some favorites on card autos

i decided at some point in 2024 to seek out autographed cards of my favorite non-dodgers of the year. i have a card for each player representing the season in which they were my favorite, and i already have autograph cards of my favorite dodgers scattered throughout my dodger and steve garvey collections, and some of my non-dodger favorites were already in my hall of famer collection with autographed cards or in a couple of cases, other parts of my collection. still, there were a couple of non-dodger favorites that i was missing and in the end, i decided to add a new autograph for each member of this group to keep with my year-to-year favorites card collection.

i've finally finished this effort, so without further ado, here are the cards that i added for all of my yearly non-dodger favorites, from don baylor to byron buxton.

don baylor (1978-1979): 2000 fleer greats of the game autograph

baylor had a monster year in 1979 and led the angels to the postseason for the first time. however, i was already a big fan of pete rose, and i switched my favoritism to him starting with the 1980 season.

pete rose (1980-1982): 2016 panini pantheon milestone scripts /25

rose was the first of my favorite players - dodger or non-dodger - to win the world series as a favorite of mine. i definitely wanted this card to be from rose's philly days, and i was happy to find it for a pretty decent price (this was before rose passed away). i can remember a lot about the phillies' win over the royals to this day. once my favorite dodger left los angeles, however, i dropped pete like a hot potato.

steve garvey (1983-1987): 1999 fleer sports illustrated autograph

i now have three of these particular autograph cards in my collection - one in this one, one in my garvey collection, and one in my collection of cards featuring games that i've attended in person. garvey took the padres to their first, and his last, fall classic during this stretch where he was my favorite non-dodger. i held out hope that he would return in 1988, but he went unsigned (collusion? he thought so) and accepted the padres' offer to retire his number early in the season. with rose also retired, i moved on to another longtime favorite, and elevated him to the top spot.

paul molitor (1988-1994): 2025 topps chrome world series champion autograph /100

like rose, molitor won a world series while he was my favorite non-dodger, and i was happy to be able to land this card celebrating his title with the blue jays in 1993. i followed molitor closely until he retired, but after the strike, i did a bit of a reset, and switched my favorite to a different blue jay.

shawn green (1995-1999): 1999 topps autograph

when green joined the dodgers, i turned to my favorite of the american league shortstop triumvirate.

nomar garciaparra (2000-2005): 2023 topps finest autograph

nomar joined the dodgers which was fun for me but meant i needed a new favorite non-dodger. vladimir guerrero (my son was becoming an angels fan at this time) answered the call.

vladimir guerrero (2006-2007): 2025 topps finest creators autograph

the hometown team won out in terms of my son's fandom, so i switched my non-dodger favoritism to local hero joe mauer.

joe mauer (2008-2018): 2022 topps museum collection archival autograph /50

with mauer retiring, a former favorite dodger took over.

matt kemp (2019-2020): 2019 topps heritage real one autograph

kemp retired after the 2020 season, and i decided to go younger with my favorite for 2021.

fernando tatis jr (2021-2022): 2020 topps tribute iconic perspectives autograph /99

i stuck with tatis through his suspension before i realized that i was really paying more attention to the twins' center fielder.

byron buxton (2023-present): 2021 topps five star autograph blue parallel /25

that buxton card is pretty cool - 25/25 and all that. plus he raised his name to the 25th power!

i don't see anyone unseating buxton in the near future unless he retires. when healthy, he is a beast and he is always fun to watch.

i'll note that i also picked up another dodger autograph of nomar garciaparra - a 2016 topps archives signature series /6

this 2006 topps updates & highlights card was nomar's first and last topps flagship card as a dodger. he was included in most other 2006 topps releases (plus 2007 topps cosigners), but i was eagerly anticipating his update card. it turned out to only be an all-star card which i thought was weird at the time - not giving him a base card as a dodger. anyway, here's the back:

nomar was my favorite dodger that year, but was supplanted by matt kemp in 2007. 

card shop chain stop

a couple of weeks ago i made a stop at one of the local card shops. it had been a while since i had made it to a card show, and the big show that i was looking forward to in april was going to be a miss for me as well due to some last minute travel. this particular shop i've written about before, but this was the first time i visited this particular location. 

they had two brick and mortar shops in the twin cities pre-pandemic, but were down to one at one point soon thereafter. they've since opened up a new second location in the north metro near where their closed location was, and while i was there i heard them say that they were going to open a third location in the west suburbs. not since shinders have the cities seen a multi-location hobby shop, and this one focuses solely on cards where shinders was really an overgrown newstand that had branched out into comics and cards. and adult magazines.

anyway, this shop had a few bargain boxes sitting out which was nice to see given their penchant for online card inventory in the past. i took a look at the quarter box and found just a few cards to take. i moved on to the pricier boxes and began building a stack.

i wasn't going to pass on a blue parallel of tommy lasorda

that one comes from 2022 topps chrome platinum anniversary, and is the blue mini diamond parallel numbered to 199.

my favorite card of the day was this 2024 topps stadium club gold foil jackie robinson parallel

that i thought was underpriced but i went with it

there were quite a few autographs in the boxes, and i took this 2017 topps 1987 30th anniversary rob segedin one

home with me. as you will recall, topps reset the anniversary inserts the following year, so in 2022 we got 1987 all over again. this is evidenced by the shawn green 1987 35th anniversary autograph black parallel card

that i purchased. being the black parallel, it is numbered to 199 on the back

although i believe that non-auto black parallels are numbered to 299. at least currently.

that wasn't the only shawn green auto i snagged - here's a 2023 topps finest blue parallel auto 

it's numbered to 150 up in the left hand corner.

there were two other autograph cards that i set aside, but i only wound up buying one of them. the one i put back was a 2004 upper deck legends timeless teams chet lemon card. you just don't see those out in the wild, but i already owned one of them and didn't see a reason to pick up a second. i did wind up buying this 2022 topps gypsy queen steve garvey autograph

even though i already have one in the pc. it's the missing nameplate version, so it's not as common as the regular version. here's the back

this one will go in my dodger collection.

another 2022 topps gypsy queen card for the team collection is this albert pujols sepia parallel

numbered to 99.

i hemmed and hawed about this next one - a 2022 sportkings volume 3 dusty baker relic card

because i've avoided it a few times in the past. the price was right on this occasion, and i have another johnnie b. baker card in my collection.

one more dodger to show - it's a 2021 topps chrome will smith negative refractor

and it's probably the least favorite card i picked up on this visit.

after finishing with the boxes, i asked for a couple of packs of the newly released 2024 topps heritage high numbers. they were nice enough to break open a box (juan soto oversized box topper) and hand me a couple. i found a nick lodolo short print

a rangers combo insert

and two base dodgers - landon knack

and teoscar hernandez

the cards looked a lot better to me than the first heritage release, and so i decided to buy a blaster as well. i picked wisely, as the dodgers were frequent in the blaster packs. in all, i found six more

including a cavan biggio dodger card which i was not expecting at all.

i also found two of the key rookies

with their complementary lemon-lime borders.

a couple more short prints - eloy jimenez

and ben brown

plus a bob gibson insert

interesting to note that he made his big league debut exactly 12 years after jackie robinson first played for the dodgers. that wasn't long ago at all. i will say that i appreciate topps recognizing gibson, harmon killebrew, and juan marichal as all-time greats who retired during or following the 1975 season, but i would rather see them get cards with the 1976 design.

i found one chrome parallel, and it's a refractor to boot. 

but it's brayan bello.

the blaster advertised three exclusive green parallels which confused me since many of the regular borders are green  i think what they meant was white letter name parallels. here are the three that i found

another dodger success with james paxton, plus tanner scott who is now a dodger.

i found one more parallel, and it was forrest whitley's aqua border parallel. it's shown here with his base card

that was also in the blaster. i have to say, i've seen forrest whitley cards for so long i can't believe that 2024 was his rookie year designation.

one more card from the blaster, and it's the padres quad insert

i was really happy to see this because i knew someone who was looking for it. i shipped it off to rod at padrographs, and it should be in his collection by the time this posts. 

the last card i took from the store was a 2023 topps international trading day adley rutschman card

they had a stack at the register so these aren't rare, but it serves as a reminder to get to the card shop once in a while. it's easier to do when they have multiple locations!

there are only so many photos to go around

we've come a long way from the 1970's when there was one major card release to chase, along with some oddball sets that were fairly easy to ignore if you so chose. there weren't too many cards of retired players, so photos were assumedly easy to come by to populate those few sets. there were many similarities between the annual topps set and, say, the photos used for the hostess set, but they weren't the same.

with some recent additions to my garvey collection, i've noticed some repeat photos (just as i did in late 2022). it doesn't annoy as much as it did a few years ago, but with all of the releases and parallels i will admit to some fatigue. still it is up to me to buy them or not so i am not complaining. much. this is a long post so bail out now if you have no interest in seeing a bunch of steve garvey cards from the last 50 years or so. 

back in 1991, this card

was issued by impel (i think) called "line drive". the set featured nothing but retired players, and used the same photos there were used in the 1991 swell baseball greats set

i didn't notice this at the time, because i was not really chasing garvey oddballs or really anything other than topps flagship back in '91.

by the time 2004 rolled around and upper deck released their annual legends set (this time they added "timeless teams" to the title, i did a bit of a double take at the photo used on one of the four garvey cards

that is one of his certified autograph cards in the set (i recently picked up that second version so i would have one in the dodger collection). a year later, donruss joined in the fun, using that same photo for their ridiculously paralleled studio portraits release. here are a few cards from that set that i've added over the last year

that's the studio red black & white version

numbered to 45

that's the diamond kings blue

numbered to 50

that's the leather & lumber blue black & white

numbered to 35

that's the throwback threads white

numbered to 30

and that's the zenith sepia

numbered to 45

in 2012, topps used the photo (for the first time, i believe) in their triple threads set

and then it showed up again in 2013 on a bunt digital card

seeing that card got me excited for 2020 heritage, but garvey was not included anywhere in that set, unfortunately.

the photo appeared again last year on garvey's 2023 topps allen & ginter cards

i went ahead and chased the parallels and added a few since the last time i posted about the garveys in the set, including the black bordered mini

and the brooklyn back mini

along with the base card from the "x" release

and the mini, too

as if that weren't enough, the same photo was used for garvey's card in the topps living set

which is almost the highest numbered garvey card

he's #686 in the 1972 set. once i saw that tommy john was included in the living set, i was pretty sure garvey would get there, too, as both have been featured in recent topps releases as autograph subjects. speaking of which...

yes, topps used the photo on the 2023 heritage dual 1974 mvp autograph card of garvey and jeff burroughs. here's the back

i would guess that i've seen maybe five of those cards up for sale in the last year, so i was happy to grab one. note that, in true modern heritage fashion, topps photoshopped the background of the photo.

i also added another 2023 heritage garvey card a few months ago - his flashbacks auto relic

here's the back

not sure why folks get a card like that graded, but to each their own.

i've seen that photo before, both on a postcard type issue and a card. topps used it in 2011 in their marquee set

red patch!

i believe the first time topps repeated a photo on a garvey card was that same year. back in 2002, they gave us this dual relic with gil hodges

in their tribute release. then, in 2011, they recycled that photo for a topps 60 relic card

the photo is reminiscent of the one used on garvey's 1972 topps card, 

and that photo seems to be one of their standbys for new garvey cards. here's yet another 2023 topps heritage card from my collection

that uses the photo, and here's his 2016 topps archives card

that was, i believe, the first instance of reusing that particular shot. it most recently showed up on 2021 topps chrome platinum anniversary

which is ok because the early career photo works well for garvey's first appearance on the 1952 design.

archives was a double disappoint to me in 2016 in terms of garvey cards, as this was his card in the snapshots release

that's just his 1976 topps photo

recycled. i thought the whole point of the snapshots release was for topps to used photos from their archives. maybe they sold all of the unused garvey photos through their vault store on ebay. who knows.

here's a 2022 topps allen & ginter x red parallel mini

that i bought last fall. it's numbered to 5

and features another photo that was reused that same year on garvey's chrome platinum anniversary cards. i've added a few more of the garvey parallels to my collection since the first post on the subject last september

yellow ray wave

platinum toile white blue

blue atomic

fuchsia atomic

platinum toile cream rose gold

and red atomic

all of those card images are posed photos, but garvey does get an action shot onto cardboard every once in awhile.  here's his 2023 topps chrome black base auto

and his 2023 topps museum collection base auto

that use the same photo. this photo was also used in 2022 on garvey's stadium club autograph cards.

topps used a different action photo of garvey for his 2023 finest autos - i have the base

and blue

versions, but used that same photo on his 2023 pristine cards.

i've picked up his base

gold

numbered to 50

purple

numbered to 99

loose cards so far, along with his encased refractor

and blue refractor

cards. the photo used on the finest and pristine cards was familiar to me because topps used it back in 2017 on their bunt digital release

i am glad to have the photo on real, tangible cards now, but i still wish they would have printed up their digital cards!

speaking of which, in 2023 topps issued this bunt digital card of the garv

i am thinking we will see this photo on physical cardboard at some point in the future.

i realize that there are a limited supply of photos of garvey from his playing days so i will take what i can get. i will say, however, as i get older i am less inclined to chase everything with garvey's photo on it. despite what the evidence presented in this post might indicate.

thanks for making it through the post! i promise i will limit tomorrow's post to just one garvey card.