something in the air

generosity has been prevalent in the blogosphere for a long time, and recently there were some giveaways and surprise envelopes from multiple sources. i figured it was time to highlight some of these instances that have furthered my collection.

first, the diamond king had a giveaway featuring shohei ohtani cards. i requested a 2018 panini diamond kings card

and true to form, kevin included a couple of extras. this is a 2017 panini black friday cody bellinger card

comc calls it rainbow spokes, tcdb calls it wedges. whatever it is, it's great!  and this is a 2022 topps chrome platinum anniversary max muncy card

platinum cream toile & rose gold refractor, and it's numbered on the back to 75.

kevin wasn't done there, as a while later, he offered up some paul skenes cards. i requested a 2024 bowman insert chrome prospect card

and once again, kevin included some bonus dodgers.

that's a 2020 panini chronicles phoenix ruby wave cody bellinger card numbered to 199, and this is a 2018 topps fire duke snider orange parallel card

numbered to 299.

thanks kevin - i hope the cards i sent your way made it there ok!

next up, rod from padrographs had posted that there were some mailings sent out from padrographs hq, and that one of them was a poster in a tube mailer. well, guess who got the poster?!

rod sent me the steve garvey "out of the blue" poster that looks like this:

mine isn't signed, but it was easier to find a photo online than to try to roll it out and take one myself. i have a couple other garvey posters that i need to get set up somewhere.

rod also sent some cards, including one of the garv

along with a 1982 fleer roger erickson signed card

there were also some unopened packs, including 2002 upper deck world series heroes. nice to see don drysdale on the wrapper!

i don't really believe in unopened product, so here we go. my pack included a duke snider card

plus some other folks who played in the world series at some point

other packs included two 1992 upper deck minors which yielded some fun content, including chad ogea in tailored shorts

these days a few players are wearing these "above the knees" pants for real. here's the immortal skeets thomas

with one of the better broken bat cards out there.

there was one dodger card in the packs - greg hansell

i already had this card in my collection, but i found someone who needed one for theirs...

that would be tom, from angels in order. the hansell came in handy because i was preparing a return envelope for tom thanks to him sending me some cards a couple of weeks earlier. he sent these three cards from 1992 classic update white travel edition

along with a 1993-94 fleer excel roger cedeno minor league card

and a 1995 upper deck minor league top prospects karim garcia future stock card

i don't typically seek out minor league cards so it's great to have someone sending them my way!

not to be outdone, tom later had a giveaway in which i was able to procure this card:

2013 bowman platinum yasiel puig prospects chrome green refractor /399. it's really shiny and a great lead-in to st. patrick's day.

thanks kevin, rod, tom, and everyone else out there for bringing the generosity to the blogs. i am feeling inspired to do another "almost free stuff friday" in the near future. stay tuned!

summer sortin' had me a blast

i have a bunch of cards to sort through and haven't dedicated the time to do so in recent months. or is it years? anyway, i was envious of fuji who noted that he was doing a big summer sorting project and now i have become one of the beneficiaries of his work!

i received a bubble mailer full of dodger (and selected other) goodness that ran the gamut from oddballs to parallels and even a custom pinback.

i was able to add some cards to my collection from 1986 sportflics including a tri-star card of fernando valenzuela that also features vida blue and john denny.

denny is a good outlier for me to use on the immaculate grid from time to time thanks to him being a non-steve carlton phillie cy young award winner who was featured in the 1978 topps set. i try my best each day to complete the grid using players from that set.

there were a number of fernando items, including stickers like this one from 1984 topps

that is a sears catalog worthy pose!

fuji also sent me my first 1993 topps micro dodger cards, including darryl strawberry, orel hershiser, and eric karros

i've had some of these in the past of other players, but these are the first keepers for me.

these next two items aren't new to me, but i did want to show how clayton kershaw went from a ryan reynolds lookalike on his 2012 panini triple play sticker

to a more hirsute individual on his 2013 panini triple play sticker

it's a transformation similar to what was seen for some players between early 1970's topps flagship sets - 1970 and 1971 richie/dick allen comes to mind (yes i know the photo on his 1970 card is an older photo).

these next three are all new to me - 2013 panini prizm mike piazza diamond dominance

and yasiel puig fearless

inserts, plus a 2018 panini diamond kings jackie robinson portraits insert

obviously, those cards are all lacking logos, but i think i prefer that to whatever it is that todd hollandsworth is wearing on this 1995 signature rookies card 

it kind of looks like a rec league jersey, but hey - the card is 1 of only 25,000!

there were cards with logos, including one that is just the logo

from 1987 donruss opening day.

with fuji being a padres fan, i wasn't surprised to see some steve garvey cards make the mailing. here's a 1986 donruss pop ups card

that celebrates garvey's (last) all-star game which was played at the metrodome in 1985.

my favorite item of the package was this pinback

that was constructed using his 1982 donruss diamond kings card. this is right up there with the coaster that p-town tom sent to me using a 2012 topps mini matt kemp card in terms of custom coolness.

finally, there were a handful of cards from the 2021 topps complete set (gold star edition) for my collection, including corey seager

and the championship fireworks

it's been a long time since i received a gold star from a teacher!

thanks mark! enjoy the last few days of your summer vacation!

i'd buy that for $0.07! and i did!

i made it to the monthly card show on saturday for the first time in a while.  i made purchases from three dealers. the first guy had a decent dime box from which i found 40 cards.  good deal.  the third guy had his 15/$1 boxes, and i had to quickly dig before the people next to me decided to buy the full boxes at $12/each.  one guy did pull two boxes before i could get there, but i found some pretty decent stuff, including a 2017 topps update yu darvish photo variation short print.

yu had some friends, including the robinson cano

and joey votto

photo variation short prints from the same set.

i've never completed my 2017 want lists, so i wasn't sure if i needed the darvish or not.  it didn't matter in the end, as i wasn't going to leave him there for less than a dime.

in all, i found 75 cards to take from the boxes - some to flip and some to keep for my mini collections.  this is a 2005 upper deck mvp batter up card of phil niekro

who happens to be standing in dodger stadium.  you might think phil was there for an old-timer's game, but knowing the way ballplayers aged back then, this could be phil in his 30's.

here's a new double play for that collection - a 2012 topps erick aybar golden sparkle parallel

comc calls these parallels "golden moments", but i go with the sparkle.

my big daddy vladdy pc is represented by his 2001 upper deck legends card

here's a 2017 topps all-time all-stars card of eddie mathews

i like this insert set a lot, but it would have been even better had they included a certain dodger first baseman who won the all-star game mvp award twice.  oh well.  as much as i like this mathews, it was not the best one i picked up on saturday.

the last time i was at the card show, i picked up a big name (roberto clemente, to be exact) for my 1957 topps set build, and i did the same on saturday with this card

this came from the second dealer i purchased from, and i also grabbed another 10 cards from the set from him.

while i was looking at the 57's, i heard a person next to me talking about building the 1964 topps venezuelan set, and i knew that it had to be brian from highly subjective completely arbitrary. and so it was.  we had just recently completed a trade, so we didn't have any cards to exchange, but it was good to see him nonetheless.

here are a couple of the cards he sent me recently:

that's a 2018 panini diamond kings original materials relic card of clayton kershaw, and this is a 2018 topps stadium club kyle farmer auto

i like it when brian is assigned the nl west in his transatlantic box breaks!

as for the rest of the show, i was pulling cards from a quarter box at another seller's table when he began a homophobic rant to the seller next to him regarding someone who had walked by earlier. i loudly put the cards back and said no thanks. i wouldn't buy that at any price.

that escalated quickly

i have always liked the cards that link the past to the present like the donruss passing the torch cards from the 90s, and so i was interested in seeing the 'past and present' cards offered up by panini in their 2018 diamond kings set.

i actually opened a few packs and found a mickey mantle/mike trout card, as well as a craig biggio/jose altuve card.  i had assumed that any dodger card would be gil hodges (a diamond kings favorite) or perhaps eric karros (from one roy to another) and cody bellinger, but was holding out hope that steve garvey would get the call.  instead, panini went with adrian gonzalez.

this is akin to a wally pipp/lou gehrig card as bellinger took the first base position directly from gonzalez in 2017 when the latter went on the disabled list.  through last friday, both of these guys were batting .239 on the season, but bellinger seemed to be breaking out with a surge in power.  and then at the end of the week, the mets released gonzalez.

gonzalez was the dodgers' first baseman for about 5 years, replacing james loney who had served for about the same time.  loney's reign had ended a patchwork group of first basemen that followed the departure of the aforementioned karros.  they may not share a card, but bellinger may be able to give karros a run for his money, both in terms of longevity as a dodger first baseman and in career los angeles dodger home runs.