are you an optimist or a cynic?

i received this 2003 fleer platinum new to me chin-feng chen card

from night owl in the last batch of cards he sent my way. i think it might be a short print, even. regardless, it shows what i at first believed to be a defensive miscue which is a rarity on cardboard. 

when i first looked at the card, i thought that chen had attempted to short hop the ball missed and it hit off of his arm and is seen ricocheting away. i looked at it again as i was putting it in my 2003 dodger binder and thought that maybe the ball was still on its way down and that he has a chance to make the catch. i would guess that what i saw the second time around is correct as there is no disturbance of the grass shown, which would seem to indicate that the ball hasn't hit the ground yet.

i guess i was just trending negative when i first saw the card which is strange because receiving cards in the mail is always a good thing!

green grow the cards

here is a somewhat meta card - this 2003 fleer platinum card

is a very green shawn green card! i had a teammate back in high school whose last name was black. he thought it was weird to have a last name that was also a color, and he refused to wear black. names are weird in general, i think.

moving on, here's a green non-green card

that card, from 2005 playoff prestige, is the purple parallel. 

and another, from 2001 fleer authority:

i stumbled upon this one in my dodger dupes box and noticed that the dodger stadium murals (hi, pee wee!) are visible behind green despite the best efforts of fleer's card designers. to the dodger stadium binder it goes!

i do have some other non-green green cards to show that have entered my collection over the last couple of years.  here's a 2020 panini diamond kings jackie robinson all-time diamond king card

that is green by design.

i stumbled upon this retail green parallel of a 2019 topps sandy koufax decades' best card

in a target or walgreens somewhere back in 2019, and this 2018 topps gypsy queen chris taylor green parallel card

was a sportlots order filler.

green green green! happy st. patrick's day!

it got dusty in here, and then some

i recently received a couple of plain white envelopes from fellow collectors, which was a nice surprise. as many have noted, trading as of late is not what it had been in headier days, and i am as much to blame as anyone else. i do have some stacks of cards building for a few folks that i hope to send out in the near future.  at any rate, i have already returned a few cards to mr. haverkamp who sent me a 1995 mother's cookies giants dusty baker card

as well as a 2006 topps allen & ginter baker black-bordered mini

for my collection of the left fielder of the team of my youth.

mr. haverkamp reports that the mini came from the national, which made me appreciative that my collection was being thought of as cards were being pulled from dealers' wares, but also made me wonder if there was cubbies markup on the card given the convention was in illinois.  

there was probably no markup on dodger cards out in the pacific northwest, as the team has long since left affiliations in ogden and spokane.  still, kerry from cards on cards was able to find a few cards that i was happily able to delete from my want lists.

here are a couple from 2004 donruss classics - hong-chih kuo and shawn green

and two from 2004 donruss team heroes - paul loduca and another shawn green 

loduca was definitely a hero to manager jim tracy, but i was not a big fan.  green has been in the dodger conversation lately given that cody bellinger has a chance to eclipse his franchise record of 49 home runs this year.

stepping back a year, kerry also sent this 2003 fleer platinum eric gagne card

that was also a need.  gagne may have been considered by fleer as an unsung hero heading in to 2003, but he won the cy young award that year and so received the highest of sung praises a pitcher could receive.

one more card from kerry, and it was a need even though i don't have a want list for 2019 cards.  it's a 2019 panini diamond kings alex verdugo squires insert

verdugo was playing well this season until he got sidelined by injury. his status kind of reminds me of  when matt kemp was trying to break in to the lineup while the dodger brain trust was signing guys like kenny lofton and luis gonzalez to block his path.  the dodgers signed a.j. pollock prior to the season despite already having joc pederson, cody bellinger, chris taylor, kiké hernandez, and verdugo who all play in the outfield. maybe they should have picked up an actual second baseman instead, so that max muncy could be a full-time first baseman?

regardless, i am thankful for the cards!