to give is to receive

most of the giveaways i've hosted have been "almost free" in that claimants can have as many cards as they choose, and need only send one card back to me in return. the most recent giveaway i hosted was a true giveaway so i was a bit surprised when one of the winners, mark z, sent a few cards back my way.

mark took care of a few 1991 needs from my want list, with five cards from 1991 classic including steady eddie murray

along with brett butler, kal daniels, orel hershiser, and ramon martinez

that's the first new kal daniels card i've added to my collection in a long time! 

another 1991 need sent along was this 1991 legends sports memorabilia darryl strawberry card

new dodger strawberry was the subject of an absolute avalanche of oddball cards back then. the homecoming didn't go quite as planned but there was so much excitement early on. i really enjoy finding and receiving new-to-me dodger strawberry cards!

one more card to show, and it's a bit more modern. it's a 2013 topps chrome andre ethier blue refractor parallel

these guys are numbered to 199

i am reminded of the interesting stuff topps put on card backs in the early 2010's. in this case, the career chase of hank aaron's rbi total. ethier amassed another 152 rbi in his career after this card was printed, so he only fell 1,610 short of hammerin' hank's mark. 

that's good stuff, just like these cards. thanks mark!

bonus content!

jon from penny sleeves reached out a couple of weeks ago asking about some player collections of mine and late last week these two cards showed up in my mailbox:

1997 collector's edge masters mark brunell ripped

2000 topps tek vladimir guerrero pattern 7

pattern 7 is "hometown" and topps has "nizao bani" listed for vladdy. he was born in nizao (according to baseball reference) and bani is close by. not sure why they had two towns listed, or if nizao bani is a whole separate entity. i am also reminded that i need to get my brunell cards listed in tcdb.

anyway, more good stuff for the collection. thanks jon!

let's play hockey! and to the game?

i really do appreciate folks who trade cards through the mail. whether it's through tcdb (i have yet to complete a trade that way) or through email or blog posts, it's not a small effort these days to pull cards and get them on their way. it's even more difficult to send cards into this country at the moment, so angus of dawg day cards deserves a hearty thanks for sending me some items in return for my "almost free stuff friday" event.

plus, it is now hockey season (although it's still baseball season in my world), and the local club started out the season strong with a shutout in st. louis. i'll get to the hockey content in a moment...

i really should have held off on my post showing some of the other returns i received, as these items were en route at that time and they really do bring the international flair i alluded to in the post. first up is a near complete dodger team set of stickers from 1992 panini

however, these are the canadian version of the stickers as you could probably tell by the french position translations. it's always fun to see "premier but" on baseball cards or stickers.

missing from the set are the dodger team logo/header sticker and mike scioscia's sticker. i will for sure need to track those down. the backs of the stickers invite you to "au jeu!"

which is how they have translated "play ball". based on my rudimentary french knowledge, i would have thought that "au jeu" would be "to the game" (and not to be confused with "au jus" which is "with juice"). with these stickers printed in italy, were there some further language barriers in place? i would be interested to know how a french speaking umpire would say "play ball", and now that i think about it "to the game" sort of makes sense.

the other card that angus sent was one of my most wanted non-dodger cards - a 2013-14 o-pee-chee luc robitaille card

minimal french, even on the back

but it's understandable as there is not really any room for a bilingual bio. robitaille remains my favorite hockey player and i was happy each time he returned to the kings. i've replaced this robitaille card with a ron cey oddball on my most wanted non-dodger list, but i would think luuuuuuuuuuuuuc would reappear on that list at some point. i really need to get the rest of my collection (including my robitailles) entered into tcdb so i have better access to what i am missing.

thanks angus for the cards and for avoiding strikes and tariffs!

things really were pretty bad in '92

the 1992 dodgers were the worst team in franchise history other than a couple of the brooklyn superbas teams from earlier in the century. they lost 99 games and had the worst record in the league for only the second time in franchise history. in fact, they had the worst record in the majors but still missed out on the first overall pick (alex rodriguez) due to the stupid alternating league rule at the time.

as a reminder of how bad this team was, there were no dodger pitchers in 1992 with a winning record, mike sharperson was the team's all-star representative, and only one player had double digit home run totals. sure, that was rookie of the year eric karros, but still.

this 1993 donruss long ball leaders card of darryl strawberry

is a recent addition to my collection, and it shares some information about the dodgers' ineptitude in 1992 on the back:

72 home runs as a team is pretty poor. after karros and his 20 homers, the next highest total on the team belonged to mitch webster and dave hansen with six apiece. thankfully, mike piazza would show up the next season to start launching baseballs all over the place.

by the way, even though this is a fairly sad dodger card thanks to strawberry being "plagued by injuries" and the display of the dodgers' home run ineptitude, i need another one of these for the dodger stadium collection - can you help a blogger out?

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!

oddballs and ends

here are some dodger oddballs i picked up not too long ago from a few different sportlot sellers. filling out orders to maximize shipping benefit is a lot easier for team collectors with the site's database revisions - you can sort seller inventory by team!

this is a 1983 post super sugar crisp dodger team card

and the back contains a summary of the franchise's history

it is weird to think of a time when pee wee reese and don drysdale weren't in the hall of fame, but it was "just" 40 years ago that they were so honored, and this cereal insert predates that! when will there be cards in cereal boxes again? 

this is a 1993 metz - not mets - baking card of darryl strawberry

it is clearly a dodger card and not a met card.  metz baking company was founded in the 1920's in iowa and grew to be the largest baking company in the midwest. from what i can tell it's been bought out and resold since these cards were produced.

i completed my dodgers 1981 permagraphics team sets with the addition of fernando valenzuela's all-star card 

and a steve garvey credit card beyond the one that is in my garvey pc

apparently there are variations of these cards in terms of how they are numbered on the back

but i think the garveys i have are the same. i also have one of these that garvey actually signed in the autograph spot on the back.

finally, i picked up this 1981 fleer dodger sticker

it has the 1980 all-star game on the back, which features the game played at dodger stadium. i have one of those backs in my dodger stadium mini-collection, and i am pretty sure i have this sticker as part of the 1981 fleer set i put together in real time 43 years ago.

i still need a couple of stickers to complete the team set, so i will be oddball hunting again in the future i am sure.

i am glad that i signed up!

in my mind there is really only one law of trading (as long as you assume that trading means both parties actually send cards to each other), and it is similar to the golden rule: swap cards that are commensurate with your trading partner's expectations. want to trade by book value? that's fine, although i can't recall the last time i entered a trade like that. blind trade? that's great, but first time blind traders should have an idea of expectations. more often than not, the trades i am involved in are of the ongoing back and forth variety in which we figure things will work out in the end. those are the best kind of trades, and they speak to the quality of trading partners we typically deal with.

back in april of 2020, i commented on a post at my sports obsession in which jeff asked for trading partners for his cousin who collects braves inserts and parallels. by then, (like most) i was working from home and paying more attention to my collection than i had been during the previous year, so i figured why not swap some cards. indeed.

since then, kevin and i have sent cards back and forth 3 or 4 times - braves for dodgers. the haul has been amazing. hundreds of cards including short prints, inserts, variations, parallels, game used, and autographs. here are shots of a couple of the boxes i've received:

i took the time to scan some cards from the third box i received, so hold on

some good stuff here, including a 2008 topps allen & ginter chad billingsley bazooka back and a carl fuillo relic

more cool stuff, including a 2017 topps holiday cody bellinger rookie

just a bunch of parallels and variations and what not. i had a lot of fun going through the cards that kevin sent.

one card that arrived in the first box that really had me scratching my head was this one:

here's the back:

i had never seen one of these before, despite thinking i had all of the dodger cards from 1993 stadium club. i had no record of a "pacific terrific" insert being available, but then it all made sense when i found that this was actually the "superstar duos" insert - the same insert set that topps revisited in this year's stadium club release.

i am hoping to get another package from kevin at some point - i am glad i signed up to trade!

let's see a show of cards

i skipped the september and october card shows here in the twin cities, but spent $80 at the august card show. i arrived early and went straight for the dealer with the 5/$1 boxes that i perused in july. there were already a few other people mining those boxes, including a teenager who seemed to be pulling every other card and handing them to his mom to hold. it was kind of a free for all, but there were a bunch of boxes so i was able to find quite a few gems.  before we get to the haul from those boxes, i will show some 1957 cards that i added to my set thanks to a different dealer:

the tony kubek card is kinda rough, but the price was right. great color on the other cards - i can't imagine what it was like as a collector to open packs in 1957 and see actual photography on cardboard.

now, back to the bargain boxes. i am going to show all the cards, so buckle up. first up are most of the keepers, starting with three horizontal, gold bordered dodger cards:

that is a broder card of dodger buds and duds darryl strawberry and eric davis. more specifically, it is a 1992 ballstreet card made for the west coast national card show held at the la county fairgrounds in the summer of '92. i did not attend that show but now almost 30 years later i have one of the 30,000 copies of the card that was handed out to attendees. patience pays off!

here's a 2011 topps russell martin gold parallel

and a regular 1999 topps raul mondesi card that has been rescued and stamped as part of the 2017 topps "rediscover topps" effort

it's a bronze stamp by the way.

and now for some dodger keepers

and some mini-collection additions for the dodger stadium collection

double play collection

the lurker collection

that's aaron miles, mike trout, and ronald acuna jr if you are curious

the tatooine collection

a quick note about the mccutchen card - i initially thought it was a short printed jackie robinson day variation since cutch is wearing the jrd patch on his right sleeve. however, in true topps fashion, it's just his regular card

the vladdy collection

and the 2001 topps heritage set build

some big names from the low number short prints there.

and now for the rest of the cards, nine at a time

it's not too often you find a 1984 fleer update card in the wild like that ron darling card. the pete rose card is from the 1985 topps/renata galasso rose-centric set.

the pujols is the sticker parallel - just like the vladdy i found the previous month

neat to find an anthony rizzo rookie card for twenty cents!

a couple of 2011 topps update rookies for twenty cents - crawford and blackmon. no trout, sadly.

20 cent manny machado rookie!

that was fun. the reason i grabbed most of these cards was to sell or trade them for other cards i need, so let me know if you see anything you need.