through the mail thursday - a jerry hairston jr ttm success!

former dodger and current dodger network analyst jerry hairston jr signed and returned a couple of cards for me last week.  he signed and returned his fantastic 2012 topps update card

and his 2013 topps card

in about a week.

hairston is now part of the dodgers' pre and postgame broadcast team at sportsnet la, their new network that came from the $7 billion deal that allowed the team to have the league's highest payroll.  i don't live in southern california, so i can't see the network, but then again, neither can most southern californians at the moment.

thanks for signing my cards jerry!

when trades collide

i have had the pleasure recently of completing a number of great trades.  sometimes, when the trades are happening quickly and concurrently, overlap happens.  i probably should work harder to get my want lists under control (and updated), but i am in no way complaining.

here's a 2013 topps johnny podres auto from the chasing history insert set

i wish that there were base versions of all of the auto cards in this insert set.  there is a steve garvey auto in series 2, but no regular base.  i am guessing that the auto is short printed, too, based on the fact that only two have been up on ebay in the last week.

here are some true parallels from 2013 topps - brandon league

and his replacement at closer, kenley jansen

thanks arpsmith!

doc holoday got into the trade action, too, with some walmart blue borders of his own.  here's a 2012 topps aaron harang parallel

 and a 2012 topps kenley jansen as well

doc went to target for some 2012 topps update - here are the jerry hairston

 and aj ellis target parallels

hard to believe i haven't shown that card on here before.  i think there were a number of blogs that showcased that card, so that's probably why i didn't bother.  yup - i just checked my scanned folder and pretty much all of my 2012 update cards are still sitting there.  except for adam kennedy, of course.

moving on to 2013, here is aj ellis' walmart blue parallel from the flagship

again with a lurker

and here's chad billingsley, too

thanks doc!

here's bills

and aj again

courtesy of brian at play at the plate

he also sent the dee gordon walmart blue parallel

in all of its double play glory

plus paco rodriguez

jerry hairston

and a target red parallel of andre ethier

so, certainly some overlap there with the cards and players received in each package.  the big overlap, however, was that brian also sent this card

dos podres-es!

owning two sticker autos of a deceased world series mvp is not a bad problem to have.

thanks guys for the trades - i will be showing more of the loot from these deals later!

random is as monkey do

i'll take potpourri for $200, alex.  here is an odd assortment of cards that have been haunting my scanned folder for a while.  first up, we have the 1985 american league all-star team from 1986 topps rack packs.

these guys, including wade boggs, rickey henderson, george brett and cal ripken jr are sitting in right field at the metrodome in minneapolis.  behind them are the fold-up seats that are used during viking games.  i also spy bert blyleven, carlton fisk, dave winfield, jim rice and roger clemens, among others, with tom kelly sitting in the bat boy position front and center.

here is the national league counterpart.

not quite as organized as the american league all-stars.  not sure why there is a gap next to dick williams, either.  look at all those padres, too - including steve garvey way off at the end of the bench in front of nolan ryan.  a good assortment of players here, too, such as tony gwynn, ozzie smith, fernando valenzuela, pedro guerrero, and pete rose.

here's where the monkey do part comes into play.  i didn't know that these cards existed until i saw one of them on another blog a while back.  and i call myself a garvey semi-supercollector!  this happens pretty often actually - i see a card on another blog and i go out and get it.  many times it's a double play card or a card featuring dodger stadium in the background, but sometimes it's a plain old dodger card.  like this 1989 swell baseball greats jose morales card.

i would guess that i owned this card within 10 days of seeing it on a blog for the first time.  it's great.  morales has only a handful of dodger cards (he was on the team from 1982 through 1984) so this was a nice surprise.

i was also surprised to find a couple of white sox cards that i wanted, thanks to a ebay search i ran a couple of months ago.  i was looking for 'bell dodgers' and up popped a card of albert belle.  two cards, actually.  this one is from 1997 donruss limited

and this one is from 1997 pinnacle select

the search was set up to find cards from the 1960 - 1962 bell brand dodger releases, but joey there made the grade because he was paired up on each of those cards with this guy - karim garcia

that's the pinnacle back, and here is the limited front

garcia was quite the darling of the hobby in the mid-90's, or at least of the card manufacturers.  he came to the plate just 67 times as a dodger, but probably has three times that many cards showing him in dodger blue.  i suppose topps and the other card makers thought that he might be the sixth consecutive dodger rookie of the year and that's why they went wild with his cards.

of course, the search did turn up it's intended prey - a low cost vintage goodie.  here's duke snider's 1961 bell brand card

see how that works?  we're back to the random part of the post.  and it doesn't get more random than last year's topps heritage dodger short prints - at least the ones that are not aaron miles.

here's dee gordon and his rookie trophy.

will gordon ever get back to the majors for good?  or is he the second coming of chad fonville?  how about jerry hairston jr

who wears steve garvey's number and has even played some first base over the last couple of seasons.  he's been playing third since coming back from the dl, which means less time for luis cruz, juan uribe, and the rest of the ragtag fleet of hot corner residents.

well, that's enough for now - off to read some of your blogs.  maybe i'll see some more cards to add to my collection!

hairston styles

hey! happy new year, everybody!  i want to kick 2013 off right, so i'll show a nice looking dodger card - it features jerry hairston jr. on a 2012 topps update card

a dodger stadium play at the plate.  hairston played some middle infield for the dodgers last year, and turned about 20 double plays.  as much as i like the photo on the above card, a dp turn would have been nice.  hairston still has one more year on his contract with the dodgers so there's hope i suppose.  you can probably guess that i still haven't finished posting all of my double play cards, some of which feature none other than jerry hairston jr.  like his 2003 topps card

and his 2004 topps card

and his 2006 upper deck card

and then there is the double play-errific miguel tejada on this 2005 upper deck espn web gems insert

back to the 2003 topps set, we have pokey reese with an appearance by todd walker

and then we have todd walker returning the dp favor, this time to the giants

i am ok with that.

in the 2003 topps traded set, we got a card of dodger prospect eric riggs turning two

while wearing maury wills' number.  riggs never did make it to the big leagues, although he put together a couple of decent looking seasons at aaa las vegas.

finally, here's a 2009 topps chrome orlando hudson card, featuring a lurking juan castro

this is a refractor parallel, and i like how the empty seats add some nice color to the card.  it looks like a diamondback player is getting forced at second, in case you are curious.

stay tuned for even more double play cards.  there are more than i first thought.

um, yeah. update is live.

i swung by the target near my work at quitting time to see if, by chance, they had any 2012 topps update lying around.  they sure did.  i picked up a blaster and a rack pack.  i was lucky enough to pull this card out of the rack pack

that's one of those pesky short print variations.  it's ichiro and it's a yankee, so i scanned the back as i knew i wouldn't be owning it for too long

sure enough, it sold about two hours after i listed it on ebay.  it's too bad that it wasn't the matt kemp or clayton kershaw sp, though.  or even the cc sabathia one with matt kemp sitting next to him.  still, ichiro covered the costs and then some of the cards i picked up, so that means all of these were free.

here's a red parallel of kershaw's regular card in the set

 as well as a red version of fellow lefty scott elbert's card

 i also pulled the regular version of elbert

i did pretty well as far as dodgers go, which is a change for me.  one of the reasons i stopped buying packs was because i wasn't getting any dodgers.  literally.  i'm glad i lifted my self-imposed moratorium today.  because, otherwise, i wouldn't have been able to show you the jerry hairston card i pulled.

it's still weird to see number 6 out there.

here's matt kemp's home run derby card

kind of a checklist waste, but whatever.

shane victorino as a dodger

i am still not a fan of that trade at all.

i also got a juan rivera gold card

i thought rivera was in series 2.  wasn't he?  yes he was.  not sure what's going on here.

that's a pretty good dodger haul, but there was more.  there were a couple of dodgers lurking, like bobby abreu on cody ransom's card

 and dee gordon on former dodger ryan theriot's card

 and, i should have had another dodger had topps realized that randy choate

 was included in the hanley ramirez deal.  they've got hanley in dodger blue, and nathan eovaldi

in marlins colors, but i guess they forgot that choate also changed teams.

there were a couple of cool double play cards in my packs, too.  i really like this jamey carroll card

it's better than this john mcdonald card

even though the photos are very similar.

i wasn't really looking for bryce harper, although he was there on rick ankiel's card

seems like an excuse to get harper on another card, if you ask me.  ankiel was released at the end of july.  typically, that would mean he wouldn't make the final checklist cut.  but, with harper in the picture, anything is possible.

i did pull a harper card in one of the last packs i opened.

pretty sure that's dodger stadium he's playing in, which would make sense since he debuted in la on april 28.

as luck would have it, i pulled two gold parallels of that card, too.

each blaster comes with a manupatch again, and while i didn't get the hanley patch, i did get yu darvish

this will probably go the way of the ichiro unless someone out there is interested.

overall, i'm pretty happy that i stopped at target.  take a bow, ichiro, for providing me with some free cards.