dodgers, ensemble!

back in 2006, i heard about a high end product from upper deck. ultimate collection, they called it. there were two cards that featured steve garvey, and they were both multi-auto cards. i don't think i saw any surface for quite some time. fifteen years later, i have had the quad auto (numbered to 25) in my collection for quite some time, but i don't think i had even seen the version with five signatures (appropriately named "signatures 5") until just a few months ago.

now, it's mine.

yay. it's numbered to 15, and my version happens to match up with steve garvey's jersey number. that's just by coincidence. upper deck took the quad version, which featured garvey, ron cey, don sutton, and dusty baker, and added maury wills to make this card. while i am always happy to have another maury wills signed card, having him and baker on the same card is a bit off as they were never teammates.

speaking of baker and teammates, i also added the black parallel version of what was my favorite card from 2020

that's the decades' best card from 2020 topps update that celebrates the team of my youth with a very small part of baker, along with cey, lee lacy, tom lasorda, and bill north on the front. the back of the card has the serial number

which matches baker's jersey number. again, a coincidence.

hail, hail, the infield's all here

i was very happy to see that topps included ron cey in this year's archives autograph checklist.  they could have given him a regular base card, too, but i'll take the auto.  topps used the 1979 design for cey's card

and they featured a photo that i believe to be new to cardboard.  it's a similar image to what topps used on cey's 1977 card, but different.  you will recall that last year, topps gave steve garvey a short print base card and an auto

but used his 1972 card photo (more tightly cropped) rather than a new one.

in 2014, bill russell was given the auto treatment in archives with a 'new' photo

and the year before that, it was davey lopes who received the base card short print and an auto

the photo used on the lopes card was used by upper deck in the 2004 legends timeless teams issue, but i don't believe topps had used it before.  

since its revival, archives has featured other dodgers from the team of my youth - don sutton has been a base card member of the checklist twice and dusty baker got the short print and auto in 2014.  this year, i was very excited to see that manny mota was included in the checklist

as well as the skipper of the team of my youth, tommy lasorda

it would have been nice if topps had used card designs that those two had not appeared on previously, such as 1980 for mota and any number of years for lasorda.  still, i am happy to add these autos of dodgers to my collection!

i also went and picked up another parallel of garvey's archives auto - the red /50 version

plus a ron cey auto from 2006 upper deck ultimate collection

that features a couple of other dudes.  i was also so pleased to see cey in this year's archives that i grabbed the peach parallel version

as well.

with 2017 archives in the books, i now have recent autographed cards from the entire infield

as well as the manager and pinch hitter. i was surprised to find that i did not own the dusty baker auto, so i will correct that soon.

edit - corrected:

in the meantime, topps can go ahead and get reggie smith, steve yeager, and rick monday lined up for next year.