green grow the parallels

getting ready for st. patrick's day tomorrow, and what better way than to share some green cards, including a couple featuring steven patrick garvey. i recently added these green flash

and neon green

parallels from 2024 panini select to my garvey collection. the neon green one is numbered on the back

to 49.

this 2019 topps tribute corey seager green parallel

is numbered to 99, and is also not as green as the garvey cards.

i scanned two of duke snider's 2021 panini mosaic vintage parallel cards together - base mosaic and green mosaic

unlike previous years, i don't have any shawn green cards to include, but i did recently add this 2026 topps clayton kershaw parallel to my collection

st. paddy's day is not the holiday being represented there, but it still fits.

may the luck of the irish be with you tomorrow!

deja vu, but not all over again

a week or so before christmas i found myself across the border in wisconsin. i chose not to pick up any new glarus, but i did make a stop at iconic sports cards just off of i-94 in hudson. it was the second time i've been to the shop, and this time was as positive as the last.

i headed over to the monster boxes sorted by team but first saw a random box of miscellaneous cards sitting on a table. this 1996 pinnacle summit card

was fronting one of the rows. i grabbed it thinking that it was probably not anything on my dodger team set list because the front has it as a very clear jason kendall card. the back

does identify piazza and includes a dodger logo. at any rate, it did not look familiar to me so it was among the cards i purchased. when i got home, i realized that this card was on my team want list and that it was one i did not previously own. i was sort of surprised that i need cards from a mid-90's set like this but i guess i do.

it's getting to the point where i can't just pick up a panini clayton kershaw parallel and safely assume it is a need, but this 2021 mosaic mosaic parallel

was one that i didn't previously own.

boxes like these are good for finding base cards from higher end or obscure releases, and i found a 2021 topps tribute duke snider card 

and a 2025 topps all-star game hyeseong kim card

as evidence.

i don't think anyone was asking for a chrome version of allen & ginter, but in 2022 there was a chrome release separate from the regular a&g set. this walker buehler card

is a numbered magenta parallel

parallels like that are the primary thing i look for these days in these sorts of situations. here's a 2024 topps update gold parallel of dinelson lamet's card

along with three parallels from 2024 topps chrome update/2024 topps chrome sapphire edition

sapphire is something that shows up a lot in boxes like this. i am guessing people buy the sets and pull a couple of specific cards and dump the rest?

in addition to parallels, i am on the lookout for inserts. here is a foursome of freddie freeman inserts that were all new to me

those are from 2024 topps cosmic chrome, 2024 topps heritage high numbers, 2025 topps, and 2025 topps chrome, respectively.

one more dodger insert to show - jason wrobleski's 2025 topps silver pack card

at some point, checklists switched from calling these "silver pack" cards to "chrome" cards but that gets confusing when there are 35th anniversary cards (without the "mojo") in chrome releases so i've stuck with the silver pack nomenclature.

the last time i visited the shop, i picked up a couple of non-certified autographs, and i grabbed one this time around

the late tim crews' 1989 donruss card is really a nice looking card in my opinion and i am happy to be able to add a card he (supposedly) signed to my collection.

it wasn't all dodgers that i purchased - here's a 2024 topps cosmic chrome willie mays galactic greatness insert

and a 2025 bowman dylan crews rookie of the year favorites insert

that i added to my stack.

one more that i will show is this 2022 topps chrome sapphire owen miller green parallel

it's a nice double play card and is numbered to 75 on the back. in all, i wound up with 29 singles for which my cost was $15.

i asked the guy at the counter to grab a hanger pack of 2025 topps allen & ginter, and here's what that contained

it was nice to find a new orel hershiser card in a pack. the mel ott card at the end is a short print

and it sort of looks like the short prints have slightly different coloring.

my pack also included a francisco lindor foil filigree parallel

along with a pair of mini parallels

one gold (obviously), one base mini (less obvious)

the main (full size) inserts this year are "wicked curves" and "sweet victory" and i got one of each - both yankees

the checklists for these inserts is not bad, with some players and moments that don't typically get a lot of play in the current hobby (like sparky lyle) showing up.

i also asked the guy at the counter if he had any old 9-pocket pages lying around from people bringing in old binders of cards to sell. the card shop in the western twin cities used to have some of these binders but i hadn't noticed any the last time i was there. and, the monthly card show used to have one or two people selling binders with junk wax era star cards that i bought once or twice more for the pages. i used these pages for sending cards and i had recently run out of my most recent batch.

anyway, the guy looked over and picked up a binder and handed it to me. it was very clearly a 1993 leaf collection of national league teams

i am guessing that the former owner put this together sometime after 1997 as the brewers were in the american league when the set was released but they were in the binder. since i was in wisconsin, here's a look at some of the brew crew cards that were in the binder

i wasn't looking for ultra pro platinum sheets to cut up, but that's what i got. there was no charge for this binder or these sheets or cards, which included a couple of the heading to the hall inserts

pretty cool move and much appreciated.

in all, my total was $22 and i handed over $2 plus my second 2025 topps chrome shohei ohtani card which was easier for me to find than many of the cards i picked up at the shop. it will probably be a few months, but i'll be back to wisconsin and this shop for sure.

a bird in the air (and more) from a birds on the bat collector that blends with other recent pickups

so i have run out of different ways to title a post featuring (mostly) cards that were sent by madding of cards on cards. "cards from cards on cards" is stale and not all of the cards are "dodgers on cards from cards on cards", so why not mix it up.

as the title of the post implies (very strongly), here is a card of a bird (a blue jay, to be exact) in the air that was sent to me by kerry.

it's a 2000 fleer ultra tony batista gold medallion edition card, and fits oh so nicely into my double play collection.

seeing it arrive reminded me that i had picked up some other new-to-me double play cards, such as this 1993 fleer casey candaele card

and these two 1992 leaf black gold parallels featuring carlos baerga and tim naehring

one more double play card i finally added to my collection is pat kelly'2 1994 fleer flair card. it features at least two double play images - one on the front

and one on the back

and the larger image on the front could be a dp pivot as well. only the inset photo on the front officially counts for my collection, however.

back to cards from cards on cards (had to work that in somewhere), here are a couple of 2025 panini donruss cards i received

kellon lindsey was the dodgers' first round pick in 2024, and he spent most of this season in a-ball. mike piazza was famously a 63rd round pick of the dodgers. up until now, the only 2025 donruss card i had was pee wee reese's. however, a couple of months ago i added a 2025 panini donruss optic card to my collection

that's piazza's green scope prizm parallel. it is numbered to 65 on the back

and was a cheap add to an ebay purchase i made. i don't think it was more than a buck.

kerry also sent some 2025 panini crusade cards to me - here are kendall george and bobby miller

george was the dodgers' first round pick in 2023 and spent this past year playing pretty well at the high-a level. miller, on the other hand, hasn't been able to replicate his 2023 success and spent most of last year at triple-a.  here's lindsey again

with a blue cracked ice parallel.

these aren't the first crusade cards i've seen from 2025, as steve garvey is on the checklist and i quickly snapped up a couple of his base cards

one for the pc and one for the dodger collection. here's the back

some pretty complimentary text there. garvey hit .417 (10 for 24) in the 1981 world series (and even walked twice!) but he had no extra base hits or rbi so i am not sure he was "especially" clutch in that series. he was, for a brief moment, announced as one of the three mvp winners (his name was mixed up with steve yeager's) but i don't think that series was his best in terms of "clutch".

of course, you know there are parallels, and i have picked up four of them

those are silver, red, and blue. this one is purple

and it is refreshing to not see them named "velocity" or whatever. the last three are numbered, by the way.

back to licensed cards now, with a 2025 topps shohei ohtani 1990 insert

and a freddie freeman holofoil parallel

courtesy of kerry. their swings, or follow-throughs, are pretty similar.

those two cards match up with a couple of 2025 bowman cards i added to a sportlots order recently

freeman's card is interesting because of the clock. this is one of the few cards i've seen with the clock so pronounced, and i am not sure why it is at over a minute. it's not a time clock (it's not 1:05 in the afternoon) it's the pitch clock, and i don't think freddie is in the on deck circle. not sure why he'd be in the box ready to go so early on. any thoughts?

here are a few more from kerry - a 1996 pacific ismael valdes prisms card

and a 2021 panini mosaic duke snider vintage insert

i didn't have anything in my scanned folder to match up with the valdes card, but i did have some vintage in there. i am saving that for a different post, however.

similarly, here's a 2024 topps heritage chrome silver border refractor of kyle hurt

that kerry sent. i have a post partially drafted to revisit my heritage chrome pursuits, so stay tuned for more of these sorts of cards. 

and then there is this 2025 topps hunter feduccia team color border card

kerry is the second person to send me one of these semi-rare parallels and i will show the other one in a separate post.

finally, kerry included this 2021 topps finest walker buehler card

which pairs up super nicely with buehler's autograph card from the same set

that i added a week or so before kerry's envelope arrived. i guess when you get released and are on your third team in two years, some folks start to shed your cards and so i got a really great deal (at least as far as i am concerned) on this card - $4.99! i will spend that for buehler autos all day long.

thanks kerry! as you can see, the cards you sent fit nicely in my collection alongside some other newly acquired cards. i would say "good luck ducks" but they are playing the gophers this weekend so i will say "ski u mah" instead.