still treinen to collect dodgers

at some point being a team collector becomes difficult. there are so many releases and parallels and inserts and cards. it's tough to keep track of, and even if you do, the time to check a have/want is not always available when digging through boxes or just browsing online. that's why i am thankful for fellow bloggers who look at want lists and send me cards that i know i most likely "need". one of the latest cases in point are these cards i received from night owl.

starting off with a 2020 topps stickers blake treinen item

this is the back of the sticker - the front is a cub if i recall correctly. there aren't a lot of treinen items out there and i certainly am not actively looking for those that are given how bad he had been in 2025. we will always have 2024, however, so i still have room for him in my collection.

i can probably count on one hand the number of trade packages that have included cards from 2002 upper deck 40 man, and greg sent me two cards i needed

alex cora and hiram bocachica. i remember bocachica fondly because he hit a home run late in the shawn green 4 homer game that helped advance the lineup so that green would later get a shot at homer number 4.

eric karros, seen here on his 1995 fleer flair, 2002 playoff absolute memorabilia, and 1996 score cards,

also played in the shawn green 4 homer game. he was eventually replaced by dave hansen who hit a home run right after green left the yard for the fourth time. i didn't even notice because my friend and i were still freaking out over green's blast. that score card is a dugout collection parallel, by the way.

here's a 2014 bowman chrome dual-ing die-cut card featuring 2012 first round picks corey seager and eddie butler

seager was taken 18th overall - he was the fourth shortstop taken in the draft after carlos correa (#1 overall), addison russell (#11), and gavin cecchini (#12). butler was taken with the 46th overall pick.

this 2024 topps mookie betts insert

is quite often listed as "fan favorites". i know because i have a saved search for dodger fan favorites on ebay, as i look for refractors and autographs. the card is actually "fantasy favorites", but the design hides a lot of the text behind the photo. not just for betts, either.

we've now reached the colored parallel portion of the post, with a 2024 topps yellow bordered jd martinez card

a 2018 topps gypsy queen green parallel clayton kershaw card

and a purple hot box chrome refractor of freddie freeman from 2024 topps heritage

it's always fun to get a 1975 design card from night owl!

last but not least is this 2018 panini donruss optic shock prizm clayton kershaw card

like i said up top, there are too many parallels these days (so many, in fact, i have pretty much stopped adding full panini checklists to my want lists), so i am glad that some others are looking out for me and my collection. thanks greg!

show me two times, baby. show me twice today.

as you might have figured from the title of the post, i like the doors. you might have also deduced that there were two card shows in the twin cities today. well, not today today, but today as in when i started writing this post (november 15).

neither show was the monthly club show, instead there was the biannual church show (put on by one of the owners of one of the local card shops) and then a "monthly" show that doesn't always happen every month. it is put on by the same folks who do the big show at the rivercentre space in downtown st. paul twice a year. i didn't plan on going to both, but when i left the first one, i figured i might as well head the few miles north to see what's what.

before i get to that, i'll share some of what i found at the church show. i purchased cards from four sellers and also received some cards from brian of highly subjective, completely arbitrary fame. the first seller has discounted boxes that have yielded some decent finds in the past, so i dug through for a bit. i started with the "half-off sticker" box that was autos, relics, and manufactured things.

i found some mookie betts cards i needed - a couple of things from 2022 topps

and one from 2023 topps

plus a 2021 panini mosaic encased gavin lux mosaic autograph

i was happy to pay the seven bucks for those.

i also added a 2022 topps stadium club chrome green refractor auto of zack short

for a buck because i liked the look of the card and his signature. it's numbered to 99, too. the other two items i took from this box were both priced at four bucks, so they were two bucks each. they were a small stack of cards in team bags - it turned out that there were 10 cards per bag. i'll do a separate post to highlight them and see if you think it was worth the gamble.

this seller also had some fifty cent boxes (or three for a dollar) as well as a quarter box (or seven for a dollar). i wound up with nine fifty cent cards, including a 2020 bowman's best cody bellinger insert

that i turned out not to need, and this 2022 topps stadium club chrome lars nootbaar card

that i will add to my retired numbers tangential collection because it shows murals for august busch and ted simmons (no photo for simmons that year). at some point i'll probably seek out the refractor of this card because shiny. and kudos to the cardinals for maintaining their murals!

to finish up, i found 21 quarter cards to take home, including a red holo parallel of keibert ruiz's 2021 panini donruss card

and a red foil parallel of eric davis' 2023 topps stadium club card

i'm still looking for an eric davis dodger auto though.

after that, i stopped at one of the bargain vintage sellers and looked through his dollar and fifty cent boxes. it was good to dig through vintage again, after not doing so for quite a while. i recently decided to revisit an old vintage project, so i wound up pulling quite a few cards. one of them was this 1962 topps elio chacon card

it is unrelated to the project i am working on - i just grabbed it for the lurker collection since i am pretty certain that is frank robinson in the background. one thing i was looking for was a 1960 topps coaches card, and i wound up buying six of them, including these three

i don't need all three for my project so let me know if you are in need of one.

i also bought a couple of vintage cards from the show organizer out of his vintage bargain tub. these two cards

do figure into my project, but i will explain later.

in between those sellers is when i saw brian and talked with him for a bit. he's still working on his venezuelan set, but has some big cards in his way. he said that he also opened a bunch of 2025-26 topps basketball and had plenty to trade, so if you are interested in those sorts of cards, look him up. we swapped cards, of course, and here is some of what he handed over to me

2025 topps max muncy diamante parallel

2022 topps finest flashbacks chris taylor gold refractor parallel

numbered to 50

2025 topps now luis arraez

apparently, arraez got his 1,000th hit on the field behind the mos eisley cantina.

the other seller i bought cards from spanned two separate purchases. they were set up on a corner, and my first pass ended before i turned and saw their second table. in my walk through at the start of the show, i noticed that they had a couple of baseball monster boxes priced at 4/$1. there was a big guy already camped out in front of the boxes so i figured i would circle back later. when i did, the guy was still there. i asked if i could start looking and you would think i had asked him to give up his seat altogether and while he was at it give me his lunch money. i assured him i was not looking to cut in front of him but that i would look through what he had already put back. he didn't make any room for me, so i quit after finding 12 cards in the first row and a half of the box he was done with.

there was quite a variety of things, as evidenced by these cards

1996 pinnacle eric karros starburst parallel

2025 topps heritage andy pages chrome parallel

2022 topps allen & ginter chrome vladimir guerrero

and a trio of 2024 panini select orange flash prizms - johnny pesky, dick williams, and jim bunning

so, when i turned the corner and saw a small box of "$1, $2, $5 autos/relics" i decided to take a peek. it's no surprise that deals like this are populated with andre jackson relics - these two 

are from 2022 panini chronicles and capstone, respectively. jackson has been pitching in japan the last couple of years with some success, and i'm happy for him.

finally, i found a 2025 panini donruss bob feller relic

in that box that is numbered to 99, and i couldn't pass up the old-timey wool swatch! i wound up with six relic cards for ten bucks and decided that was the end of the church show for me. it was still fairly early, so i headed up highway 100 to the other show.

the parking lot was pretty full, and i had immediate regret as soon as i walked in. i would say the venue was as crowded as the national - fewer people, of course, but in a smaller space. i did one and a half laps around the room and saw that is was at least 75% pokemon and those that had sportscards didn't have much in the way of bulk or bargain boxes - not that i could have bellied up to a table if they had. there were even some people there with strollers and one guy had a collapsible wagon. there was no room to maneuver any of that.

i left quickly and empty handed, so i'll show an andre jackson card that has been in my scanned folder since i pulled it from a bargain box at a show sometime in the past year. it's from 2022 topps gallery

it's a "private issue" parallel but it's nothing to be embarrassed about.

i was glad to get to a regular show again (the last show i went to was a disappointing mall show that i'll review in a future post) and i'm glad i stopped at the second show just so i know i don't have to have any fomo about missing those in the future. and, i'm happy as always to have seen brian, talked about cards, and added some to my collection.

diamond priority

keeping with my renewed focus on team set completion, i spent some time earlier this year revisiting a set that sat unfinished for 14 years. back in 2011, topps issued some new parallels to their flagship set to celebrate their diamond anniversary, and the diamond parallels were pretty sharp in my opinion. 

as of the first of the year, i was only missing those parallels of the "legends" variations - in the case of the dodgers, that meant the typical brooklyn era hall of famers and one los angeles dodger goat. without further ado, these are the parallels that completed my 2011 topps (series 1, 2, and update) diamond anniversary parallel team set:

jackie robinson

roy campanella

duke snider

sandy koufax

and pee wee reese

koufax also had a legends variation in update, but i had the diamond parallel already.

with that set out of the way, i also decided to complete the cognac parallels. 

pee wee reese

and jackie robinson

were two of the bigger cards i needed, but i also went and tracked down some lesser remembered dodgers like vicente padilla

cards like his are sometimes tougher to find than the big names, but in this case i didn't have much difficulty at all. here are the other cards i needed to complete the team set:

hong-chih kuo

chad billingsley

casey blake

ivan dejesus jr

kenley jansen

and sandy koufax

in this instance, i also needed koufax's card from update

pov when the mailman delivers a card i need to complete a team parallel set!

i am not sure if i will work to complete any of the current slate of parallels in team set form, but i have enjoyed knocking out some of these from the 2010's, so who know.

it's like christmas in november

i see that this year, the topps holiday release is being referred to (at least in some locations such as sportlots) as "topps holiday christmas". this probably has more to do with the "holiday" inserts in series 1, 2, and update (i assume they will be in update again this year), but it's fairly obvious that the holiday this standalone set recognize is christmas.

i haven't purchased retail product for a month or two (chrome sort of bummed me out - future post foreshadowing), but i did grab a holiday mega box at target last week. turns out, i must be on the nice list because the box was pretty much the most i could hope for without a major "hit".

not the pete alonso oversized ornament

but the box yielded several cards that will go straight into my collection.

first card of the first pack i opened was this shohei ohtani card

so things began nicely. the insert in that first pack was this kristian campbell silver glitter parallel

beckett's website tells me to expect six of these, plus a blue metallic glitter parallel and a blue and white gltter parallel in the box, along with four other parallel or insert things (in addition to the ornament). the box itself also mentioned three holiday variation short prints per box. we will see.

when i opened the second pack, these three cards greeted me as the first three of the pack

going back-to-back-to-back with blake snell, ohtani (he has two base cards - one as a pitcher and one as a dh), and mookie betts was very nice to see for this dodger collector. however, the pack lacked an insert.

the next pack delivered, with a nick kurtz rookie card

and the blue & white glitter parallel

which just happened to be dodger teoscar hernandez. i like how the image of hernandez seems to have him checking to see if the candy cane is real.

the fourth pack was a bit weird at first. it included another dodger - roki sasaki

and the last card in the pack was a masyn winn silver glitter parallel

but the two cards immediately preceding winn's had me stumped for a few minutes. here's how they appeared in the pack

the second card was flipped over, so i knew it was not a base card. plus, the code on that one ends with a 7, while all of the base cards end with a 6. here's the front of the card

and here they are side to side

it seems obvious now, but i spent a lot of time looking for a hidden elf. the variation is brighter, but the real difference is the amount of snow/frosting and primarily the fact that there is a snow cap on the positional field in the lower right corner. so, this is just the short print variation, i guess? the typical variations with christmas themed elements added are the super short prints this year? 

moving on to pack five, there were some big names but no dodgers. the insert was this agustin ramirez silver glitter parallel

same with pack six - some good base cards plus a silver glitter parallel 

this time it was marcelo mayer. this pack also afforded me my first look at rafael devers in a giants' uniform on cardboard

and it's their updated city connect one at that (note that this is bonus giants content to please mr. haverkamp).

pack seven saw a return to dodger goodness with freddie freeman's card showing up

and it also contained my "big" hit. i was guaranteed a relic, auto, or chrome parallel and i received the latter.

it's a purple refractor of salvador perez numbered to 299. adding chrome to the holiday release was a good move in my opinion. the cards look nice in chrome format but it certainly didn't need to be its own release.

there was also a silver glitter parallel in the pack featuring hunter greene

in pack eight, i found my guaranteed blue metallic glitter card - francisco lindor

is that a #colormatch?

the second to last card in pack nine was backwards

it was another roki sasaki card

but with a different code so i knew it wasn't poor collation by topps. but, with no obvious changes to the front image i was initially stumped. ultimately, this is how i discovered that there were back design variations. i have seen this referred to as a "christmas cookie back" but not sure that is the correct term. here is the regular back

so the change is the team logo swap and the color theme.

the final card of the final pack was a more obvious variation

the standard christmas light necklace, with a nice gift added as well. here's the base (from pack nine) with the variation.

it makes one wonder if the photo was selected for use in flagship (and hence holiday) because it would fit a holiday variation theme, or if these are determined after the fact. i assume the latter, but you never know.

after opening all the packs, i totaled things up and figured i was missing one of the six silver glitter parallels but hit on the others, including the three short print variations - chapman, sasaki, and rodriguez. however, when i went to scan the cards, i took a closer look at blake snell's card

and discovered that it was also a back variation short print

to hit three dodger variations/parallels is pretty good luck for this dodger collector and probably bought topps some goodwill from me heading into archives and update season.