a moment for davey lopes

damn.

davey lopes passed away earlier today.

i heard he was in bad health just the other day thanks to a comment on night owl's excellent recent post. i went looking for an update on that news just about an hour ago and saw the announcement that he had passed away.

there aren't many words, so here is a retrospective of his primary topps cards from his playing days, each of which has a special place in my collection.

of course, lopes also featured prominently on topps record breaker and league leader cards throughout his career, as well as the 1978 topps 1977 nlcs retrospective card

and 1982 all-star and in action subset cards along with a traded set card that year. i even made a custom when he was left out of the 1984 and 1986 topps traded sets. he returned to topps flagship sets as the brewers' manager in 2001 and 2002

and has a ton of other cards from various releases due to his career as a player, coach, and manager.

i've written often about my love for the dodger infield, and that i played second base quite a bit. i was a big fan of lopes, and i wore his number 15 on a couple of different occasions in my babe ruth baseball playing days. i never really had the chance to interact with him other than a short recognition and simultaneous head nod and thumbs up from him at a nationals game in 2017 where he was the first base coach under dusty baker.

my most recent lopes additions to my collection come from that same year, as these 2017 topps rediscover topps buybacks

arrived in my mailbox just a week or so ago from a sportlots seller.

lopes is the eighth member of the 1978 topps dodgers to pass away, joining jerry grote, vic davalillo, don sutton, tom lasorda, lance rautzhan, johnny oates, and glenn burke. i am sad to have lost another member of the team of my youth, but happy that i was able to witness the majority of his career. 

rest in peace 15.

a little effort goes a long way

file this one under small victories.

this is a 50th anniversary buyback from 2024 topps heritage 

that i added to my steve garvey collection shortly after the set's release date. it features the buyback foil stamp oriented as if the card were a portrait design rather than landscape. it works with the card in a binder, but it seemed lazy by topps to not take the time to stamp cards correctly. it was something that i think i first noticed in 2021.

well, here is the same card, bought back and stamped, but released with 2024 topps heritage high numbers

it looks so much better to have the stamp aligned with the card.

from what i can tell, topps maintained the "correct" stamp positioning for landscape cards in 2025 and i hope it continues into the future. it's the simple things i suppose.

card show date to church

back in may i went to the semi-annual card show at a suburban church. it's held in a gymnasium that seems too small to me to function as a gymasium, but i am not an elementary school child so that might be the issue. anyway, i bought cards from four dealers and found some fun stuff.

the first guy i bought from is a regular at the local shows. i picked up a couple of 1955 bowman cards for the set build, along with this dandy

it turns out that these world series pennants were inserts in the 1961 fleer baseball greats packs. there are then only two dodger world champions pennants (1955 and this one) and i bet that the 1955 version is pretty spendy. cool vintage oddball pickup for the collection for sure.

the next seller i picked up cards from was another regular - the guy who always has bargain boxes with a seemingly neverending variety of cards. i found these three legends variations from 2009 topps update

a yasiel puig variation from 2018 topps

and some numbered dodger parallels from 2022 topps uk edition

turner & turner at your service.

he also had a box of autos and relics that were marked at 50% off sticker which meant most were a buck or two. i took a black parallel of victor gonzalez' 2021 topps update 1986 autograph

and a couple of dodger relics

from his inventory.

this 2009 bowman draft derek jeter card

goes in my name/number on the back collection, and this 2010 topps cards your mom threw out 1969 reggie jackson card

is an original back version

and probably the closest i will come to owning the real thing.

i am not familiar with paw patrol (i can tell you all about the wiggles, however) but i still picked up this 2024 topps update aaron judge thing

did he make a guest appearance on the show? not sure what the crossover is supposed to be.

finally, i chose to buy this 2023 topps mike trout city connect manupatch

i actually like the angels' city connect uniforms, although you don't get too much of it on this card.

there was another seller with a 50 cent box that i stopped to check out. i wound up with a few cards, including a desecrated 1975 topps pete rose card

and a beat up phil garner/keith hernandez rookie card from the same set

i mean no disrespect to bob sheldon and tom veryzer, but those top two guys made this card a hot commodity back when i was trying to complete the oakland a's team sets during the early billy ball days.

i also grabbed this 1979 topps lou brock card

even though i don't have a need for it. it's just such an iconic card from my childhood - seeing the same person as the all-time and season record holder was pretty cool to young gcrl. and it's still cool, even though the player on this card would be different today. looking forward to 2028 topps heritage!

finally, i was on my way out when i saw some monster boxes set up near the doorway. there was a kid - probably late teens - who was set up with a table of toploaded and slabbed stuff. the monster boxes were on the side and clearly not the main thrust of his set up. i didn't want to spend too much more time at the show, but i started looking through one of the boxes.

i wish all sellers were like this one. he came over and told me that he would give me a deal on the singles from the box. i pulled this card out - a 2024 topps holiday shohei ohtani variation 

and asked him how he would price it. he said that it was a variation, and so i was ready for the $5 to $10 price tag. instead, he said a buck or so. um ok. i'll keep digging.

i wound up with quite a stack of cards - parallels and inserts - from various 2023, 2024, and 2025 topps releases. finding a 2024 topps chrome cosmic mookie betts extraterrestrial talent insert

was fun, but most of the cards in the one box i looked through came from topps flagship releases. clearly this person was buying a variety of release formats and looking for the big hits. here's a 2025 topps ohtani 8-bit ballers insert

and a 2025 topps rosie red insert

that both came from the celebration boxes. 

i was able to add the one dodger themed first pitch card to my collection

(that's usc trojan juju watkins) plus some other dodger parallels like a 2023 topps freddie freeman silver pattern foil card

from a collector's box, and some 2024 topps aqua parallels from fanatics packaging - freeman on a league leader card

and walker buehler

as well.

i didn't limit myself to dodgers, as i will always go for a miguel cabrera final tribute parallel

and i also couldn't pass up the color match on the padres team card

the last card i added to my stack was this 2024 topps chrome update jackson holliday stratospheric stars insert

i asked the seller to price the stack and figured i was looking at about 20 bucks. he came back with 10 and it was such a pleasant surprise. i hope to see him at future shows, although he hasn't been at the couple i've attended since then, and i won't be able to get to the next church show.

the triumphant return of the mall show

i don't recall all of the details as it's been about four months, but back in february i went to a card show held in one of the many suburban twin cities malls. these locations have largely become depressing shells of their past glory, so i don't get to malls too often. the last time i was in a mall before this show, it was the mall of america in october for dinner at the twin city grill. that's good stuff and i highly recommend it if you ever venture to bloomington and the site of the twins' former ballpark.

i had been to shows at this particular mall before over the years, including recent incarnations even though the last few years have been disappointing as there seems to be more of a focus on other types of collectables (sport and non-sport) from the vendors who set up. this time, it was like the days of yore with a lot of card dealers from near and far. i recognized a couple of them and they admitted that they hadn't been to this location for a while, but they thought timing was right and they had hoped that the current status of the hobby would bring out the customers. 

one of these sellers i recognized had a nickel box of vintage-ish commons, including a bunch of miscuts. i remember buying a gloriously miscut 1977 topps davey lopes card from him several years ago. this time, i took this 1975 topps mini ken mcmullen card

that is slightly miscut and diamond cut. i will note that the mcmullen was the least miscut of the 15 miscuts i grabbed! 

the 1975 topps mini bob oliver

and 1975 topps (regular?) joe lis

are progressively worse, and then there is the star of the show - a 1980 topps larry biittner and kent tekulve mashup card

that is just ridiculous. i get vertigo just looking at that thing.

i even grabbed four football cards - three from 1973 and one from my lost love 1978 - that were fantastically miscut

the charley young card shares space with a checklist, while ed budde has the bills' dick cunningham encroaching in his neutral zone. bruce gossett's card features another kicker, or punter, actually, in bobby walden from the steelers. it's charlie harraway's card that really gets me, because that's jack younblood showing up. as a rams fan growing up, youngblood was one of my three favorite players. stud.

just before i found the seller with the miscuts, i visited a dealer who stuck to his guns and charged me $9 for 9 cards from his dollar box.

i asked him, "even austin barnes?", and he shrugged. i suggested that i should stop buying gavin lux cards and he agreed with me, but i persisted.

dollar boxes were the theme for the most part, but at least there was the opportunity to haggle, or in the case of one of the dealers the dollar (and two dollar) boxes were proactively marked as "50% off". i found some decent dodger parallels including a prism refractor

and a regular refractor

of mookie betts from the two most recent topps chrome platinum anniversary releases. i wonder if topps decided to take a break in 2024 and restart this set in 2025 with a true 70 year anniversary for the 1955 design.

these shows are a good way to pick up cards left over (i assume?) from card shop activities, like a couple of hobby rip night dodgers - yoshinobu yamamoto and shohei ohtani

this would have been one of ohtani's first dodger cards? or maybe these were series 2 rip night cards. i don't follow these sorts of things anymore.

my favorite pick up from this dealer was this 2008 upper deck yankee stadium legacy card

it's not just a roger maris 1961 season card from that expansive set, it's from his 61st home run game!

imagine the odds of pulling the card for this specific game from a pack. and then throwing the card in a $2 box and selling it for a buck.

the next seller was a guy whose tables were straining under the weight of a massive number of monster boxes with all sorts of cards jammed in them. i grabbed mostly cheap autos and relics like these four dodger autos

(that came from 2017 bowman high tek, 2017 topps finest, 2020 panini prizm, and 2023 bowman platinum, respectively), and this yankee relic from 2021 topps allen & ginter

yankee relics with a pinstripe will always make me take notice. as for luke voit, he's currently playing in mexico.

now we've made our way to cards from the first dealer i stopped at (and spent most of my time with). he had a couple of 1 and 2 dollar boxes in a corner of the second level walkway. the boxes had some good variety, and i wound up buying my very first 1965 topps embossed insert.

is that tommy davis? who knows. i had always avoided these things, even as i built the 1965 set. i may now look to track down the other dodgers now that i have a start.

2020 topps chrome dustin may refractor parallels

are sort of boring, but team collectors are slaves to the machine.

i like seeing shiny cards of players from my youth, so i picked out this 2022 panini mosaic george brett

green mosaic prizm and this 2023 panini prizm green ice prizm card

of willie stargell.

i will also happily purchase legend variation cards, such as this 2022 topps update christy mathewson

i tell you what, i would collect the heck out of a set that looked like this in its entirety. the simple 2022 flagship design works really well with tobacco card type images.

from clean and sharp to cluttered and nonsense, here are some 2024 topps parallels that i bought. this first one is the aforementioned (and recently released) austin barnes

he's got beach chairs and umbrellas behind him (reminds me of a day i spent at siesta key a couple of years ago). this series 2 holiday foil design is numbered to 50. here's the back:

jackie robinson number sighting!

i found three other, non-numbered holiday parallels, too

hot dog!

beach chairs and umbrellas, plus hot dogs? sounds like a summer cookout, and with the fourth of july in a couple of days now is the time!

happy (2021 panini donruss bo jackson) independence day (parallel)!

be safe!