blue plate is special

blue parallels or blue cards of any kind are near and dear to the hearts of dodger collectors, and that extends for me to printing plates. now, due to their nature, one can't be too picky when it comes to those items, but it is nice when the cyan plate pops up for sale.

such was the case a short time ago with this 2012 leaf lumber "the franchise 4" plate

featuring steve garvey, ron cey, mike piazza, and kirk gibson. it had a very reasonable buy it now, and so i pounced.  here's the back:

take note topps - the numbers on the backs of those jerseys are definitely blue!

now, where cyan works so well, the yellow plate does not. i couldn't pass up this yellow plate

a couple of weeks ago as it is the 2021 leaf lumber "decade vs. decade" plate featuring johnny bench, garvey, reggie jackson, willie stargell, mike trout, ronald acuna jr, fernando tatis jr, and victor robles.  here's the back:

as you can see, there isn't a lot of yellow in the dodger jerseys.

this yellow plate

from 2006 fleer greats of the game is a little bit better due to the photograph used. here's the back:

nice of upper deck to tell me to enjoy my "fleer" card. i am still ticked at fleer for the redemptions in 2004 greats of the game that were never fulfilled, including a number of garvey items that i sent in for. maybe i would enjoy it a bit more if it were the cyan plate.

some big garvey gets mean i can see from both ends now

a while back, i posted some bat barrel cards that i have in my steve garvey collection. super cool stuff, at least to me, and i am always keeping an eye out for more of them.  when i saw the 2021 leaf lumber checklist, the card that most interested me was the bat rack card of garvey, cey, russell, lopes. however, i was also hoping to get a crack at either the 1/1 bat knob or the 1/1 off the end of the bat cards.

well....

i am happy to report that i got them both!

that's a scan of the bat knob. the card is so thick and the wood is a bit recessed, so it's blurry. here's a photograph:

and the back:

same goes for the end of the bat card. here's the scan:

and photo:

and the back:

to be honest i thought the end of the bat card would be a bit better. the piece of bat is not as thick as i would have thought it would be, but i am still happy to have the card. especially since it has the psa/dna and jsa stickers attached.

the beauty of the psa/dna sticker on the end of the bat is that i can access the database and find out more information about it - check it out here! i grabbed a couple of the photos

and am confident that both of these cards come from the same bat. you can see in the photo above that it is the knob used on the card for sure! and you can see the other ink (and sticker) from the end of the bat on this photo:

with the photos found at that link, it is clear that both the end and knob come from the same bat, which sold at auction in 2019 for $360. whomever won the auction then took it to jsa to get the signature authenticated and the second sticker applied to the end of the bat that later wound up on the card.  here is the jsa verification.

the bat card that i picked up earlier from this same release - the one that featured an exterior chunk of bat - looks like it came from the same bat as this end and knob which makes complete sense. in fact, i think i can see the part of the bat that my chunk came from

seems legit.

i looked through my garvey collection for cards that showed bat ends the best, and his 1982 fleer card

fits the bill for the one end.   you'd have to zoom in quite a bit, but it does look like his 2008 donruss threads card

includes some markings on the knob.

the bat that leaf cut up likely comes from 1987 since it was signed by garvey in 1988 (assuming the "88" notation under his autograph is meant to denote the date). of course, the bat could be from some point earlier in his career, too.

there was another bat knob garvey card issued this year, and it was from 2021 topps sterling

i did not acquire this card - the asking price was and still is pretty high, so i'll just settle for the card images!

1/1 in more than 1 way

hard to believe that it is the start of a new year, but the calendar has indeed turned to 2022. i'm taking advantage of the date to show a couple of 1/1 cards that i've added to my collection over the last couple of years. these scans have languished in my scan folder for several months and today is the day that they are freed.

this is a printing plate from 2019 panini immaculate collection

of none other than my favorite player, steve garvey. it's the yellow plate, and it's been modified to include embedded patches and a nice autograph from the garv. the autograph looks great on the matte finish of the card.  here's the back:

i guess it's not technically a 1/1 but rather a one of one. fancy script.

similarly, this next one is the cyan printing plate from 2020 panini national treasures

and features an embedded bat piece and a nice autograph. here's the back:

nice to see different writeups on the backs of these cards.

just to clarify - it's not all steve garvey and printing plates around these parts, as i also added this ron cey 1/1 from 2018 topps archives signature series to my collection:

it pairs nicely with my garvey 1/1 that i showed a few years ago. i doubt there will be bill russell or dave lopes 1/1 1975 topps buyback autos to ever chase, unfortunately. that doesn't mean that i haven't picked up some of their cards recently, however!

i added two bill russell autographs from 2003 upper deck sp chirography - his silver with the 1981 ws champs inscription (number 01/50)

and the gold version

numbered 07/10.

as for lopes, i picked up this 2005 topps rookie cup blue parallel

numbered 11/50

thinking it was a need. it turns out i had not updated my want list correctly, so now it's a dupe. oh well - i've got a use for it.

back to the 1/1 theme of this post, i was lucky enough to find this 2021 leaf lumber bat rack cyan printing plate a couple of weeks ago for a nice low buy it now price.

weird that the only cyan on the card is in the jerseys - nothing in the lower part of the card - but it gives the card a strangely attractive simplistic quality. at any rate, it's great to have the whole infield together!

happy new year everyone!

long time coming but still not quite there

as a younger fan and collector of cards back in the early 1980's, i certainly thought that the dodger infield of steve garvey, ron cey, bill russell, and davey lopes was worthy of a record breaker or highlights card in 1982 given that they played together for as long as they did - longer than any other foursome. of course, russell missed much of the 1975 season due to injury, and lopes missed about half of the 1981 season with injuries as well, but they still played together for over eight years - from june 23, 1973 until the final out of the 1981 world series. it turned out that i had to create my own custom card about 30 years later.

not much had changed in the card landscape since my post over 11 years ago lamenting how close some cards had been to featuring all four of these guys together.  so, when i saw the 2021 leaf lumber checklist, i was gobsmacked.  there was going to be a card of the four infielders as part of the "bat rack four" subset! my excitement was slightly tempered by the fact that it was leaf producing these cards, but still!

i wound up trying to complete the rainbow. i am currently short of that goal, but i do have these to show off - first the bronze (base) version:

that's one for the garvey collection, and this is one for the team collection:

leaf goes for the more standard ordering of the four - from first base to third base around the horn - rather than my preference for garvey, cey, russell, lopes.

the numbering falls off pretty quickly, with the purple /9 being the next most common version:

next is red /7

and then platinum /6

and then pewter /4

i am missing the emerald version which is numbered to 4 (or maybe 3), but i do have the navy blue version which is numbered to 3

there is also a silver parallel that is numbered to 2 which i am missing, but i do have the gold 1/1:

seven out of nine isn't bad!

here's the back:

i do enjoy this piece of history, thank you very much! now let's get a card with a photo of the four together - i'm thinking 2022 topps heritage would be a great place to start with a baseball flashbacks card taking us back to that fateful day in june of 1973.

long live the infield!

check my sixes

earlier this week i showed a few cards from 2021 leaf lumber. i've got a couple more today.  first up are the only solo cards steve garvey appeared on in the set. i guess this is a 2021 leaf lumber game used lumber card

this is the most common version of the card - the bronze version numbered to 25. here's the back:

as always, i am disappointed that garvey's nameplate has been removed from the back of his jersey, but the "6" is recognizable to me as the dodger jersey font. i had been content with just owning the bronze version, but then i saw a red version pop up:

it is numbered to 7, but i was interested in it because it features an exterior piece of the bat that was chopped up for these cards. it's not a bat barrel card, but it is still nice to have a card like this.

here's another card from the set - lumber numbers

i really like these cards because jersey numbers were (and still are) a big thing for me as a young fan. here we have stan musial, garvey, ryan howard, and willie wilson - all guys who wore number 6. for these cards, i think the back of the jersey image works well. so, of course, leaf went and made some of these using images of players mixed in with jersey backs. 

i have a few more cards from this set to show off in a future post, so stay tuned for more cards without pictures of players.

it's a bird, it's a plane, it's super teams!

i used to watch superfriends religiously. do you remember the voiceover opening?

"gathered together from the cosmic reaches of the universe..."

actually, gathered from ebay, here are some 2021 leaf lumber relic cards that i've added to my steve garvey collection. these are in addition to the ones that i've already shown that have an all-star game focus. i don't add these sorts of cards to the dodger collection unless someone happens to send me a dupe, and with the prices of these cards remaining somewhat high, i don't expect that to happen anytime soon.  this first card is from the "super teams" subset, and it features dodger stars:

it's the bronze/base version, and even though it references both los angeles and brooklyn, all of these guys suited up for the west coast dodgers. duke snider is the only one who can claim brooklyn ties.  it's nice that two pitchers are represented given that it is a bat card, and three-quarters of the infield is here as well.

garvey also shows up on the padres version of "super teams"

this is the platinum parallel, numbered to 6. i think seeing garvey on this card is like superman spending time with the legion of doom if i am to keep up the superfriends references. anyway, he still has a solid place in padre franchise history, but is becoming less relevant as the new crop of players emerge. it was good to see him on a dodger/padre telecast earlier this year sitting behind home plate.

not to be outdone, leaf also released a set called "ultimate sports" which featured this green lantern corps ring team subset card:

world series victories are represented here from 1969 through 1983, with pete rose (1980 - that is definitely a phillie uniform color), joe morgan (1975 or 1976), mike schmidt (1980), steve garvey (1981), reggie jackson (1977 or 1978 - although i suspect that is an angel jersey piece), dave parker (1979), earl weaver (1983), and tom seaver (1969) making up the team.

but wait! from leaf lumber, here comes the fantastic franchise 4!

garvey cey piazza gibson doesn't quite have the right ring to it. how cool would it have been for this card to feature the four infielders? pretty cool is right!

similarly, leaf included this card in their 2021 ultimate sports release

instead of the franchise 4, this is mount rushmore, and it swaps out piazza and gibson for duke snider and gil hodges. this is clearly not the "mount rushmore" for the franchise but rather a sample of players for whom leaf had jersey swatches.

not to be outdone, here comes some guys from earth 8 the ocho (it's a bold strategy, cotton)

this card also comes from 2021 leaf ultimate sports and features gil hodges (with a met pinstripe), mike piazza, don sutton, walt alston, duke snider, leo durocher, garvey, and tom lasorda. this particular card is the bronze version that is numbered to 30, and it happens to be garvey's jersey number in the print run.

back to leaf lumber, we have the legion of super heroes legendary lineup

that's a pretty good group of players, with only garvey and dave parker being non-hall of famers. garvey is included on another of these cards, but i haven't been able to secure a version of it. 

finally, it's a batman v superman decade vs. decade card.  

this is a platinum version, numbered to 6. obviously the 2020's aren't over, but the johnny bench, steve garvey, reggie jackson, and willie stargell foursome is a pretty solid group and mike trout, ronald acuna, fernando tatis jr, and victor robles have their work cut out for them in this decade to match up. as an aside, i wonder if someone at leaf confused robles with another nationals outfielder - juan soto. soto would seem to be a better fit for this card.

i do have some other cards from this set to show off, including some that do, in fact, feature all four of the dodger infield. stay tuned!