card shop battle!

i was out on the west coast a couple of weeks ago, and before i went i stopped at one of the card shops in the twin cities where i wound up picking up a few cards from the various bins. once i got to the west coast, i visited a couple of shops - a couple in the bay area and one further down the coast. i figured i'd share some of the cards i picked up via a card shop battle!

starting in the twin cities, i spent some time digging through the shop's nickel cards and found a few that interested me enough to take them home, including a 2022 panini donruss independence day adolis garcia card

i was disappointed to see garcia not able to play in the full world series, as he was on a tear.

here's a 2018 topps stadium club ichiro card

that fits in to my name/number on the back mini-collection.

i was surprised to find a bunch of cards from one of the 2022 topps 582 montgomery sets (set 5 to be precise)

and i spent sixty cents to bring these cards home with me. i'm not 100% sure why i did - probably just because they were different from all the other base cards in the boxes.

i moved on to the quarter and fifty cent cards which are conveniently sorted by team. somehow there was a 2022 topps now clayton kershaw card

for the taking, and i also grabbed several numbered dodger parallels. the two that surprised me the most were these two 2021 topps gallery gavin lux parallels

which are the orange and blue pattern parallels, numbered /25 and /50, respectively. they were a quarter apiece.

this shop also has a 50% off bin filled with autos and relics, and so i came away with a $1.50 auto of former dodger andre jackson

from 2022 topps stadium club.

in addition to all the singles i took, i bought a pack of 2023 topps chrome and found a base shohei ohtani card

that i may well be bringing back to the shop for a credit should he win the american league mvp.

all in all, it was a productive time spent at the local card shop!

once i got to california, i had some time to kill before getting down to the business that i was there for, so i went to a shop in san jose.  this shop had a very small box of dollar cards on a counter, and i grabbed a couple to purchase - a 2015 topps chrome corey seager perspectives insert

and a 2017 bowman walker buehler prospects yellow parallel

turns out i didn't need either.

i also bought a blaster of 2023 topps allen & ginter, and when i got the register there was a small pile of loose ginter cards. the guy said i could have them - some box breaker left them behind. i grabbed a few that interested me, like these two "only in..." minis from chicago

and kansas city

along with this ice cream sundae

dessert mini, and a new vladdy for my pc from the spotless spans insert set

the blaster wasn't too exciting, even though it did include this relic

of some guy from some thing.

i made my way down the coast, and a few days later stopped in at another card shop. this one had a couple of two-row boxes on the counter that included dollar cards. i dug through and found a few to purchase, including an infinitely better ginter relic

that joc pederson plain white swatch is from 2016 topps allen & ginter. i couldn't resist owning mitch white's crappy autograph for a buck, picking up this 2017 bowman's best best of '17 auto

brutal, but i wish him well in toronto or wherever he winds up in the future.

i probably overpaid for this yellow 2021 topps cody bellinger

and this 1994 upper deck sp bo jackson die cut

but what the heck. i was on vacation. the bo fits in to my lurker collection because rodney cline carew is in the background, even if it doesn't look that way in the scan.

of all places to find a signed 1978 topps card of the late adrian devine

i would not have picked a west coast card shop, but here we are. i am not sure if it is legit but it matches ok with some other examples i've seen. i still don't have any illusions about completing my 1978 topps autographed set, but this (and the recent long lost ttm i received) had me motivated to pick up a few more cards (future post coming).

a few more dollar cards that i settled on included a 2021 topps heritage joey votto target exclusive red border variation

a 2022 topps heritage 1973 buyback

and a 2014 topps supreme die-cut autograph of garin cecchini

i had assumed at the time of purchase that it was his brother gavin who signed, making this a nice pickup for baseball card breakdown, but alas, it is a card of the other cecchini.  still, it's the first supreme card i've seen in person and it only set me back a buck.

the last thing i took out of the dollar box was this pack of 30 cards

that is, of course, a sealed pack of the 1997 upper deck "trade" cards that were available through a wrapper redemption. eddie murray as an angel on the front, and hideki irabu

on the back. i sent away for these cards back in 1997 and busted it open to get at the todd zeile dodger card. good times.

the last purchase i made at this shop was a jumbo pack of 2023 topps series 2. not much in there other than this sticker autograph of the "other" yankee rookie, oswald peraza

at least it's the black parallel.

i actually returned to this shop a couple of days later and bought a hobby box of 2023 topps update, but i'll save that for a future post.

eventually i made my way back to the bay area and stopped at another shop not too far from the airport. like the first shop i visited in cali, this one had a small box of dollar cards on the counter and i bought this 2015 topps archives clayton kershaw 1990 #1 draft pick insert

along with a 2023 topps silver pack jose altuve

double play card, and a 2002 topps chrome ralph houk 1952 world series refractor parallel

you don't see those in refractor form too frequently.

i also bought a box of update from this shop, and will post about it later.

i should mention that i also bought a 2023 bowman mega box at a target somewhere in california, and netted this hao yu lee mojo auto

lee is the player that the phillies sent to detroit for michael lorenzen last season. he seems to have done ok in the arizona fall league over the past month.

i guess i should declare a winner in the card shop battle, but they all had their moments. i just wish those west coast shops would set up some dime boxes instead of focusing so intently on boxes and hits. but, as i realized while driving past the location of my childhood lcs that is now a parking lot for a mostly empty larger retail mall, such is progress.

o skipper my skipper

you might recall that i was happy to see a dusty baker card from topps in 2021 archives depicting him as the manager of the astros. manager cards have gone by the wayside in recent years, and so this was the first time he had been featured on cardboard since taking the reins of the astros prior to the 2020 season.

baker has a large number of manager cards overall, thanks to his leading teams during the renaissance of manager cards that took place beginning in 2001 topps flagship and ending with 2016 topps heritage (i think). baker's last base manager card was in 2013 topps heritage, but i know a few managers showed up in later releases. 

those cards covered his managerial stints with the giants, cubs, and reds, and with his 2021 card showing him as an astro, it was only a card marking his time managing the nationals that had not yet found its way in to my collection. to my knowledge, there is only one such card, and it is the 2016 topps allen & ginter short printed "skippers" mini. i decided to rectify that situation

you can probably tell by those images that i have a graded version.

the seller noted that it was the only psa 10 in this card's population which doesn't surprise me - how many people would send this card in for grading? the answer is one.

i had been watching for one of these cards for a while and this was the only one that showed up. i don't know how many of these were printed, but i eventually decided not to wait any longer.

my guess is that the astros are the final stop in baker's managerial career, but that remains to be seen. he will pass 2,000 wins as a big league skipper early in the 2022 season, and given the astros' talent, he should also pass bruce bochy, leo durocher, and walter alston on the all-time leader board after reaching the 2k mark. that puts him in rarified air and would, in my mind, qualify him for the hall of fame even without a world series title. we will see!

another summer come and gone

i know summer isn't officially over for a couple more weeks, but i've always associated labor day with its end. that's because of back to school, of course. these days, the days, weeks, months, seasons just sort of roll along.  anyway, baseball is the primary summer sport, and we are heading towards the end of the regular season. i am happy that i was able to get out to a few games and stadiums this year, but sad that dodger stadium wasn't one of them. i plan to be in los angeles next month, so maybe there is a chance if the dodgers are still playing in the postseason.

this post is going to feature a bunch of cards that contain images taken in the confines of chavez ravine, and i'll kick it off with a 1983 donruss nolan ryan card that i culled from my dad's collection:

i spent some time going through some sets from the 1980s looking for dodger stadium cards that i had to give up to the set build back when we were opening packs, and i found quite a few that i then pursued on sportlots for my dodger stadium collection.

1984 donruss charlie puleo

1985 donruss luis aguayo

1986 donruss vince coleman

hubie brooks

ken oberkfell

jose deleon (the original)

steve kemp

jody davis

leon durham

eddie milner

and tony perez

davis and durham look like they could have been standing next to each other.

i looked through some fleer sets, too, and found some more to add.

1983 fleer atlee hammaker

1985 fleer update dave rucker

herm winningham

mickey mahler

joe sambito

calvin schiraldi

rick schu

gary carter

hubie brooks

dave lapoint

and jeff calhoun

obviously those update cards were part of a box set that i never broke rather than packs. easy and cheap pickings on sportlots now.

i went through the 1986 fleer update set as well, and found this jim deshaies

plus a couple from the flagship set - bill gullickson

and scott sanderson

back to update for this 1987 fleer update dave dravecky

and dave meads

cards. 1987 was the last year i added the boxed fleer update sets, so i went to comc to see images from later sets. i found this 1989 fleer update randy kramer card

plus a few from the 1990 fleer update set to add:

dave hollins

luis salazar

dennis boyd

mariano duncan

there were some dodgers, too, that i hadn't yet added to the dodger stadium collection, such as this 1986 donruss bob welch

and some fleer dodgers, like a 1981 fleer mickey hatcher

1981 fleer star stickers davey (davy) lopes

1983 fleer candy maldonado

1985 fleer update al oliver

and 1987 fleer mike scioscia

i also found some oversized cards to add, like this 1984 donruss action all-stars willie mcgee

and these 1987 donruss all-stars cards of glenn davis

and mike krukow

moving to the 21st century, i added a 2001 topps chrome dodgers team card

to a recent sportlots order so i could put it in the dodger stadium collection, and i also picked up a 2017 topps javy baez card

in a lot of cards i recently purchased. with the full playoff crowd it's somewhat hard to tell that he's in dodger stadium, but he is. many of these cards are not necessarily the best examples of dodger stadium backgrounds, but oh well.

the last two dodger stadium cards i bought haven't arrived yet, but i'll share the images. they are both from 2021 topps now, and are turn back the clock cards. here are vladimir guerrero

who moved in to first place as far as expo home run hitters while in dodger stadium back in 2003, and ernie banks

who became the first cub player to have his number retired back in 1992. of course, the ceremony was held in wrigley field, but topps opted for a photo of banks hanging out by the batting cage in dodger stadium. i'm not complaining.

bonus card:

it's not dodger stadium, but it is a site i have visited on a couple of summer vacations. devils tower in wyoming was featured on the 2016 topps allen & ginter natural wonders insert checklist, so i figured i would add the card to my "meaningful and just because" mini-collection. it reminds me of yet more summers come and gone.