because of the world champion gold-lettered jersey he is wearing. i appreciate topps creating a few cards featuring dodgers in these duds in 2025 and i hope they make some in 2026 and beyond! here's the back of yamamoto's card

i found it interesting that they went with a straight "3" for his era below the photo of him on the back. era is always shown to two decimal places except here when the tenth and hundredth places are zeroes.

one of the other 2005 design cards belongs to orel hershiser

his card back is even more interesting

because i really don't know what's going on with the stat that shows up under his photo. i think it is supposed to be 204 to match his wins total (and the "w" above the .304). they just forgot to edit the number from a batting average and change the first digit. that's the best i can do in trying to figure it out.

those cards above all came from sportlots. i was able to find two of the three dodgers i was still missing at the february card show in those dig boxes i posted about previously. jackie robinson and sandy koufax

don't look too bad on these modern card designs.

i like the black foil parallels again this year, and picked up sandy's from an online seller

just like i did to obtain kershaw's 2007 all-star design insert

the other archives card i tracked down this year was barry larkin's

and that's because he is shown (finally) on the 2005 design, making this a final tribute. here are his complete career stats as they should have been presented 20 years ago

i don't have larkin in my hall of famer collection, but my final tribute collection is less restrictive.

all of this left me one card short of the dodger team set, and i should have that last card in hand soon. not that it's a big deal card (it's not) but it does provide fodder for a separate post. stay tuned!

chrome doesn't like me much

it's not a rock in my trick or treating pillowcase, but it still stinks to get this "card"

in a pack of cards. specifically, this came from a pack of 2025 topps chrome update that was included in a mega box that i purchased directly from topps. just a blank refractor which i suppose you could use to create your own art card. i understand that these are printing blanks and are (obviously) not supposed to be sent out in the packs, but it has happened the last couple of years.

the mega box was the last bit of chrome update i purchased, but i had bought a lot of it prior to that order, and in all sorts of distribution methods. as a result, i wound up with a bunch of the different guaranteed parallels, like sepia

xfractor

and topps logo 

refractors. the nick kurtz sepia refractor is nice, and i would have preferred to find his xfractor and topps logo refractor instead of willie maciver's but here we are. overall, my purchases seemed to be american league west heavy. here are some of the other sepias i found:

ben williamson

gunner hoglund

and yusei kikuchi

i'll stick with the al west theme to share some of the other cards i found, such as all-star game inserts of brent rooker

and bobby witt jr

night terrors insert of cam smith

power players inserts of kurtz

wyatt langford

and cal raleigh

plus refractor parallels of jacob wilson

blaine crim

and eugenio suarez

suarez also appeared in raywave refractor form

as did ben williamson

while denzel clarke

was one of the prism refractors i found

i came across a very small number of numbered parallels, but one was a purple raywave refractor of hoglund

numbered to 250.

to complete the card type tour via the al west, here's a base card belonging to kurtz

the only other card types i found that i couldn't represent using a player from the angels, astros, rangers, mariners, or athletics were the fortune 15 inserts (here's rafael devers)

and the aqua wave refractor rookie auto card i found in a hanger pack. it's omar cruz

and i would have preferred a different nl west team be represented.

that cruz card is a sticker auto, but not all of the signed cards in this set are like that. the card i wanted most from this release sure isn't. a week or two before chrome update was released, steve garvey made this post on the socials

i am slowing down in my additions of new garvey cards, but a chrome auto is a must have!

sadly, this is the only dodger card i found in all of my sealed product purchases - hyeseong kim's rookie debut base card

to complete the team set, i went to sportlots and bought the cards of will smith

jack dreyer

and dalton rushing

which left me a roki sasaki card short of the team set.

i added some parallels and inserts to these orders as best (and cheaply) as i could. i wound up with a prism refractor of smith

plus his all-star game insert

as well as that of clayton kershaw

and freddie freeman 1990

and power players inserts

plus the mookie betts power players insert

as well.

it's no surprise that i had to go to ebay to find the garvey legends auto, and i was successful fairly early on. the "base" versions are numbered to 50, and that's what i have

on card beauty!  here's the back:

i've seen some other variations sell for silly prices, including the 1/1. i am content to have this singular version. in fact, i would likely purchase one of orel hershiser's cards from this release before i targeted a garvey parallel.

in all, i would have had more success for my collection had i purchased a team break slot for the dodgers and seek out the garvey card as i did rather than buy as much sealed product. but where's the fun in that?