cards made for this weekend

i was scrolling through my scanned folder last month and saw this card - technically the card back

it's a may 10th card!

actually, it's a 2017 topps archives snapshots gold parallel card featuring ron cey

and i am glad that the photo used finally made it to cardboard.

here's another card that is appropriate for this weeked

that's a 2016 topps dodgers team card mother's day pink parallel. it's numbered to 50 on the back:

i hope those who are able to celebrate their mothers this weekend do so.

and, since we are all day-to-day, i'll go ahead and share a father's day blue parallel card that i picked up recently, too. it's pedro baez and his 2019 topps card

i think i prefer the backsplash tile to the honeycomb design effects when it comes to these topps flagship designs, but i appreciate both of the patterned borders when it comes to these sorts of color parallels.

enjoy the weekend!

the almost daily dodger - kenley jansen

kenley jansen is coming up on his 450th career save. he's already fourth all-time, and hitting that milestone won't move the needle on that list for him, but it's an impressive stat nonetheless. here's his 2016 topps gold parallel

from his dodger days.

jansen has reached 445 saves in 862.1 innings pitched, for a ratio of 1.94 innings pitched per save. the all-time leader, mariano rivera earned a save for every 1.97 innings pitched, and for trevor hoffman (number two all-time) it was one save for every 1.81 innings pitched. that's the lowest ratio on the board as far as i could tell, with craig kimbrel (number five) close at 1.83 ip/sv.

even if he catches and passes lee smith (number three with 478 saves), i am not sure that jansen is a certainty for the hall of fame. kimbrel is right there with him in terms of career saves at this point (just a few behind) and i don't know that he has ever been thought of as a hall of famer. i fully support smith's hall of fame status (he was the all-time saves leader when he retired), but the game and the closer role are different now than in the the past and 478 saves might not be enough even if only two have ever recorded more. i'll leave that to the voters to figure out.

the second show successes

last saturday, i wrote about the choices i had in card shows the previous weekend. i ended the post with a note that i was heading to the second show of the day - the monthly club show. i didn't bother going to the third show option i had (the mall show), but did find some cards to take home at the club show. take a look...

i had mentioned that the church show wasn't too crowded, and the attendance in terms of both sellers and buyers was down at this show as well., and there were some regular sellers that i didn't see at either show. one guy who was at this one was the guy who always has a couple of dime boxes under his super disorganized table. he's the guy who also sells a dime box for a friend, so you have to keep the cards separate, but he doesn't tell you this until the end. anyway, this time his friend's box was a quarter box so i guess it was at least distinguishable from the dime boxes. i wound up with 17 cards for $2.

the dime box focus was rookies, and i found a 2018 panini donruss optic walker buehler holo prizm parallel

for the dodger collection plus a variety of other rookie cards, including these nine

the quarter box had a hall of famer theme, and i took a burleigh grimes card and this cal ripken jr oddball

home with me. this card is from a 1996 classic cal ripken jr baseball's all-time ironman set. it's the certifcate of limited edition card, to be exact, and it certifies that "only" 21,310 sets were made

and i am just learning that the "king of collectibles" was the chairman and ceo of the score board.

i continued around the room and stopped at a table that had a few dollar boxes out. the seller was chatty, in a good way, so i went through the boxes and wound up with 53 cards for $45. only nine cards were dodgers, but they were all needs

ranging from a rainbow foil parallel of joc pederson's 2015 topps rookie card to a 2023 topps black & white james outman rookie card. as you can tell, there was a lot of online product in these boxes. i wound up with more than dodgers

and of course there is a color background parallel in a black & white set. the outlier there is the topps tribute sixto sanchez green parallel, and it represents a number of numbered parallels that were available. one of the first i came across was this 2020 topps uk nick castellanos purple parallel

which is numbered to 50. the lowest number i saw in the boxes was 25 which is not bad for a dollar box. i also grabbed some sort of george brett oddball

i believe spot-bilt is now saucony, but i could be wrong. it's shoes, anyway.

the next stop i made was at a table that was staffed by a younger seller who i recognized from years of attending these shows. he has gone from a collector at the shows to having tables of his own, which is something. anyway, he had dollar boxes or 10 for $8 and i decided to take a look. then i saw buybacks.

topps heritage buybacks

topps 75th anniversary buybacks

topps originals buybacks

topps 65th anniversary buybacks

and rediscover topps buybacks

i had actually hoped to find some 2024 topps heritage buybacks at the show, but i really didn't see any new heritage product. however, with this array of buybacks, i was so certain i was going to stumble across a 2015 topps originals 1978 elias sosa or terry forster or tommy lasorda buyback that i couldn't get through the boxes fast enough. i didn't find any of those most wanted buybacks, but i did find a bunch of others that i liked.

for some reason, i dig stamped buybacks. in all, i took 54 cards from this seller for $45. 43 were buybacks, and the other 11 included a variety of stuff like 2014 topps future stars short print variations.

good stuff.

the last purchase at the club show was a lot of six 1955 bowman cards for $13. one of the cards was earl torgeson

who is trying to figure out how to get out of tv land.

what a fun way to spend a saturday morning! i think next weekend i'll tell you about the huge show i went to last weekend. stay tuned!

42 for everyone

no surprises today, as i am posting some of the jackie robinson cards that i've added to my collection over the last few months, starting with this 2016 topps mlb debut insert

celebrating that event that occurred 77 years ago today!

2006 upper deck sp legendary cuts when it was a game insert /550

2006 upper deck all-time legends insert

2014 topps triple threads

2015 topps 1st home run gold parallel insert

four of a kind there. i am happy to report that the rest of the cards in this post have unique photos, starting with 2017 topps stadium club black foil parallel

topps' acceptance of black and white photos (for some releases, anyway) has opened the door for some "new" images of jackie to be used. some, like this one in stadium club, works really well. sometimes topps goes for colorization of black & white photos and comes up short as we've seen in another stadium club release where they colored the number on the back of his jersey red instead of blue.

2021 topps 70 years of topps inserts - base

and chrome

the chrome version is really more of a foil, i think. it's interesting to me how difficult it was to find these two cards at a low price, but i managed it.

2022 topps stadium club chrome

i believe that someone, somewhere, figured out what jackie is doing with that paper, but i can't find the post. one of the headlines above where he is holding the pencil says "contest deadlines" so maybe it's some sort of entry form and not the ponies!

2018 topps gallery hall of fame gallery insert

not a bad painting of jackie on that card

2023 topps archives 1979 comics insert

unbelievable here that the "inside baseball" inset shows the date of jackie's debut as april 15, 1945. yes, the text is correct below, but then why was the text above allowed to remain? i mean it looks like someone tried to add some red to the uniform number on the front of his jersey, so why couldn't they have corrected the text? it just boggles my mind at how poorly topps does sometimes.

in other news, the dodgers have issued a comic book about jackie robinson in the past. i think it was in 1997. i used to have one - maybe i still do!

2023 topps 1988 all-star insert

at some point i wonder if topps will leave jackie out of these insert sets. 

2024 topps grand gamers insert

this one finished my team set

2023 panini chronicles - pinnacle

i don't really chase any panini products, but i had wanted this particular card for a while. it's simple, but the design and black and white photo creates a pretty appealing card in my opinion. you almost don't miss the absence of the "b" on his hat.

today all players will wear jackie's number, just like carlos correa here on a 2018 topps salute insert

i haven't picked up any other 42 cards lately, but i'll be checking out topps now releases tomorrow to see what's available.

finally, i want to once again share the story of how i first learned of the meaning of jackie robinson's debut. i was listening to a dodger broadcast with my dad in the late 1970's and one of the announcers (vin scully, jerry doggett, or ross porter) mentioned the fact that jackie broke the color barrier and became the first black player allowed to play major league baseball. i asked my dad if that were true, and to further clarify, asked if there were really a time when dusty baker wouldn't have been able to play in the major leagues. it blew my mind when he said yes.

i wonder if there is a young fan out there that is thinking the same thing today, but about mookie betts

42 really is for everyone.

card games

onelki garcia pitched in 3 games for the dodgers. that was in 2013, and it was enough for topps to include him in the 2014 flagship checklist. here's his target red parallel card

garcia wound up missing the 2014 season due to injuries (knee and elbow) and was claimed by the white sox in the rule 5 draft that november. he didn't pitch in the majors again until 2017, and that was with the royals.

preparing for this post got me wondering about other dodger pitchers who received cards of their own from topps in flagship releases while appearing in fewer than the 3 games garcia pitched in. a quick review found a couple:

most recently, there was zach lee. lee was a number one pick who pitched in one game for the dodgers in 2015 and was included by topps in series 1 of their 2016 flagship release. 

he didn't appear in the majors again until 2017, this time with the padres.

and then there is bruce brubaker. he received a card from topps in 1967. 

he had previously received a dual player rookie card in the 1965 set as a tiger, but didn't appear in the majors until he did so as a dodger in an april 1967 contest. it turned out to be brubaker's only appearance as a dodger in the majors. he made one other big league appearance - it came with the brewers in 1970, but there's no brewers card of him to be had.

as for position players, i think terrance gore takes the title for fewest games as a dodger with a flagship card, 

although he's not actually wearing a dodger uniform. that card is from 2020 topps update, and gore earned it after appearing in 2 games early in that truncated season.

this is by no means a knock on topps. with all three of the pitchers listed, the expectation would have been that they would appear in more games than they did. in fact, i am thankful for topps issuing these cards because even short-time dodgers count, and maybe we'll see a kyle hurt dodger card in '24!

the ballad of the ballot

the hall of fame ballot is out and we can officially begin looking forward to the induction of adrian beltre. i am guessing he will go in as a ranger, but i, of course, think of him as a dodger. i think it was about this time last year that i finally picked up his most coveted (non-parallel) rookie card - 1997 bowman chrome #182

i've left it slabbed since it arrived. i have a tinge of remorse unslabbing a couple of cards so i've been leaving them be for a while. not that i've picked up many - maybe three in the last year.

in addition to beltre, joe mauer is on the ballot

and i would sure vote for him if i could.

there are a couple of interesting cases that have dodger ties - chase utley being one of them

utley is a borderline case for me. he compares well against some of the earlier era hall of fame second basemen like joe gordon, bobby doerr, or tony lazzerri and is actually not that far off from ryne sandberg. still, one could say the same thing about guys like lou whitaker and bobby grich who aren't in the hall of fame so i am not sure about utley.

the other former dodger of note on the ballot is adrian gonzalez

despite the best intentions of the 2016 topps update insert, gonzalez finished well shy of 500 home runs for his career - he hit 317 - and i don't think he has much of a chance to be inducted. he's in mark grace/don mattingly territory for first basemen which is still pretty good, just not hall of fame caliber.

of course, returning players like todd helton, billy wagner, andruw jones, and gary sheffield will get well deserved consideration too. i am looking forward to the announcement in january to see who will join jim leyland (elected by the contemporary eras committee earlier tonight) in the 2024 hall of fame class. 

k is for kershaw. and kountdown.

after his start against the padres on cinco de mayo, clayton kershaw was tied with jim bunning on the all-time strikeout leaderboard with 2,855 k's. that is significant to me because bunning has always been the guy to me who got closest to 3,000 strikeouts without reaching the milestone. every non-active pitcher who has tied bunning has gone on to get to 3k. now, with both zack greinke and clayton kershaw working between bunning and 3,000 i am waiting to see if bunning will once again become the top man south of 3,000.

i have mentioned it many times before that, as a young fan, 3,000 was a number that i fixated on - both for hits and strikeouts. i remember watching the dodgers and padres on tv late in the 1978 season as gaylord perry became just the third man to strike out 3,000 batters in a career, joining walter johnson and bob gibson. within the next few seasons, several more pitchers that i followed in earnest joined the club, including steve carlton, nolan ryan, tom seaver, fergie jenkins, bert blyleven, and don sutton.

kershaw is another pitcher that i follow quite earnestly, and he pitched on wednesday against the brewers. he got the win and recorded 8 strikeouts, giving him 2,863 for his career.  now that he is past bunning, i am going to start counting down the 145 strikeouts he needs to get to 3,000. so, here are 8 clayton kershaw cards to celebrate strikeouts 2,856 - 2,863:

2,856 - 2013 bowman hometown parallel

2,857 - 2016 topps gold parallel

2,858 and 2,859 - 2019 panini donruss franchise features base and bronze parallel

2,860 - 2020 panini prizm red white & blue prizm

2,861 - 2020 topps on demand 3d

2,862 - 2021 panini donruss optic lime green prizm

2,863 - 2022 topps gallery

to summarize, kershaw is now in sole possession of 21st place all-time in strikeouts, and stands 137 k's short of 3,000. he trails zack greinke by 46 strikeouts, and is a decent bet to overtake him by season's end.

kershaw's next start looks like it will be on tuesday against minnesota. if that is the case, i am hoping for a big number as the last time he faced the twins, he struck out 13. i'll be sure to continue the kountdown regardless of how many he k's, as i have a lot of kershaw cards at the ready. stay tuned!