Monday, December 15, 2025

free cards for the taking

i am inspired by the giveaways that kevin at the diamond king hosted over the last few weeks - congrats to fuji, night owl, and gavin for winning some great cards! as part of those giveaways, i committed to sending out more card mailings than i normally would this time of year. my regular trading partners have dwindled over the years and so i figure a giveaway is the best way to fulfill my commitment.

i will be looking to generate a list from those who comment on this post from which i will randomly select three commenters to receive six inserts and/or parallels featuring players from that team. make sense?

these days, there are no shortages of inserts or parallels to choose from as both topps and panini have gone wild. i have a bunch of these cards languishing in my scanned folder, so here's a sampling of some dodger inserts and parallels that i've picked up but not yet posted about over the last few months.

1997 pinnacle mike piazza/greg maddux cardfrontation
2007 topps finest matt kemp rookie finest moment black parallel
2012 topps gypsy queen matt kemp framed gold parallel
2019 topps update gil hodges iconic card
2020 topps tony gonsolin purple parallel
2020 topps allen & ginter tom lasorda foil parallel
2021 panini chronicles mookie betts revolution fractal parallel
2021 panini donruss mookie betts livestream
2021 topps mookie betts zero to sixty
2022 topps mookie betts sweet shades
2022 topps dodgers foilboard parallel
2022 topps andre jackson 1987 silver pack chrome
2022 topps mini freddie freeman 1987 
2022 topps update freddie freeman 1987 35th anniversary black parallel
2022 topps update mike piazza 1987 silver pack chrome
2023 topps allen & ginter tony gonsolin silver portrait
2023 topps allen & ginter will smith mini gold parallel
2023 topps chrome jp feyereisen refractor parallel
2023 topps chrome miguel vargas sepia refractor parallel
2023 topps chrome update miguel vargas prism refractor parallel
2023 topps update david peralta orange foil parallel
2023 topps update gavin stone royal blue parallel
2024 topps mookie betts rainbow foil parallel
2024 topps chrome mookie betts 1989 35th anniversary
2024 topps heritage high numbers mookie betts perfectly programmed
2025 topps austin barnes (series 2) holiday parallel
2025 topps teoscar hernandez ops leaders
2025 topps michael kopech gold parallel
you get the idea - there are lots of inserts and parallels out there.

those cards are not ones that i necessarily have duplicates of, but i have plenty of similar dodgers for this effort, as well as similar cards for every current major league team. 

leave a comment that includes the name of a current major league baseball team before 11:59 pm on thursday december 18, and if your name is randomly selected, i will send you six non-base cards of said team. i will likely run the randomization on friday morning because i plan to check out a mall show that day and i will be on the lookout for inserts and parallels to supplement my current supply. i will post the results on saturday and connect with the winners via email.

this is not an "almost free friday" scenario - no return is required so have at it. thanks for the inspiration kevin, and happy holidays!

Saturday, December 13, 2025

chrome was a chore this year

i purchased a fair amount of 2025 topps chrome this year, and i purchased it from a variety of sources - directly from topps, from a couple of card shops, and from different target stores in different cities. none of it produced much for my collection, which from this product would be mostly dodgers. if i pc'd ketel marte, on the other hand...
the very first pack that i opened this year included a river ryan base card
and a couple of packs later, i found a roki sasaki prism refractor
that was a good start, but it also represented the sum total of my dodger cards across a lot of packs, until i found a teoscar hernandez refractor when i visited one of the local card shops
and then later, a yoshinobu yamamoto sepia refractor
in my final ill advised blaster purchase.

one other card for my collection from my pack ripping experience was this xander bogaerts double play turn
then again, i did also find a brooks lee photo variation refractor in one of the packs i purchased
lee sort of lives on the fringes of my collection. he's from my neck of the woods and so i have been setting some of his cards aside, and this is a nice one for sure. not sure whether or not it will hold, though.

at some point, i decided to go the sportlots route to get my chrome dodgers that were missing
which were all of the dodgers except for river ryan. that would be those nine above plus clayton kershaw
and shohei ohtani.
note that his chrome card shows him as a two-way player
while his flagship card did not. instead, he got two flagship cards - one for each position. i actually purchased two ohtani base chrome cards from a sportlots seller for $30. now that he has won the mvp, i'll exchange one for $20 and see if i can get that extra $5 value for the $15 i invested. stay tuned.

those initial orders included some parallels, too. 

hunter feduccia refractor
mookie betts, justin wrobleski, river ryan sepia refractors
freddie freeman prism refractor
mookie betts
and feduccia ray wave refractors
blake snell xfractor
and as many clayton kershaw parallels i could find from shopping cart sellers at reasonable prices.

refractor
ray wave refractor
sepia refractor
xfractor
while parallels are the name of the game in chrome (aside from autos), i did pick up a couple of mookie betts inserts - all-etch
and fortune 15
and i also waited on a buyer friendly ebay listing for this fanatical insert
which was a must have for me. i love seeing mookie and muncy (and nestor cortes, for that matter) reacting to freddie freeman's walk-off home run in the 2024 world series. here's the back
which doesn't mention the moment. i think, in that moment, betts was a fan and so it would have made sense to write about the homer. curiously, freeman has a card in this set but it does not feature this dinger. ohtani and sasaki also have fanatical cards, but they will likely remain out of my reach.

going online for my 2025 topps chrome fix was a lot easier, of course, but you know what? i still haven't learned my lesson with retail and hobby wax!