what can i get for 58 cents?

back in the late 80's, a friend of mine played boogie down productions' single "illegal business" in his car while we were driving around. that song sampled a line from a "fat albert" episode in which the titular character asks "what can we get for 63 cents?" now, i watched a fair amount of "fat albert" on saturday mornings and i assume my friend did, too, but he found the sample incredibly amusing. after that, pretty much whenever we were in a retail setting, you could bet that he was going to ask, "what can we get for 63 cents?" it was so prevalent that i also began to think about it, and i still do from time to time.

at the semi-annual card show in april, i found a seller who had at least a dozen monster boxes with a price list posted above them. the prices were a sliding scale - the more you buy the cheaper the price per card. pretty standard stuff. after a while, i knew i was going to be taking home a large number of cards and decided to cap myself at 200. the price for 200 cards was $120, which i recognized as 60 cents per card. so, guess what line popped into my head? well, it turned out that i picked out 205 cards but he kept the price at $120, and so here is (some of) what i got for 58.5 cents.

i'll kick things off with a 2021 topps chrome mookie betts image variation refractor short print

always pleased to add a card of mookie celebrating during the 2020 world series! in fact. there's another one among the parallels below

freddie freeman also showed up in parallel fashion

but most of the cards i chose were not dodgers.

there was some "fake" vintage from 2021 topps heritage by way of mini die-cuts

some real vintage by way of 1970 and 1971 fleer laughlin world series cards

and some "not quite" vintage from the early 1980's

the 1985 donruss dave winfield/don mattingly card was a hot commodity in my neighborhood back then. this is the first time i've seen the card at a show in probably at least 30 years.

the junk wax era was represented, too, with a 1987 donruss greg maddux rookie

there were parallels numbered on the fronts

and parallels numbered on the backs

and i had a lot of fun just digging through the variety. i found a vein of thicker cards that included some dodgers as well as a 2019 topps museum collection manny machado copper parallel

for my double play collection.

same goes for this 2022 panini donruss brandon crawford dominators card

and i think i will keep this 2021 topps allen & ginter chrome world's largest - pacific ocean mini card

because it shows the northern california coastline - i believe somewhere around santa rosa. it's not near where i grew up, nor is it big sur where i've spent a lot of time, but it's still the ragged edge of the western world.

i'm not going to show the other 163 cards i took, but i will show seven more that i found interesting for one reason or another.

1999 topps stadium club kerry wood video replay

taking the lenticular card to the next level

2002 fleer box score albert pujols

second year pujols cards are still fun to find

2011 topps heritage minors garin cecchini red tint

topps went overboard with the tinting while trying to create a homage to an original element of the 1962 set. not sure why they didn't stick with green.

1998 stadium sports publishing mickey mantle hologram promo

oddball mickey!

2022 panini prizm bryce harper stained glass

it doesn't scan the best, but it lights up in the sun.

2009 topps kazuo matsui missing foil

i had never seen one of these in person before

2021 topps now brennan davis

a ken griffey jr cameo?! a no-brainer for 58 cents!

that kepshire cat

kurt kepshire appeared in 51 major league games in his career, which spanned from the fourth of july, 1984 until april 23, 1986. he pitched in dodger stadium in three of those games. luckily for my collection, photos of him from those away games against the dodgers made their way on to cardboard. here's his 1985 donruss card:

and his 1985 fleer card:

the shadows on the donruss card provide some drama to the image. both of these photos came from his relief appearance (second big league appearance) on july 8 of '84 and were almost assuredly taken from the camera well adjacent to the dodger dugout.

that camera well is visible on kepshire's teammate tommy herr's 1985 fleer card

and other parts of dodger stadium show up on other cardinal cards, like art howe's

and lonnie smith's

in fact, dodger stadium is fairly prevalent on non-dodger cards in 1985 fleer. a few months ago, i went through my complete sets of fleer and donruss from 1985 (along with some other scattered cards) and found some dodger stadium cards i didn't already have in the mini-collection to track down doubles of for it.

dodger stadium is here, on glenn davis' half of his rookie card

that's the right field pavilion showing up in the backtround. in addition, many mets are featured on the dodger stadium field, including brent gaff

ron gardenhire

jose oquendo

and walt terrell

traditionally with fleer in the early 1980's, it was the braves who seemed to get dodger stadium background on their cards most often. here's old friend terry forster

up along the first base line, and another old friend in jerry royster

closer to home plate.

dodger nemesis chris chambliss is probably pretty close to the batting cage

which is exactly where steve yeager is hanging out

i finally added a dupe of the yeager card to my dodger stadium collection.

back to donruss, they produced some pretty cool cards with dodger stadium backgrounds in 1984, like ryne sandberg's

and ozzie smith's

i think i put the sandberg in my name/number on the back collection though.

kepshire had some company in 1985 donruss as well, including teammate ralph citarella

who must have annoyed someone at the card company for them to choose that photo.

here's dave von ohlen, the pride of flushing, ny

who wound up pitching for the cardinals and a's instead of his hometown mets. he was 0-1 lifetime at shea, by the way. 

speaking of the mets, here's mike fitzgerald

in dodger stadium with the centerfield edge of the right field pavilion showing. these days, that section of lower seats near fitzgerald's right ear is blocked off from spectators.

one of the the centerfield speakers is visible behind atlee hammaker

and bill laskey is shown 

as seen from the visitor dugout camera well.

future dodger john tudor

makes an appearance as does long time nl west rival dave concepcion

i picked up concepcion's leaf card, too.

it was a good time going through these sets that don't show up on the blogs too often. i'll finish the post up with one more kepshire card

looks like kepshire got too much sun or perhaps is blushing because of the dodger stadium usherette in the background. i think he only has six major league cards - topps, donruss, and fleer from both 1985 and 1986 - meaning that half of them feature photos from dodger stadium. i am happy to have them all!

highly surprising and completely appreciated

although he's been quiet on the blogs, brian from highly subjective and completely arbitrary is still out there and i have some cards to prove it! brian sent me a package sometime last fall, and it's a shame it has taken me so long to share.

first up is a professionally printed "card that should have been" 1967 topps sandy koufax

i created one of these missing final tributes a long time ago, and it is great to have this version in my collection. the back

meets the final tribute criteria by having his complete career stats on the back, even if they don't have the year by year stats and they also show a line for 1967. it's still great. you can see that the card was produced by or for the greater boston sports collectors club in 2008 based on the "celebrating 23 years" note in the text. there are some other similar "cards that never were" under the gbscc name out there, including a 1957 bob feller that would be nice to have.

speaking of nice to have, i've been eyeing a complete dodger team set of 2020 topps total after brian sent this will smith card

from the online only set. we will see if i pull the trigger (spoiler alert i am certain that i will). i just miss topps total so much.

this is a 2022 topps mike piazza insert

and i appreciate topps showing him as a dodger from time to time. of course, he had to be a dodger in this "welcome to the show" set.

brian also hit some mini-collections, such as the dodger stadium one with this 1985 donruss mario soto card

and the double play mini-collection with this 1994 fleer ricky gutierrez card

nice cameo of hall of famer jeff bagwell there, too.

this next card

wasn't a need, but it is such a great card that i had to show it anyway. fernando valenzuela's final topps flagship card as a dodger, and the photo selection and design complement each other so well.  although, this isn't topps but instead is o-pee-chee!

oh my!

here's where i remind folks that i once dedicated an entire blog to the differences between topps and o-pee-chee cards. check it out if you haven't already!

a couple of the cards that i featured on that site were also included in brian's package, including this 1991 dodger/mets mashup of bob ojeda

and a blue jays/padres card of joe carter

forget the "now with" - card packages from brian always have the good stuff. thanks brian!