the almost daily dodger - victor gonzalez

i figured today is a good day to share this 2021 topps stadium club chrome card that i sought out a couple of years ago.

victor gonzalez got a pretty nice card after not being in the flagship stadium club release. 

gonzalez was a key bullpen piece for the dodgers in their 2020 world series champion season, but was dealt to the yankees before the 2024 season began. the yankees released him a couple of weeks ago and i am not sure if he has resurfaced anywhere. it sounded like there was concern about his k/9 ratio which is about half this year than it had been during his tenure with the dodgers.

hopefully he gets another look by a team, but if not, at least we have this card to remember him by.

it's good to know a guy

i had been occasionally checking the local card collector club's website to see when the next church show was going to be held. they are typically held once in the spring and once in the fall. however, there was just a glaring "tbd" on the site for months. running into brian at the monthly club show in august had me thinking about the church show again, and thankfully i got an email from him letting me know that the church show was happening on september 21. better yet, brian and a couple friends were setting up as a vendor.

it turns out that the reason the club website wasn't being updated is that the church show was scheduled for the same day as the monthly club show and they didn't want to publicize the competition. for me, with brian selling, it was a nobrainer to eschew the club show and head to church!

brian had told me that he was going to have two 5000 count monster dime boxes, and when i approached the table, he put the first one down. there in the second row was this card in front

i told brian that having a 1982 donruss steve garvey diamond king in front was a smart move. he said it was all about knowing his customer. of course, i couldn't leave the garv behind.

the first block of cards that i looked at included a bunch of 2024 topps aqua parallels, and i told brian that i was a sucker for those sorts of parallels, too. here's a "color match" fernando tatis jr card

to represent the stack of these that i added to my pile. there were a host of other parallel types that i took, including a 2017 topps fire brooks robinson flame parallel

there were a boatload of straight up inserts, too. here's a 2022 panini prizm vladimir guerrero jr illumination insert

i suspect that the holo version is more "illuminated" than this base insert version.

here are a couple of topps heritage inserts that caught my eye - a nolan ryan card from 2015

and an ernie banks card from 2020

there were some attractive base cards, too. this 1994 upper deck ken griffey jr card

is one of my favorite base cards of all-time so i had to grab one of the two that brian had for sale. and i am not sure that i had seen this 2014 topps stadium club roberto clemente card before

so i took it, too.

i felt that it was worth a dime to acquire this 1974 topps hank aaron card

even though it is in rough shape. as brian noted, "it's 96% intact!"

as for dodgers, there were plenty even though brian has provided me with a steady stream of cards featuring the boys in blue over the years. here's a 2017 topps gypsy queen jackie robinson short print

that i needed, and here's a 2021 topps chrome max muncy all-star game refractor insert

that was also a need. these seem to be less prevalent than the 2022 counterparts, but that may not actually be the case.

back to some cards that i didn't really need but bought nonetheless, here's a 1970 topps dodger team card

and a 1987 topps bill russell card

that i chose to take with me.

one player specific card that was new to me was this 2022 panini donruss vladimir guerrero orange holo

parallel.

i found a lot of cards for my various mini-collections, too.

double play cards like a 2002 donruss originals jeff kent 

and a couple of 2022 panini donruss ryne sandberg cards

the base version is a dupe of one i already had, so it goes into my lurker collection thanks to tony gwynn showing up.

here's another one for the lurker collection - a 2016 topps stadium club manny machado card

featuring cal ripken jr.

brian was wise to have this 2012 topps gypsy queen willie mays glove stories insert in one of the boxes

because i will purchase pretty much any card showing "the catch" for my name/number on the back collection. that's where this 1992 leaf jon olerud card is headed

as is this 1998 donruss collections leaf eric davis card

and this 2019 topps stadium club mookie betts card

i have kind of shied away from adding too many tatooine cards lately, but i did choose this electric blue parallel of jazz chisholm's 2021 topps big league card

as well as this 2021 topps stadium club jose ramirez card

that photo really should have been saved for 2022 topps heritage, as it has 1973 topps written all over it. i see the first base coach's head, the first baseman's arm, the second baseman's leg, and the umpire's arm all disembodied. it's chaos!

at some point while i was digging through the boxes, brian laid out a couple of cards he had set aside for me specifically. this is a 2001 pacific private stock shawn green game gear card

and this is a 1998 topps interleague matchups mystery finest card

that hasn't been peeled. here's the back:

so, does the card front feature mike piazza, eric karros, jim edmonds, or tim salmon? i didn't peel it, but based on the comparison of the impression underneath and images online, i believe this to be jim edmonds' card.

brian also had somehow acquired duplicates of a baseball card breakdown 1975 hostess clayton kershaw custom

so he handed one over to me.

after all was said and done, i had pulled around 460 cards from the two dime boxes. after settling up, brian handed over this 2015 topps stadium club yasiel puig gold foil parallel

it is a beaut of a card.

finally, i had added an unopened pack of 2003 topps opening day to my pile

of course, i opened it when i got home. the mini insert was mike piazza

and the cards were your standard early 2000's variety of guys -todd helton, carlos lee, cliff floyd, and mike sweeney. the floyd card offered a nice view of the ted williams memorial that the red sox wore. i thought it appropriate that the last card in the pack was this one

a sweet minky card from a fellow twin cities card collector. thanks brian!

and, if anyone out there is looking for a pair of john candy's pants, i know a guy who knows a guy.

worth the price of admission

i went to the semi-annual big old card show in st. paul a couple of weeks ago. this was a hotel show last fall, but has been held in the st. paul rivercentre for the last two occurrences, which is a big improvement in terms of space.

i went on the friday - it was open on thursday to vendors and vip types - and so i am sure i missed some of the larger crowds who were likely there on saturday and sunday. still, most tables were full and some patrons were in full body odor mode.

as you might imagine, most tables seemed focused on slabbed stuff, and there were more than a couple tables that were solely pokemon, but i still found some bargain boxes to dig through, which is my card show jam. i wound up with about 200 cards in total, and i didn't pay more than $2 for any of them. in fact, the average price turned out to be around 70 cents - a bit more if you factor in the cost of admission which was $15.

for that price, i was given a paper ticket, and not a qr code

that was unexpected as i didn't know paper tickets were still a thing at any venue.

as we move to the cards, i will go straight to what was worth the price of admission. this 2024 topps chrome shohei ohtani card

is presumably worth $20 due to the anticipated mvp buyback program and ohtani's status as the national league frontrunner. the dealer i bought it from had it in a 50 cent box. that same dealer had this 2024 topps trading card day ohtani

for the same price. i wound up buying some other cards from his box just to spend a little bit more for him.

another dealer had this 2024 topps chrome black ohtani

in a dollar box. here's yoshinobu yamamoto's 2024 topps chrome card

that was in the same 50 cent box as the ohtani chrome card.

some other dodger favorites that i picked up at the show include this 2023 topps heritage bill buckner 50th (really 49th) anniversary card

and a 2015 topps heritage adrian gonzalez action variation card

from a quarter box of 70s and 80s cards came this 1984 sports design products duke snider card

and the lone card that i paid $2 for was this 2020 topps corey seager photo variation

i am always going to pull albert pujols dodger cards from these bargain boxes, and some of the ones i found were these three chrome parallels/ben baller edition cards

i also found a sheldon neuse dodger card - it's a 2022 panini donruss pink fireworks parallel autograph

of a guy who played in 33 games for the dodgers in 2021. i don't think he has a non-autograph card showing him as a dodger.

i am not going to add panini sets to my dodger want lists anymore, but i did still spend a few minutes looking through a big monster box of 2024 donruss. i was mostly looking for parallels for others but did grab a jackie robinson foil parallel

plus a couple of vladimir guerrero inserts

that first one is an homage to the 1984 action all-stars oddball release. another seller had this 1999 pacific revolution tripleheader

which was a no-brainer for me to pick up for some loose change.

i did not know that 2024 topps dynamic duals was a thing, nor that it was out, but someone was selling a few singles and i grabbed a dusty baker and lou piniella mashup

i figure we will continue to see johnnie b baker show up in future card releases which is fine by me.

speaking of mash ups, here is a 2022 topps stadium chrome bo jackson card showing him shaking hands with ronald reagan

i thought that someone might want the card, but there is a scratch on it above ronnie's head, so i put this one in my lurkers collection.

my double play collection benefitted from the show with this 2023 topps chrome josh smith sepia refractor parallel

and this 2006 topps chrome felipe lopez red refractor parallel

the lopez parallel is numbered to 90, but that's not the lowest numbered card i picked up at the show. i will probably show more of those cards in a different post, but here is a sample of the variety of parallels and serial numbered cards that i added to my stacks

i was also somewhat surprised to be able to buy a fernando tatis jr rookie card for less than a buck

even if it is from a set like 2019 topps holiday.

there was so much more to my haul, but i will stop there for now. maybe there will be another post with cards from this show, but i have another show's worth of stuff to show off so who knows.