when a penny is worth a quarter and other tales from the card shows

it was business as usual at the june twin cities collector club card show, with yours truly arriving as the doors opened and then making the handful of regular stops at tables with bargain boxes. as usual, the boxes included dime, quarter, dollar, and two dollar boxes, with the latter two belonging to a seller who gives good discounts from those posted prices.

one card i pulled from one of the quarter boxes was this one

it's a 2005 upper deck artifacts brad penny card. i took it because i know that my mid-2000 upper deck non-flagship dodger team sets aren't necessarily complete. it wasn't until i got home that i realized it was a promo. yes, i did not notice the "ud promo" text across the front.  here's the back:

i don't know how these promos were distributed, but there are a few dodgers included. i certainly was in need of this penny card that cost a quarter.

from the dime box vendor, i took a couple of 2020 topps 206 series 1 cards. first, a gavin lux

sovereign back

and next, a gerrit cole

polar bear back

the polar bear backs were 1:18 packs

some other dime box cards included this 2023 panini donruss gavin stone purple holo parallel

a 2021 topps archives 1989 big foil elvis andrus card

for the double play collection, and a 2024 topps lawrence butler gameday drip insert

this card caught my eye for a couple of reasons. first, unlike the other gameday drip cards i've seen, this one features the subject in their baseball uniform. this makes sense to me, although i get the other side showing players in their walk-in ensembles. anyway, i also took notice of butler wearing number 4. my high school team modeled its uniforms after the late-80's athletics look, and i wore number 4 so i definitely like the look of this card!

back to the quarter box, i rescued this "gem"

that is an honest to goodness beat up 1983 topps tony gwynn rookie. here's the back:

it's not a card that i need - i have a couple of complete sets, plus the one from my dad's collection - but i figured i would remove it from the indignity of a bargain box. who knows, maybe this will be fuji's next wallet card.

i also nabbed a couple of green parallels from 2022 topps gypsy queen. one of a retiring sure-to-be hall of famer, and one that is a "color match"

these next few came from the dollar (or 7 for $5, but really even less than that) box

2021 topps chrome platinum anniversary babe ruth

2005 topps heritage moises alou sp

2010 topps warren spahn legends variation

i will always pick up a legends variation when i see it in these boxes. same goes for cards of the bambino on the 1952 topps design. heritage short prints are in the "sometimes always" category.

there were some 2026 inserts and parallels that i also purchased, including these 8 bit ballers

this pair of andrew mccutchen varieties

and a series 2 holiday parallel of juan soto

soto got a hero number in series 2

which is absolutely justified by those stats.

one more card from the dollar box - a 2026 topps heritage kris bryant black parallel

these have a print run of 50 so i was surprised to see it. there is a touch of damage to the bottom border, similar to the black border card that i pulled (and returned to topps but have not yet received my replacement) so i am guessing that's why it was in the bargain box. it was with some other color parallels from this year's heritage, including some dark grays, so it was obvious that it is a black border.

from the same seller i took this 2020 topps heritage christian yelich card

seeing these cards back-to-back here reminds me of how my mind was blown a bit when i realized that 1977 topps is just a revision of 1971 topps with capital letters for the player name, white borders, and a position pennant. small changes with the same basic design. seeing the bryant card makes it more obvious how similar the two designs are.

anyway, i picked up the yelich card because it's a mini, numbered to 100 on the back

i have been stockpiling some brewer cards in anticipation of thorzul's "trade me anything" event which was postponed from its usual timing last winter. hopefully it is a tradition that has not yet come to an end.

more topps heritage black borders from 2018

and 2019

plus another topps legend variation - this one from 2011 topps

robin roberts passed away in 2010 so i am sure he was in the minds of the topps folks who determined who would be included on these cards.

a couple more cards that i couldn't pass up - these are vintage stock parallels from 2025 topps update

i need to track down a 2026 example. these are much more interesting to me since topps started putting more thought into them in 2024.

as for more obvious cards for my collection, i found some from each of the sellers i visited.

here's a 2016 topps perspectives insert of randy johnson

for the tatooine collection, and a 2026 topps 1991 insert of vladimir guerrero

for that pc that i maintain.

as for dodgers, here's an alex freeland 1991 insert

a tommy edman sandglitter parallel

and a teoscar hernandez rainbow foil parallel

from this year's flagship.

other needed cards i picked up included a 2019 pedro baez rainbow foil parallel

a 2019 topps heritage kenta maeda chrome purple refractor parallel

and the same parallel, but of walker buehler from 2020 topps heritage

another buehler parallel - the aqua wave refractor from 2021 topps chrome platinum anniversary

here's a 2024 panini prizm pink ice parallel of emmet sheehan

and a couple of 2025 freddie freeman cards - chrome all-etch insert

and holiday gold lights parallel

finally, from 2025 topps update i found a hyeseong kim 1990 insert

and a purple holofoil parallel of evan phillips

overall, a pretty good haul for my collection.

i will also mention that one of the sellers had quite a few of these 2019 topps cross-product inserts of the greatest players, greatest seasons, and greatest moments across the 150 years of professional baseball. 

whenever i see them i get the urge to build the sets, but then remember that some of the cards are harder to find than others. maybe if i just stick to the series 1, 2, and update inserts. we will see, but in the meantime, ruth, lou gehrig, and fighter pilot ted williams were no-brainers to pick up at the card show.

do you miss upper deck baseball?

i was a late adopter to upper deck baseball. i wasn't buying a whole lot of cards by the time 1989 rolled around, and at that time i was loyal to topps when it came to baseball with my limited hobby spending. i did buy a lot of upper deck hockey starting with their 1990-91 release through 1994 or so. still, i didn't pay a lot of attention to upper deck baseball until i saw some 1992 packs for sale at my college campus convenience store.

later on in the 90's, i went back and started building the 1989 set and completed numerous dodger team sets from their flagship (and other releases). reading "card sharks" in the early days of blogging gave me a new appreciation for what the founders of the company were trying to do. as it mentioned in the book, the cards were certainly an upgrade to what the other companies were putting out at the time.

they put out some weird stuff, too, like this 1997 upper deck sp special fx card of eric karros

which demonstrates their commitment to holographic imagery and die-cut experimentation. 

by the end of the 1990's, i was all-in on upper deck baseball. they had, it seemed, more sets with legends than topps and i collected many of them. maybe fleer was the only one giving them a run for their money in that regard. here's a 2005 upper deck artifacts don drysdale card

which is the only one of four dodger "legends" short printed as part of the team set that i currently own.

they put out repetitive and redundant sets, too, like their annual obsession with "x". these three dodgers are from 2009 upper deck spx

they look pretty good scanned, i will admit.

my favorite upper deck baseball flagship set is probably 1994

there was a lot of "stadium club" level photography as andre dawson's card can attest, and i liked the design. topps, of course, took the "phantom zone" inset image and used it in their bowman release the next year, as well as in their 1996 flagship set. that dawson, by the way, is the "electric diamond" parallel, which was upper deck's answer to topps' "gold" full set parallels.

a couple of things that were pointed out in "card sharks" were the large numbers and the holograms on the card backs

one of the pet peeves of the founders (who owned a card shop) were small and/or hard to read card numbers. i am also very frustrated by that as my eyesight declines. the 1990 eddie murray card above is testament to upper deck's commitment to legible card numbers for sure. i don't know if anyone was clamoring for hologram authentication technology back then, but it certainly was a differentiator from the other card manufacturers at the beginning of the junk wax era when reprinting of key cards was somewhat rampant (of course, upper deck reprinted their own cash cow - the 1989 ken griffey jr rookie card - at will).

eventually, upper deck began to stray from some of these design tenants. the numbers got smaller

and there were releases later on in their existence that lacked the holograms on the backs, too. however, in the mid-2000's, they introduced my favorite innovation - one i wish topps would fully embrace. they put the set name on the card back

this was done as far back as 2004 from what i can find - some of their sweet spot base cards from 2004 say "2004 sweet spot" on the backs - but their flagship set in 2007 seems to be the first primary set that included this for all cards. it was issued in two series, and they identified each one on the backs. that nomar garciaparra checklist card is from series 1. that's great to know, although i consider series 1 and 2 of flagship releases to really just be one total set (although i have stopped combining the checklists in my want lists). still, it's a nice touch - one that topps has sort of embraced by putting "series one" or "chrome" under the numbers of their base card releases.

however, here are a couple of insert cards from 2024 topps chrome releases

gerrit cole got an "all-etch" insert in both topps chrome and topps chrome update. they are different, but how do you know which is from which set? in this case, topps added a "u" to the card number

so those who understand the nomenclature might also understand that one of the cards is from the update set. still, would it be so hard to add text above the copyright box stating which sets these cards come from?

here are another two cards, this time from 2025 topps series 1 and series 2

coby mayo was featured in the "stars of mlb" insert set in both releases. here are the card backs:

there is really no way to know which is from series 1 and which is from series 2 without finding a checklist database as topps even restarted the numbering with series 2. i am pretty sure that series 1 is on the left, but i forget at this point.

upper deck treated their cross-release inserts differently. here are a couple of starquest inserts from 2009

the one on the left is one i own and is from their flagship set - series 1. i know this because the back says so

the one on the right is not in my collection but i know straight away that it is from a different release - in this case 2009 upper deck first edition - because they identify that set on both the front of the card and its back:

they are both numbered sq-9, but the set information tells me that they come from different sets. so helpful.

now, upper deck wasn't perfect by any means - check out these 2007 nomar garciaparra and takashi saito cards

that are from series 1

now check out these nomar garciaparra and takashi saito cards

that say they are from series 2

trust, but verify.

i do wish topps would go all-in with set identification and include the information on every card they print. they do it on their autograph and relic cards (for the most part) as well as the base cards (again, for the most part). it would make me miss upper deck a whole lot less.