football is in the air (and the mail)

right after i posted about the cards that fuji sent me from his summer sort, he let me know that another envelope was on the way with some cards that failed to make it into the initial mailing. he noted that these included cards from my "nefarious 9" list of my most wanted cards. one of them that showed up a few days later was this 2021 score mark brunell card

it was one of my most wanted non-dodger cards, a "bonus" 9 cards in addition to the top 9 that are all dodger centric. not to be outdone, i also got an email from jon at a pennysleeve for your thoughts asking (as he does from time to time) if i need a certain card or two. most of the time (all of the time?) the answer is yes! this time, the ask involved a couple of brunell cards - a 1997 pacific crown royale

and a 1998 skybox premium d'stroyers insert

i don't mention it often, and i don't have it loaded into tcdb or have a want list, but i have a pretty solid mark brunell collection. 

now, through the interaction with jon, i took a look at jon's "yours for the taking" page and asked for a few others to accompany the brunells through the mail

here's a double play card i didn't have - 2003 bowman bret boone

and four topps archives reserve cards - two from 2001

and two from 2002

the 1952 topps jackie robinson looks especially nice all refractored up! thanks jon!

as for the remainder of fuji's envelope, he was able to hit the top three cards from my "nefarious 9" list, including a 1987 drake's fernando valenzuela card

that isn't cut too badly. the other two cards were kevin brown's 2002 upper deck sweet spot

and marquis grissom's 2001 topps stars

cards. all three of those completed team sets for me (in brown's case, the non-sp team set) and i was quite happy to take them off the list. thanks fuji!

if you are interested in helping a blogger out, i have since refreshed my "nefarious 9" linked above with some new most wanted cards. in the meantime, i think a decent goal for the football season is to get my brunell collection cataloged. more fun than watching the vikings, that's for sure. stay tuned!

the almost daily dodger - paul loduca

it's been about 20 years since paul loduca played for the dodgers and i still think he is one of my least favorite dodgers. here's his 2002 upper deck sweet spot card

that is new-ish to my collection.

it's likely that my opinion was formed through no fault of loduca's, as i wasn't a fan of the mike piazza trade, and loduca was one of the catchers that the dodgers deployed in the months following that deal. he wound up putting together a couple of good seasons for the dodgers, but he still wasn't mike piazza, and that's not his fault. he wound up replacing piazza again, this time in new york when he joined the mets in 2006. that same year loduca helped the amazins beat the dodgers in the nlds which did nothing to change my opinion of him.

i really don't seek out his cards, but i like this set and was a couple away from completing the basic team set, so here we are. if you have kevin brown's 2002 ud sweet spot card available, please let me know!

collecting k's

i don't usually write about this stuff, but work has been really great the last couple of years, and i decided to direct some of my rewards towards expanding my collection in a very specific way.

i started following searches for sandy koufax autographs.

since he rejoined the hobby in 2000, there have been a significant number of releases that have featured koufax in the checklist.  however, the only koufax signed card i owned before this year was his 1998 donruss signature series card.

i waited and watched for a while to get a sense as to what koufax autos were selling for, and then made a move on a couple of cards.  first, a 2002 upper deck sweet spot legendary signatures card

and then a 2001 upper deck ultimate collection ultimate signatures card

people seem to avoid graded cards sometimes, which means they sell for less than they should. i don't mind, as i can either free the card or keep it slabbed (which is how this card remains).  i will say i passed over some slightly cheaper koufax autographed cards due to either a poor design (in my opinion) or a shaky/smudged autograph.  these two cards are pretty good in that regard.  i think i did well, and i will likely try to pick up at least one more card signed by the left hand of god.

while i was at it, i decided to do the same for another dodger lefty, clayton kershaw.

over the past few months, i've picked up a few different on-card autos of the future hall of famer, but i'll only show two of those cards here.  first up is a 2015 topps museum collection archival autograph card

not sure if it's a blue parallel or if that is the base design, but it looks good.

i wasn't quite sure about the next one as it looked a little gaudy at first, but i did wind up buying this 2017 topps five star card

in the hopes that it looked better in person.  it did.

this foray into specifically targeting these sorts of cards is not necessarily new to me, but it has led to a more widely scoped angle to my collection. i'll get in to that in my next post.