breaking in a couple of new (to me) card shops

back in mid august, i visited a couple of card shops that i had never been to before thanks to some work related road trips. first, i ventured into wisconsin and found a shop not too far from the minnesota border. it's been open for just over a year and looked pretty promising once i entered the shop.

i told the owner that i was looking to dig through some cards, and he pointed me to a couple of racks featuring monster bargain boxes organized by team! this made things easy for me as i focused on the dodger cards. there was a lot of bowman related product, but also some nice finds. the belle of the ball was this 2020 topps heritage cody bellinger action image variation

but i came away with a bunch more dodgers, too.

2021 topps stadium club chrome cody bellinger beam team

2021 panini mosaic sandy koufax all-time greats orange reactive mosaic

2022 panini prizm albert pujols red prizm

2023 topps chrome update gavin stone youthquake

2024 topps chrome update james outman youthquake

2024 topps cosmic chrome mookie betts launched into orbit

2024 topps chrome mookie betts refractor

2024 topps chrome update gavin stone negative refractor

2024 topps pristine steve garvey squeaky clean

2024 topps jason heyward gold parallel

a quad of 2021 topps chrome platinum anniversary dodger parallels

and an in person signed 1988 donruss matt young card

i also chose a card signed by the late joe beckwith

who was my dad's golfing partner in a tournament back in 1980.

i perused other loose singles on the counter, and grabbed a few including a couple of 2025 topps chrome parallels

i don't think either salvador perez or josh bell will get any mvp votes this year, but i didn't leave these refractor parallels behind. i also bought a blaster of chrome that was pretty much garbage with nothing really worth sharing here. meanwhile, a guy was busting a box of chrome at the counter, and i saw him pull a blake treinen world series champion gold refractor /50.

a few days later, i was returning from a work day trip, and stopped at a northern twin cities shop. gallery is more like it. they "don't do bulk" but instead had a small number of vertical cases set at $5, $10, $25, and "as priced". they had a big breaking area and a small office that was set up for online breaks, plus a ton of boxes of various product. someone was opening a box of some star wars release and apparently pulled a couple of decent cards based on the yelling and screaming that was taking place. acting on the collector's folly, he purchased a couple more boxes afterwards. i didn't stick around to see what the results were.

i was not immune to this siren song, however, as i bought a jumbo pack of 2025 topps chrome that was worthless. i figured that the next pack would pay off, and it sort of did with an autograph

but it was still money not well spent.

i should have stuck with sportlots which is where i have purchased almost all of the 2025 topps chrome dodgers that i own (i'll share in a separate post).

i did buy a single from one of the cases - a 2021 topps japan edition clayton kershaw jade green parallel

it's numbered to 75

with so much breaking happening in this store, i was hoping to find some discarded singles but they really did not mess with that end of the hobby.

i did make one other stop in early august at a hobby shop in superior, wisconsin. this was a shop that i had been to several years ago. unfortunately for me, they are now focused solely on upper deck hockey and pokemon as far as cards were concerned. of the three shops mentioned here, i think i will likely only return to the one in wisconsin. go figure.

four on one

first up - r.i.p. tommy davis. owner of one of the greatest offensive seasons (1962) in franchise history. i hope the franchise recognizes him this year. take a trip down the path of his career with this post.

---------------------------------------

earlier this year i shared a 1989 donruss card that was new to my dodger stadium collection. it featured three prominent team logos in the card design, hat and jacket. gtt wondered about the greatest number of logos on a single card, and i responded that i assumed there was a card somewhere with four of the same logo - card design, hat, jersey and patch or jacket.

i wound up taking a cursory look through a few different sets to see if i could prove myself correct. most teams don't repeat their hat logo on their their jerseys, so i focused on just a handful of teams. i started with fleer and donruss cards that included the team logo on the cards and pretty quickly came close to four full logos.

here's a 1988 donruss baseball's best david wells card

there are four blue jay beaks visible - card design, hat, jacket, and jersey just barely visible under the jacket.

this 1993 donruss mcdonald's expos card of gene mauch

would get us closer to four if donruss had used an expos logo in the card design.

i've had this 1990 fleer update oil can boyd card 

in my dodger stadium collection for a while. like the wells card above, it has just over three logos - card design, hat, jacket and the tip of the "m" on a shirt under the jacket.

it didn't take long to find this 1984 mike vail card

card design logo - check.

hat logo - check

jersey logo - check

equipment bag/box logo - check

that is the cleanest four logos on one card example that i found.  i did find some cards that i added to my collection as a result of this review, so that's a bonus.

1986 fleer bryn smith

if you count tim wallach back there in the background, there are five "m" expos logos on this card. i bought this card for it's dodger stadium background though. i am surprised that it wasn't already in that collection as i used to collect bryn smith cards (he's from my neck of the woods) and he has a few other dodger stadium cards in my collection already.

the phillies were another team i checked on, thanks to their "p" logo. i didn't find any cards with four logos on one, but i did find and purchase a 1987 donruss opening day juan samuel card

and a 1988 fleer mike jackson card

for the dodger stadium collection. the colors are inverted, but i still consider the jackson card to have three logos on it.

i didn't seek out mets cards for this exercise, but a few did pop up that featured dodger stadium in the background. welcome to the collection 1989 donruss all-stars gary carter

and 1988 donruss bonus mvp darryl strawberry!

i saw the strawberry when i took a closer look at the 1988 donruss bonus mvp set thanks to this card

the cubs were another of the teams that i looked in to, and this card does feature four cub logos, but they are different. one could maybe make an argument about the "c" being the same in three of the logos, but the actual bear cub logo on the left sleeve disqualifies it altogether. i still bought this card because it features andre dawson at the 1987 all-star game in oakland. standing to his right is a dodger that i am fairly confident is orel hershiser. that's good enough for me to put this in the lurker collection!

anyone have any other four logos on one card examples?

bloggers made me do it

i am thankful for the blogging community as it affords me the opportunity to see cards that i would not otherwise see. of course, sometimes seeing is not enough and i have to track down cards to add to my collection. case in point, a while back bo posted about some asa sets, including frank robinson's, which included this card

it's always a good thing to add a frank robinson dodger card to the collection! robby's 521st homer tied him with ted williams for 7th all-time. he would retire with 586 home runs which put him 4th all-time, although he has since fallen to tenth on the career home run leader board. the card sort of reminds me of steve garvey's 1973 topps card in that he was also greeted at home plate by wes parker after hitting a home run.

bo also posted about a yogi berra asa set, and i went out and found my own copy of this card:

berra took over the met managerial duties following the death of gil hodges, and here he is with dodger skipper walter alston.

in one of nick's dime box bounty posts, he showed this 1986 fleer star sticker juan samuel card:

which drove me to sportlots to find one for my dodger stadium collection. i decided to peruse comc to see if there were other cards from the set with the colorful strata of seats in the background, and added this bruce sutter card

to my sportlots order. upon close inspection, the young fan is holding what looks like the back of a 1983 fleer card, i assume to be sutter's. you actually get a closer look at it on sutter's 1986 fleer mini card

which i also added to the order for my dodger stadium collection.

then, night owl posted about his pursuit of the 1986 fleer set, and showed a claudell washington card

i realized that i hadn't mined that set for dodger stadium cards, so off to sportlots i went. the braves had an inordinate amount of fleer cards with dodger stadium used as a backdrop in the early years of that brand.

finally, diamond jesters posted a repack haiku using barry lyons' 1988 donruss card

which was absent for the dodger stadium collection, largely due to the fact that i did not buy any donruss back in 1988 and it's not really a set that gets displayed too often.

thanks to everyone for continuing to blog and show off cards that i didn't know i needed!

finally finalized final tributes

i was a bit annoyed with topps in 1988 when i discovered that steve garvey wasn't in the set. he hadn't played since may of 1987, missing the remainder of the season following surgery to repair a torn biceps tendon, but he didn't officially announce his retirement until january of 1988. i had hoped that his announcement came late enough for him to have been included in the flagship set as he had been since 1971.

i wasn't buying anything other than topps in 1988 - and i only bought a couple of boxes of that - so i didn't really notice at the time that the garv was missing from the donruss and fleer sets as well. thank goodness for score - at least they gave us a genuine final tribute of the nl iron man.

back a dozen years or so ago, travis at punk rock paint put together a 1988 topps steve garvey card that should have been. i added a back, and it's been in my collection ever since.  however, i don't know that anyone ever made the missing donruss and fleer cards.

having had some time on my hands this past summer, i broke out the old photoshop and went to work to bring these missing cards to light.

here's the 1988 donruss card that should have been:

complete with a back:

is it wrong of me to say that i may not mind the 1988 donruss design? i've found one card lately that looks pretty sharp from this set.

now here's the 1988 fleer card that should have been:

this one is not perfect with the fade in the upper corners of the picture. oh well. here's its back:

full career stats there! i started with a scan of reggie jackson's card back from the set, and found that fleer had his splits at the bottom all goofed up. thanks to baseball reference, i was able to use actual splits from garvey's career without having to figure them out on my own.

i mentioned that a topps final tribute of the garv already exists, but i decided to add another card that should have been in the 1988 topps set.  thanks to the turn back the clock subset, we can revisit garvey's 1983 season

as well as his 1978 campaign.

now, i am not suggesting that his accomplishments those years were greater than those of nolan ryan or jim rice (the players actually featured on these cards), but i am saying that it wouldn't be a stretch to have featured garvey. i made backs for the cards, too - here's the 1983 back:

the font isn't a full match, and now that i look at this, i realize that this is the "tiffany" version. oh well.  here's the 1978 back:

aside from his score card, the only issue garvey was featured in back in 1988 was the dodgers sga smokey all-stars set. i'm looking forward to printing these out and getting them in to my garvey and final tribute binders.

i also added a 2013 topps 1972 mini insert of ernie banks

to my final tribute collection.  that is what a true final tribute of mr. cub would have looked like had topps done the right thing back then.  here's the back with his career totals on display:

i suppose there wouldn't have been a cartoon about george brett on the card, however.

lastly, i found a 2014 topps roy halladay card

in my sportlots inventory.

i had an opening day halladay card in my final tribute collection already, but now have flagship in there, too.

i'm not 100% sure who might get a final tribute in 2021 other than alex gordon. i'll be sure to keep an eye out, though.

this is the cardboard equivalent to a blind squirrel finding a nut

i was not buying donruss in 1988 - the first time in their existence that i didn't open at least a box worth's of packs. when it came in to my purview later on, i was quite dismissive of the design of randomly set black, blue, and red borders.

it was much later on that i saw david cone's card

and was forced to reconsider my opinion of the design.

with the photo used for cone's card featuring the met pitcher on the mound in dodger stadium, the design really works. the lines all line up - the wall of the right field pavilion vertically and the top of the outfield wall horizontally - as do the colors - the pavilion seats, the darker shading of the back of the bullpen wall, and the window looking in to the bullpen - plus, the photo is framed perfectly. cone's head and planted foot are in line with each other and the vertical aspects of the border design.

maybe i owe 1988 donruss an apology. at least for one card.