you're my inspiration

i enjoy being a part of this blogging community. hosting my own blog(s) has helped me appreciate my collection more than i otherwise would have, and reading the blogs of others and the related interactions has led to the expansion of my collection beyond what i would have thought possible.

the trades are the big things, of course, but just seeing cards posted by fellow collectors that i would not otherwise be aware of often inspires me to add those cards to my collection. here are just a few recent examples.

fuji posted some old baseball card magazines a while back, including one that featured this 1990 card of steve carter and jeff huson

huson, of course, is standing in dodger stadium, and so off i went to add this card to my dodger stadium collection. while searching for the card, i found another 1990 baseball card magazine card to add

i have no problem adding barry bonds cards to my collection. these cards are especially appreciated now that the original right field scoreboard is no more.

back when 2022 topps stadium club was released, i made a big deal of how the vladimir guerrero card featured a photo of him sitting at the edge of the visitor's dugout at dodger stadium. nick from dime boxes commented that topps had used that same photo before, and so i tracked that card down, too

that's from the 2019 topps x vlad jr the legend online set. i had no idea until nick took the time to comment.

night owl shared this 1971 topps partridge family card

a while back, and i decided it would make a quirky addition to my dodger stadium collection. i don't really believe that they are in dodger stadium ,but the sign makes reference to the facility so it makes the grade. i was curious about the people in the background - as in are they players - but this photo from getty images

suggests that they are just extras and not actual dodgers. looks like guys like jim lefebvre missed out on more tv credits. i used to watch the partridge family in reruns in the mid 1970s, but don't remember this particular episode. i checked it out on prime video and the dodger piece is part of a "blink and you'd miss it" dream sequence. in his dream, danny bought the dodgers for his little brother chris after achieving superstardom success as a solo artist. this after a review of a partridge family show said that danny had "star quality". the twist at the end of the episode is that the reviewer was actually writing about chris and got their names mixed up. hilarity ensued, indeed.

night owl also shared this 1997 sportflics kellogg's card of ralph kiner

with one of the photos being the same one that was used for a 1950 sport magazine cover. this is significant because that photo shows kiner wearing the black armband that the team wore for their late teammate tiny bonham for the last couple of weeks of the 1949 season. i did not have a card in my collection to represent that memorial, but after seeing night owl's post, i picked up a copy and now i do!  i've updated my earlier post that referenced this armband as well.

finally, jon at penny sleeves recently hosted a spate of giveaways featuring dozens of great cards. one of the cards he offered up was this 1978 tcma the 1960's denny mclain card

had jon not posted that card, i would likely have never known of its existence. the card is significant to me because it shows mclain wearing the black armband he and his teammates wore for their late manager chuck dressen. dressen passed away in august of 1966, so the team wore the armbands for just a short time. i had previously searched for cardboard (and even just photographic) evidence of the armband but came up empty as i obviously missed this card. even though i was too late to claim the card in jon's giveaway, his post informed and inspired me to find another copy and add it to my collection.

thanks to all who blog and post cards for us to see, sometimes for the first time!

jonerosity recognized

jon from a penny sleeve for your thoughts started the 'free stuff friday' posts, which made sense to me as he had previously proven himself to be one of the most generous blog traders out there. he inspired several others to follow suit, which resulted in a lot of people adding a lot of cool cards to their collections with no strings attached.

i claimed a few cards from his posts myself, including a 1972 topps harmon killebrew card

and later on, a 1978 tcma the 1960's dick farrell card

the farrell card is great because it is really his only dodger card.  sure, he's in the 1961 topps set as a dodger, but the photo used for that card shows him with his phillies cap on. then, in 1962, when he's wearing a dodger jersey (but not a hat), his team affiliation is the houston colts.  even the 1990 target dodger set features farrell in a colts uniform.  that target card is also interesting as it has his name as dick on the front and turk (his nickname that also appeared on some topps cards in the mid-1960s) on the back.

as jon does, he included some other cards for me in his pwe's. here are a 2018 topps chrome justin turner pink refractor

and a 2013 topps randy choate walmart blue parallel

that were "throw-ins" for my collection.

jon is one of the bloggers that i would most like to meet in person. i've appreciated our email conversations and have used him as a sounding board in the past. i'm glad that i've been able to find cards to send to him for his collection, even as it has evolved over time.

every once in a while, i'll get an email from him asking if i need certain cards. such was the case with some 2013 panini cooperstown colgan chips of tom lasorda and duke snider (spoiler alert - i said yes)

and some 1994 and 1995 score gold rush cards. jon sent me eric karros and jose offerman from 1994

chan ho park from 1994 score rookies and traded

and henry rodriguez and jim gott from 1995

all appreciated.

there is one more card that jon emailed me about that i will save for a future post, but i'll end this one with a card that i didn't know was coming.

that's a 2016 topps mike piazza mlb debut manufactured medallion card.  i liked this theme, as it generated some new piazza dodger cards, although i do feel the need to point out that piazza wore 25 during his first run with the dodgers, and he made his debut on the road at wrigley. i have another card from this set (not the medallion, but the regular insert) that did a much better job matching the photo with the actual debut of that player.  that's a post for another day, as this one is an overdue thank you to jon for offering up and sending me some cards!

thanks jon!

introducing my favorite cards of the year mini collection, starting with my first year as a collector

one of the things i've been doing with my collection during the work from home months has been to attempt to fully separate keeper cards from non-keepers. i had things pretty well organized in that regard, but there were a few monster boxes that were in purgatory. i've been going through them and identifying cards to trade, sell, or keep.

as a result, i've been working to formalize my mini collections to fully encompass the cards that i want to keep. i already have a "just because" mini collection, but i decided to formalize what was a subset of that collection in to a "favorite cards of the year" mini collection.  p-town tom used to host a favorite card of the year contest each year, and so i already had a few cards identified and included in this collection. however, i've expanded on this concept and have gone back to add my favorite* cards from each year since i began collecting.

the asterisk is there because, in order to avoid this collection just being a repeat of cards that are already in my player collections (mainly steve garvey) or other mini collections (dodger stadium, double plays, etc), i've disqualified some cards from being eligible. i will have two cards for each year - one non-dodger and one dodger.  i want to stress that this is not a revisionist history collection - these were the cards that i truly appreciated the year that they were released. as a result, they are mostly base cards and not inserts or other cards that were chased down later.

i will start things off with 1978, which was the first year that i collected cards.

favorite non-dodger card: topps doug ault

i, along with many others, have extolled the beauty of ault's card in the past. when i was 7 and first saw this card, i recognized that it was different from the other cards in the set. it was a rare in-game photo that was used, but there was no active action, unlike the nlcs and alcs cards, felix millan's card, roy white's card, and others.  the rookie cup and the green grass and the brown dirt really spoke to me. the angle of the photo was also different, as if it were taken from the stands - a photo that i (or more realistically at the time, my dad) would have taken.

it is likely that, had there not been an american league team in southern california at the time, doug ault would have been my first favorite non-dodger player largely due to this card. of course, the angels did exist, and we were in their broadcast area, so i followed the exploits of don baylor much more closely.

now when i look at this card, i also feel a sense of time. the card showcases a moment in between action that is a big part of baseball. ault with one foot out of the batter's box, and thurman munson adjusting his mask gives a portrait of activity that occurs in every game but is not often memorialized.  i love the entire 1978 topps set, and there are lots of great cards in there that i was happy to have, but the ault card stands out, and it is a perfect card to kick off this collection.

favorite dodger card: tcma the 1960's jim lefebvre

clearly, my favorite dodger card of 1978 was and is steve garvey's topps (or o-pee-chee) card. i already have a large number of those cards in various collections, and so, as mentioned up top, it was disqualified from consideration here. another card considered was ron cey's 1978 o-pee-chee card - a card which i used to have pinned up on my wall and later sent to him to be signed. that card means a lot to me, but it was already in my permanent collection.  the dodger team card and nlcs card were also front runners, but i decided to go with a different card that i was happy to have back then.  as a result, jim lefebvre gets the nod.

i purchased this card at my local lcs in 1978, and it was the first non-topps card that i owned. i was so happy to have this card, as i had learned that lefebvre was my dad's favorite player. he had a rawlings lefebvre model glove that he would use when we played catch (mine was a mike schmidt model). i also chose number 5 that year for my first little league jersey because of lefebvre (johnny oates was wearing that number for the dodgers at that time, but that was inconsequential). later on that season, lefebvre was back in a dodger uniform, as he replaced the late jim gilliam as the dodgers' first base coach for the world series that year. these days, my dad has more recollections of sandy koufax or don drysdale as his favorites, but that doesn't change my love of this card. in fact, i've still got my dad's old mitt, and i still have this card.

so there you have the first two cards inducted in to my "favorite* cards of the year" mini collection. i'll keep a running entry over at my want list site where i link to my other mini collections. i don't plan to go in chronological order with this series; in fact, the next year up will be the year 2000. 

stay tuned.