happy holidays

it's christmas eve already which is hard to believe. i don't know whether or not santa will bring me any cards, but i am happy to report that i have found some dodger holiday variations in bargain boxes this year, including a 2020 dustin may

and a 2019 walker buehler

with 2024 topps holiday being such a departure from the first few years of the product, i thought about ranking the various designs. instead, i figured i would just show the progression through the years

2016

this set came on the scene as more of a weather variation than anything else.

2017

the weather continued to be the only thing differentiating these cards in the second year. the yasiel puig above is the "metallic snowflake" parallel which may make it a bit more difficult to see all the snow.

2018

just brought on more snow. i think most were pretty tired of this set by this point.

2019

the snow is gone in favor of some seasonal foliage and a tablecloth approach.

2020

back to snow, but with the addition of a pine garland. that gavin lux is also a metallic snowflake parallel.

2021

a departure this year with a beaded curtain made of ornaments and snowflakes, plus some candy cane treatment of the borders

2022

still sticking with the snowflakes. that clayton kershaw card is the metallic parallel, so the border is all treated up. the base cards just have the regular white border with the bows and garland.

2023

more snow, but topps switched to "charlie brown christmas" snow instead of elaborately designed snowflakes.

2024

topps finally fully embraced the christmas holiday theme, and continued to build on their flagship neon design. this is really a dramatic departure from previous years and it seems to have been embraced by a large part of the collecting community.

merry christmas everybody!

keith hernandez is in my hall of famer collection

here's another relatively recent addition to my hall of famer collection. it's keith hernandez, with this card as his entry:

that's a 2023 topps archives signature series 1986 topps all-star subset card, autographed and numbered 07/81. here's the back: 

once i decided to add hernandez, i decided i wanted one of the all-star cards that he "stole" from steve garvey. garvey, of course, was the national league starter in both 1984 and 1985, but topps gave the all-star cards the following years to hernandez, much to my chagrin. hernandez wasn't even on the 1985 all-star squad, for goodness sake.

hernandez was, however, the better first baseman by that point in time. he succeeded garvey as the national league's gold glove winner at first in 1978, and then claimed the award in each of the next 10 years to boot. he has a batting title, an mvp award, and two world series titles to his name, and he has remained in the game as a broadcaster since his retirement. the mets recently retired his number which again raised the question of his hall of fame candidacy.

modern metrics show hernandez as perhaps slightly below average when it comes to hall of fame first basemen, but he is one of the few modern first basemen with a positive dwar and ranks higher than tony perez, for example, in overall war. he has over 2,100 hits and a .296 lifetime average and passes my sniff test of more than 3,000 times on base.

i didn't see hernandez play in person until 1988. on august 24, i saw him go 1 for 4 as the mets beat the dodgers and orel hershiser 2-1. this was just before hershiser began his scoreless streak. he shut the mets out for seven innings but then mike marshall misplayed a mookie wilson fly ball into a triple and hernandez singled him home.

i'm not sure if hernandez will show up on the classic or contemporary era committee as he won his mvp in 1979 but fully entered the national stage with his two world series wins in the 1980's. whenever he shows up on the ballot, i am sure he will receive some votes.

as a reminder, you can see hernandez and all of the members of my hall of famer collection here.

tier one three ways

birthday boy steve garvey was included in the 2024 topps tier one release with some sticker auto/relic cards. the most basic one has one plain road swatch

and is numbered to 199. i picked that card up fairly quickly upon release for 16 bucks.

there is a two swatch version numbered to 99, and a three swatch version 

numbered to 49.

i am trying really hard not to chase all of these nonsense cards anymore, and i only bit on the three swatch version because the buy it now was really low compared to the other versions of the card. i was content not having a two swatch version until i saw the patch version

and my more dominant collecting instinct kicked in.

garvey also had an auto/relic card in series 2 of 2024 topps

that has a variety of parallel versions, but i was able to hold myself to just the one example. same goes for his 2024 topps pristine insert

which has a ridiculous number of different parallels.

anyway, happy birthday to the first baseman from the team of my youth!

how many days until spring?

there are 90 days between today, the winter solstice, and march 21, the spring solstice. who knows, however, what punxsutawney phil will predict in terms of winter and spring come next february. for baseball fans, however, we know that spring starts with pitchers and catchers reporting, and that is about 53 days from now, using february 12 as the reporting date.

here's a card for spring - a 2023 topps japan edition clayton kershaw 1988 insert, cherry blossom parallel

you don't see a floral baseball card design too often.

53 days. can't wait!

here's a card that flew into my collection

here's another non-sport card that i have in my collection

it's from the 1991 topps rocketeer set that showcased the major motion picture "the rocketeer". i've not seen the movie, but the card shows a plane being pushed out of a hangar at fictitious chaplin airfield. here's the back:

now, you may wonder, if i haven't seen the movie then why did i want the card in my collection?

first, i need to thank tom at the angels, in order for showing some cards from this set a long time ago which first alerted me to the fact that there were cards for the movie. next, i went to comc to cruise the database to see if any of the cards featured the hangar that disney built for the film.

now, the reason for that is that my dad was part of the group that worked to acquire the hangar from disney (or whomever owned it after filming) to convert into a space for a local air museum. the hangar, because it was a prop, wasn't built to code and so my dad and a bunch of other volunteers spent a large number of weekends working to fortify and improve the place. here are a couple of photos that my dad took around 1994 when the hangar was acquired:

that photo is at a similar angle as the one on the card. you can see that they didn't bother to finish the one side. here's a straight on shot

not sure if the broken windows were the result of vandalism or just cheap materials. anyway, the building was improved and now houses an array of aeronautical items on california's central coast. next time i am in town, i think i will stop by to check it out!

another standout chrome year

while i was completing my 2007 topps chrome refractor run dodger team sets, i was also picking up other refractors from other topps chrome releases. the one set that i hit the hardest during that time was 2008. the card design from that year really lends itself to the refractor treatment as there is color built in to the design along with ample border space.

these base refractors - hiroki kuroda

blake dewitt

and chin-lung hu (autograph)

were the ones i needed to complete the team set of refractor parallels.

the copper parallels from 2008 are pretty sharp, and i've almost completed that team set, too. here are the last few that i acquired in that effort - brad penny

russell martin

james loney

derek lowe

andre ethier

hiroki kuroda

and blake dewitt

i also have the matt kemp and andruw jones copper parallels, leaving the chin-lung hu autograph as the only card yet to obtain.

there is no x-fractor hu autograph but i only have a few of the dodgers, including russell martin

martin is also only one of the two blue refractor parallels that i own

but i will probably work to correct that. they are really great looking cards. i don't know if topps has changed their refractor printing or if its design based, but these 2008 cards hit a little differently than more recent releases from what i can see.

this would have made more sense during the olympics

i've acquired some gold, silver, and bronze of my own without dedicating years of my life to an intense training regimen. all it takes is several saved ebay searches. over the last several months, i've come across a couple of sellers who offered up several parallels from the 2004 upper deck legends timeless teams set, and i pounced on quite a few.

i added a couple of gold parallels to my master set build, including tim mccarver's 1964 subset card

and mookie wilson's 1986 subset card

these are numbered to 5, and i don't really have any plans around this particular parallel. for the bronze parallels, which are numbered to 50, my main goal was to have at least one from every team subset. my recent purchases got me quite close to that goal.

bob gibson 

is card #1 in the set, and it's always nice to start at the beginning. 

this jim kaat card

was the first bronze parallel i've found for a 1965 twin.

jim lonborg

was my first non-dodger pc, so adding his card made a lot of sense to me, and it is the only 1967 red sox bronze i have as well.

lou brock

is now one of four 1967 cardinal bronze parallels in the collection

and i didn't "need" denny mclain

as i already had a couple 1968 tigers in bronze form, but because it's a memorable moments card i pulled the trigger

this steve carlton

is my lone 1968 cardinals bronze

but boog powell

is one of the six i have for the 1969 orioles

here are two bert campaneris bronze parallels

and one vida blue

the blue is the lone 1975 a's bronze card in my collection

i added cecil cooper's card

just because he's cecil cooper

same can be said for george foster

but this one was a happy find as it represents the 1979 reds in the collection

manny trillo

is the only 1980 phillies bronze card i have, and i found it on sportlots!

i had no bronze parallels of the 1983 orioles, but came away from my most recent transaction with two - cal ripken jr

and john shelby

as a dodger fan, i couldn't leave shelby behind.

dwight gooden

lou whitaker

and dave winfield 

were the remainder of my non-dodger bronze additions, but they were opportunity acquisitions and not needed for the one from each team effort.

al downing's 1974 bronze parallel

is a duplicate so i now have a card to represent that team in the "set" build. i added some other dodger bronze cards, but they feed the dodger collection first.

ron cey

steve garvey

tommy john

steve yeager

bill russell

jerry reuss

ron cey

i added a second kirk gibson

to the collection to represent the 1988 dodgers in the set.

i am missing only bronze parallels from the 1987 and 1991 twins teams, so you can be sure i will be keeping an eye out for any of those that might pop up.

i did also add a few more dodger gold parallels while i was at it - al downing

ron cey

davey lopes

pedro guerrero

and ron cey

again. as i said up top, i don't have any illusions about picking up all or even most of these but i will bite from time to time.

as for the silver part of the post, the "base" autographs are sometimes referred to in that way, and i've added three since my last update. first, the late merv rettenmund

and the late luis tiant

and finally another steve garvey

that garvey goes into the dodger collection as i already had one in the pc.

there are still a bunch of parallels out there for sale, but for now i am content. until i see some bronze twinkies.