a blogger's impact

trading is not the only way for bloggers to impact another's collection. by simply doing what we do - posting about cards - we can increase other's awareness of the vast multitude of cards that exist.  case in point, nick at dime boxes recently showed a couple of cards as part of his second frankenset that i had not seen before.

one was this 2000 fleer impact edgar martinez card

and the other was this 2003 donruss team heroes mark ellis card

both cards were missing from my collection - the edgar is a sweet dodger stadium card, and the ellis is a double play turn - so i thanked nick and headed to sportlots to acquire these new found gems.

now, anyone who has shopped on sportlots knows that there is a temptation to maximize the return and add cards to the shopping cart to optimize the shipping costs.  even with the "box" option, many sellers offer decent shipping costs for multiple cards.  so, i decided to try to finish up a team set or two.

i settled on 1999 fleer tradition, and added the dodgers that i was missing from my setl

kevin brown

not a padre anymore.

antonio osuna

angel pena

jeff shaw

gary sheffield

and devon white

even with these cards, i still had room in my cart for a couple more without increasing the shipping cost.  so, i went to comc to browse images from the set, thinking that there may be a dodger stadium or double play card or two from another team that i could add.

one of the cards i came across was this charles johnson card

cj is an oriole in name only - he's wearing dodger blue, so i added it to the purchase.

i knew already that there were quite a few cards in the set that featured images taken in dodger stadium. because i needed a few dodgers, i filtered my search at comc by team to see if any of those cards featured a dodger stadium shot.  as a result, i picked up another copy of jeff shaw's card, but not gary sheffield's. that's because i didn't turn the card over until it arrived,

so it wasn't until then that i saw the '1965' behind him from the world championships mural. oh well.  i did pick up a second copy of eric gagne's update card for my dodger stadium collection

as well as a second card of eric weaver from the base set

i found a few other dodger stadium cards featuring players from visiting teams, like chris peters

masato yoshii

larry walker

the gagne card actually shows the 1999 murals in the background which were based on the heroes patches that the players wore that year. the weaver, peters, and yoshii cards show the 1959 championship in the background, with don drysdale appearing towards the edge of yoshii's card (the murals also included retired numbers). walker's card shows sandy koufax on the wall.

the murals weren't the only part of dodger stadium on display. here's jon lieber 

and jay powell

at the dugout rail. i always appreciate seeing a dodger usher in the background like on that lieber card.  interestingly enough, i already had the warning track parallel of the powell card in my collection, but not the base.

here's dante bichette

chillin' and maxin' in the golf cart he spent all day waxin', hanging out in front of the old dugout level seats.

and here's future dodger hitting coach turner ward

bringing good gum game to chavez ravine as a player.

i know that i will likely never have all of the dodger fleer ultra inserts, so that is a good place for me to look when i am adding cards to the collection. i wound up grabbing two copies of roger cedeno's 1996 golden prospects card.

one for the team set, and one for the dodger stadium mini-collection. i like the aerial view on the front.

so now we are getting to the double play portion of the post. 1999 fleer tradition did not disappoint as i was able to add a few new cards to my collection.

unfortunately, sportlots does not usually have images, especially for 20-year old base.  so, while i ordered a nm copy of abraham nunez's card, i received this jacked up version

it's miscut and suffers from offset printing. maybe i'll try to flip it and pick up a better version. i know some folks out there collect these sorts of printing errors.

other new-to-me double plays included this alex gonzalez card

plus a couple featuring miguel tejada - his card

and that of darren lewis

next up are a couple of tatooine cards - brant brown

and andres galarraga

i think galarraga's name is a good anagram for a star wars character.  how about sendar ralagraga? sounds right to me.

finally, i added this mark loretta card to my card.

the future dodger is shown in front of jackie robinson's retired number, which makes it a great add to my mini-collection.

in all, i picked up around 30 cards with this sportlots purchase that was spurred on by just a couple of cards nick posted. it was not the first time and won't be the last time that another blogger impacts my collection in this way, so thank you to everyone posting about their cards and collections! i never know what i might find to add to my collection as a result.