chrome was a chore this year

i purchased a fair amount of 2025 topps chrome this year, and i purchased it from a variety of sources - directly from topps, from a couple of card shops, and from different target stores in different cities. none of it produced much for my collection, which from this product would be mostly dodgers. if i pc'd ketel marte, on the other hand...

the very first pack that i opened this year included a river ryan base card

and a couple of packs later, i found a roki sasaki prism refractor

that was a good start, but it also represented the sum total of my dodger cards across a lot of packs, until i found a teoscar hernandez refractor when i visited one of the local card shops

and then later, a yoshinobu yamamoto sepia refractor

in my final ill advised blaster purchase.

one other card for my collection from my pack ripping experience was this xander bogaerts double play turn

then again, i did also find a brooks lee photo variation refractor in one of the packs i purchased

lee sort of lives on the fringes of my collection. he's from my neck of the woods and so i have been setting some of his cards aside, and this is a nice one for sure. not sure whether or not it will hold, though.

at some point, i decided to go the sportlots route to get my chrome dodgers that were missing

which were all of the dodgers except for river ryan. that would be those nine above plus clayton kershaw

and shohei ohtani.

note that his chrome card shows him as a two-way player

while his flagship card did not. instead, he got two flagship cards - one for each position. i actually purchased two ohtani base chrome cards from a sportlots seller for $30. now that he has won the mvp, i'll exchange one for $20 and see if i can get that extra $5 value for the $15 i invested. stay tuned.

those initial orders included some parallels, too. 

hunter feduccia refractor

mookie betts, justin wrobleski, river ryan sepia refractors

freddie freeman prism refractor

mookie betts

and feduccia ray wave refractors

blake snell xfractor

and as many clayton kershaw parallels i could find from shopping cart sellers at reasonable prices.

refractor

ray wave refractor

sepia refractor

xfractor

while parallels are the name of the game in chrome (aside from autos), i did pick up a couple of mookie betts inserts - all-etch

and fortune 15

and i also waited on a buyer friendly ebay listing for this fanatical insert

which was a must have for me. i love seeing mookie and muncy (and nestor cortes, for that matter) reacting to freddie freeman's walk-off home run in the 2024 world series. here's the back

which doesn't mention the moment. i think, in that moment, betts was a fan and so it would have made sense to write about the homer. curiously, freeman has a card in this set but it does not feature this dinger. ohtani and sasaki also have fanatical cards, but they will likely remain out of my reach.

going online for my 2025 topps chrome fix was a lot easier, of course, but you know what? i still haven't learned my lesson with retail and hobby wax!

something to look forward to

i was all set for this post to be a nod to blue jays fans and collectors with what they could expect to see in 2026 and beyond from topps until all of the strange and "you might never see that again" plays from games 6 and 7 of the 2025 world series transpired. so, now this post is about cards that i and other dodger fans and collectors can look forward to.

2025 topps chrome world series champions refractor

there are 16 cards in this insert set, but this is the one i wanted most. limited to 50 and, as a result, wildly priced on the secondary market, i had to act fast to buy this one that was undervalued by the seller. here's the back:

these cards were "new" this year and limiting them to 50 copies sucks. i would have loved to be able to complete a set, but there is just no way.

it is possible that topps returns postseason cards to the flaghip set in 2026. i think the last time they did that was 2021 - here's one of the world series highlights cards from that set (it's a yellow parallel)

topps has stayed true to the heritage sets, so there will be singular cards for the world series and the league championship series in the 1977 design next year, most likely.

blue jay fans can look forward to cards like these title clash inserts from 2024 topps dynamic duals

that feature al and nl champs. a shohei ohtani and vladimir guerrero card would be pretty nice.

of course, world series champions are an easy go-to for topps when coming up with inserts, like they did back in 2009 with their flagship and update sets. this one features duke snider

who won a pair of rings with the dodgers.

2014 topps update included another ring focused insert set

this commemorative ring card isn't anything that topps seems to be doing these days, but maybe they bring these back? 

the rings are certainly gaudier these days and would provide some interesting fodder.

traditionally, there have been world series champion relics in flagship each year, although i don't think they were included in 2025 topps. the first year i remember seeing these was back in 2004 and i think they were in update. i pulled a dave roberts relic card which was pretty cool. today, they are less interesting but sort of hard to come by. i added this 2021 topps walker buehler example

earlier this year. it's numbered to 99 which i think is the highest print run of these things. here's the back:

nowhere near as interesting as the johnny podres fake ring card.

this year, perhaps in lieu of relic cards, topps introduced world series champion autographs. i was sure to pick up buehler's

because of his series ending role. here's the back:

the only other two i have are justin wrobleski and tony gonsolin

the buehler and gonsolin are numbered, but the wrobleski is not. i couldn't find any info on non-numbered cards for some reason. the backs are the same as buehler's

these are sticker autos but still pretty pricey. the wrobleski and gonsolin cards were outliers that the sellers put buy it now values between $20 and $30.

and then there are the cards in the future where a world series title is referenced. i picked up this 2025 leaf metal inscription autograph of 1981 world series champion steve garvey

in part because the inscription is "81 ws champs", but also because it's numbered 6/10

garvey also showed up in 2023 topps update with another world series themed commemorative insert set

this is the gold parallel that i tracked down a few months ago. garvey is the guy who gets the most mileage out of that 1981 title, although it would be nice to see some others like ron cey, steve yeager, pedro guerrero, or fernando valenzuela on cards like these.

at least it's nice to see the commissioner's trophy on a card that is sort of easy to find. topps has taken to reserving it in 2025 for semi-rare parallels like a bunch of dodger golden mirror cards. case in point, here's edgardo henriquez's golden mirror parallel

i had to wait for quite a while for one of these - featuring any player - showed up with a decent enough price. here's the back:

henriquez pitched in 3 games for the dodgers in the 2024 regular season, and then 3 more in the postseason, although none of those were in the world series. this year, he pitched in a couple of world series games. i might target his 2026 golden mirror card to keep the set going.

i am hoping that 2026 brings more cards like these, but that they are easier to find. give me a stadium club base card showing clayton kershaw with the trophy like we had in 2021 rather than the golden mirror card we got this year, for example. to the champs go the spoils and i can't wait to add more world series themed cards to my dodger collection in the future!

just wow

game 7 was an absolute classic. it would have been perfect for either team to have won - i would have had no complaints if it had gone the other way, and i truly mean that.

up until last night, miguel rojas was probably going to be remembered as the guy who made a great play to preserve clayton kershaw's no-hitter back in 2014 during his first stint with the dodgers. he didn't even warrant a card when he was first with the team, and his subsequent years have seen him with only a small number of cards. here's a 2023 topps royal blue parallel

that i've shown before (i try really hard not to show cards more than once unless it's germane to the post). he's going to get a few more cards i would say after his game 7 performance. now he will be remembered for his unlikely home run in the top of the 9th to tie the game, as well as his the drawn in defensive play to preserve the tie in the bottom of the 9th. this all overshadowed his crazy short-hop pick to end game 6!

will smith, whose 2025 topps major league material card i picked up at a mall show in mid october,

will be celebrated for his game winning home run in the 11th inning, but he also gets credit for that force play at home in the bottom of the 9th - a play that could have been overturned on replay, it was that close.

and then there was max muncy

who made it a one run game in the 8th with his solo blast. i had been saving that 2022 topps photo variation card for a different post, but game 7 heroics warrant showing it now.

mookie betts (this is his 2023 topps flagship card)

struggled in the series, but he scored a run on a shallow sacrifice fly and then turned the game ending double play with one of my favorite plays to make - the 6-3 double play where you take the ball to the bag yourself. so fun.

i don't have a new card of andy pages to share, and the only kiké hernandez card i have in my scanned folder is this 2023 topps wbc card

but the defensive play pages made while knocking kiké down was incredible. then, they teamed up in the top of the 10th for some more drama, with pages hitting into a force play at home with the bases loaded and hernandez nearly reaching on an infield grounder when the pitcher got his feet turned around at first. just a crazy sequence of plays in the late innings.

the game also marked the official end to clayton kershaw's career. this is his 2025 topps confetti parallel

it was stressful to see kershaw warming up in the bullpen at one point. i had hoped for a blowout (either way) so that kersh might get into the game without any pressure. he delivered in game 3, but...

speaking of the pitching, shohei otani battled but wound up making one bad pitch too many. this is one of his three 2025 topps 2024 greatest hits inserts

we should get a bunch of pitcher ohtani cards in 2026.

justin wrobleski (2025 topps sandglitter parallel)

relieved ohtani and contributed to some drama and a surreal dugout/bullpen emptying hbp of the blue jays' number 9 batter. no way he was trying to hit andres gimenez but three pitches up and in were a bit curious. 

after wrobleski, dave roberts fully committed to "all hands on deck". he brought in tyler glasnow (2024 topps chrome refractor)

who had earned the save in game 6. glasnow gave up what seemed like an insurance run that the blue jays were going to cash in for a title courtesy of gimenez of all people. i was surprised that roberts left glasnow in to face dodger nemesis george springer after that happened, but he did and glasnow got springer and two more outs after that.

glasnow was relived by emmet sheehan, seen here on his 2024 topps gold parallel.

he left after getting the blue jays out in the 7th and issuing a lead off double in the 8th, and was relived by blake snell.

snell (here's his 2025 topps stars of mlb card)

hadn't replicated his playoff success in his two world series starts, but got the dodgers out of a jam thanks to muncy's quick reactions and two strikeouts. he left with two on and one out in the bottom of the 10th and was replaced by yoshinobu yamamoto.

before the game, i assumed that yamamoto would be the only dodger pitcher not available. i was clearly wrong. here's his 2025 bowman chrome card (which i was saving for a different post but oh well)

yamamoto created some drama of his own by hitting the first batter he faced to load the bases. that set up the force play at home from rojas to smith and then the deep flyball that pages caught over kiké's lifeless body. he then worked around the leadoff double by vladimir guerrero jr to start the bottom of the 11th and collected his third win of the series. just a classic, epic game regardless of who won.

as the later innings went on, i was less and less concerned with who would win and more concerned that it not end as the result of an error or some other sort of miscue. i suppose the only other thing that i really didn't want to see was george springer 

as the hero.

i tentatively have plans to head to toronto in april to catch the dodgers when they visit - plans that were begun back when the 2026 schedule was released. if these plans hold, i'll be sure to appreciate both teams just as i did throughout the entire series. i may never see another matchup of my favorite teams in the world series, but if i do, i hope that it is as entertaining as this one was. after all, that's the whole point of this as a fan. and wow was i ever entertained by game 7.