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.

h-town card show, part 2

i'm here to wrap up my visit last month to planet houston and the hotel card show i attended. yesterday's post covered my pick-ups from the first few dealers i worked with, and now here is the rest!

the next dealer i found had a quarter box filled with topps inserts and topps on demand releases. i took 37 cards from him, and he charged me 8 bucks.

here's a lot of 2022 topps 582 montgomery cards from 2020-21 set 1 and 2022 set 2

plus six more from 2022 set 3

and here is a pair of red sox from 2021 topps brooklyn collection

i knew that i already had the ichiro card because of the duke snider mural in the background - i had added the card to my dodger stadium mini-collection as soon as i first saw the card online. i didn't realize, however, that i also already had the trea turner card.

i did find some other dodgers that i did need here, too, including this 2022 topps a&g x freddie freeman mini

i had more luck with dodgers at the next stop. this was a guy in a braves hat who said his boxes were 50% off the marked prices. i made away with 48 cards for a total of 20 bucks. highlights included a 2021 topps update dj peters vintage stock parallel

a 2020 topps heritage 50th anniversary buyback of wes parker's 1971 topps card

a pair of color parallels of clayton kershaw from 2021 topps big league

and 2022 panini donruss optic

a pair of jackie robinson short prints

from 2021 topps gypsy queen and 2010 topps national chicle, respectively, and a pair of autographs from a couple of 2019 topps products

of dennis santana. santana most recently pitched for the yankees, and i will admit that i was a bit sad to see the dodgers get to him during the first two games of their series in new york. after the second game, in which santana was pulled and replaced by a position player, it seemed pretty clear his time was up and the next day the yankees dfa'd him. fortunately, like mitch white in yesterday's post, santana was picked up by a nl central team - in his case, the brewers.

i added five more dodger cards from another seller for 10 bucks, and i was happy with that price. i figured that he would be asking for that much for this card alone - 2024 topps shohei ohtani/mookie betts checklist

i think topps is playing fast and loose with what a hug is. maybe their copy editor has some issues.

the other four cards were inserts and parallels from stadium club chrome and topps chrome releases

at least half of which are unnecessary, but i remain the fool that buys them (on the secondary market).

next up i stopped at a dealer who had pretty much only texas team items and dug through a short stack (is there any other kind?) of jose altuve cards for a trading partner who collects the astro 2nd baseman. i found four cards for 2 bucks, and i am keeping one from 2022 panini donruss optic

since it's a double play turn!

then i stopped at another table and dug through a couple of rows of a monster box that was ambiguously priced. i was on my way out so i didn't look too seriously but, did pick out two autographed cards which totaled 10 bucks, one of which was this 1997 bowman karim garcia auto

he gave them both to me for five which was nice. i guess there is also a "blue ink" version of the garcia card, but i will count my collection complete with this one.

i made one more stop, figuring that i should see if i could pick up some 1955 bowman. there was an older couple with some vintage stacks, including cards from the tv set. i picked out a few and offered ten bucks. the toploaders that the cards were in had prices on them, and ten bucks was a pretty good discount. the guy looked at the cards and countered with the full marked price.  i then reduced my ask to two cards which had a total marked price of six bucks and asked if he would take five. he looked at them and told me "six dollars". it was then that i realized he was hard of hearing. i held up five fingers and he said ok and so i was able to cross off st. paul native fred baczewsi and gil coan

from the want list as i work towards completing the set. i'm making some decent strides in that regard but still have a ways to go.

big thanks to houston for hosting a show that coincided with one of my visits. i have plans to be there again, but don't see any shows scheduled during that time which is too bad for me because i really did have a good time.

last gasps

here we are in the middle of june, heading officially in to summer as of today, and the baseball season is in full swing. this year feels a bit different to me thanks to the vast reduction in the number of card releases that have occurred so far - even when you count the 2022 products that were pushed in to this calendar year.

with panini losing their mlbpa license and fanatics streamlining the topps umbrella of products, i figured now would be a good time to share some of the "last gasps" we've seen from panini and 2022 products in general.

i purchased a big lot of panini stuff sometime last year due to the fact that there were some dodgers shown in the listing images, and i wasn't disappointed. these cards are from 2022 panini absolute hobby:

mookie betts icons insert

sandy koufax icons red spectrum parallel insert

andre jackson rookie force relic

dennis santan tools of the trade relic/patch auto

kudos, i guess, to panini for showing santana as a dodger even though he was a texas ranger for the last part of the 2021 season and all of 2022. he's currently a met.

of those players, only sandy koufax stands a chance to be in panini product at this point, but he hasn't shown up yet (2023 panini donruss is, i think, the only 2023 product to be released so far).

here are some from the retail version of 2022 absolute:

roy campanella

cody bellinger

and betts

betts shows up again in my collection with this 2022 panini chronicles xr card

this 2022 panini diamond kings aficionado card

and this 2022 panini donruss unleashed pink fireworks insert parallel card

i think panini is running out of animals to use on the unleashed cards.

moving on to 2022 panini donruss optic, here's a walker buehler lights out insert

and now back to 2022 panini chronicles for this freddie freeman spectra holo parallel

more holo parallel craziness with a 2022 panini donruss holo pink kenley jansen card

and a 2022 panini select holo parallel of julio urias

here's a trea turner 'extreme team' insert from 2022 panini absolute

and a regular old base card of sandy koufax from 2022 panini diamond kings

one of my favorite things about 2022 cards was seeing albert pujols in more releases as a dodger, including 2022 panini absolute - in base

and insert form

along with 2022 panini prizm

koufax and pujols may continue to show up in panini product, as their only options are retired players and prospects beginning in 2023. 

these new releases will look a lot like 2022 panini prizm draft picks, from which this peter heubeck card comes

this is a burgundy cracked ice prizm card, numbered to 23

can't wait to see more peter heubeck cards in future panini releases!

2023 has also seen the release of some 2022 products, so here is a look at some other sorts of "last gasps". i picked up a few dodgers from 2022 bowman platinum

just in case this was my only opportunity to see joey gallo as a dodger. bowman platinum may have come out in december of 2022 now that i think about it, but i didn't pick up these cards until 2023

i also picked up some 2022 topps finest dodgers

and i know these were released in 2023.

in fact, it wasn't until april of this year that we saw 2022 topps stadium club chrome hit the market, and so far i've added a few of the dodgers to my collection:

mookie betts

walker buehler

roy campanella

will smith

and a joey gallo xfractor

i am usually more interested in the new photos used in the chrome set, but i did pick up vladimir guerrero's card

which uses the same photo as the regular old stadium club set.

so by now we've seen the last gasps from panini in terms of current player sets, but we are still waiting on at least one 2022 release - that would be topps chrome platinum anniversary. and i think that 2019 upper deck chasing amy is still "tbd" as far as its release date. someday, maybe.