the almost daily dodger - frank howard

you don't see too many frank howard cards being produced these days, and i should have made an effort sooner to acquire this one

which is from the 2022 topps rookie of the year 75th anniversary set. i had found jackie robinson's card from the set at a card show in 2023 but continued to neglect the rest of the set. then, i found three of the other four dodgers at another card show

and decided to track down howard to complete the set.

howard, who passed away one year ago today, was the dodgers' fifth rookie of the year, and the first from their time in los angeles. his 23 home runs as a rookie in 1960 cracked the league's top ten but he wouldn't lead the league in that category until he was with the washington senators in the late 1960's.

in 1993, mike piazza passed howard by hitting 35 home runs as a rookie for the dodgers. his team record stood until cody bellinger came along in 2017 and hit 39. for two years, that was also a national league record, but then along came pete alonso. for the record, corey seager, the other dodger featured in this post, hit 26 dingers as a rookie in 2016.

card shop pregaming

i had some time to kill before a work event one friday evening so i stopped at one of the local card shops to check out their bargain bins and nickel and quarter boxes. i considered the trip a warmup for the monthly card show which would take place the next day. the inventory was a little low, but i still found cards to take home with me.

i know that the shop doesn't typically bust product, so i am guessing they bought some cards from someone who went for a large 2024 topps chrome yankee team break. there was one aaron judge card to be had, although it was the all-etch insert

but i found a juan soto 1989 35th anniversary card, too

among a bunch of other yankee refractor parallels.

there was a random teoscar hernandez refractor parallel

so maybe it wasn't just a yankee thing.

i had not known that 2024 topps finest was out, but i found freddie freeman's base card

and a couple of "baseball's finest" inserts - shohei ohtani

and clayton kershaw

with yoshinobu yamamoto on the injured list, his cards haven't been as tough to find. these two inserts from 2024 topps finest

were a quarter apiece. as was kershaw's 2024 topps museum collection card

his copper parallel was fifty cents

i did grab some non-dodgers, including a 2010 topps factory set limited edition exclusive hanley ramirez card

for the name/number on the back collection. it was a nickel.

this 2022 topps 75 years of the roy nomar garciaparra card

was also a nickel. i recently completed the dodger team set from this release which would have been so much more of a priority if it had featured all 151 or so roys instead of just a handful.

here's a 2021 topps jack flaherty 70 years of topps chrome parallel insert

i am assuming we will see flaherty and his number 0 in update later this year.

i figured there was some sort of shenanigans when i found two different 2024 topps finest jung hoo lee cards

and it turns out one is the base and the other is a "rare" short print. ok topps.

i spent a total of 20 bucks on loose cards - about 90 in total - but couldn't resist picking up one of the blasters of 2024 topps chrome that was in the case. i should have left it alone. i did find a clayton kershaw base card

and a freddie freeman "strokes" insert

but the rest was pretty poor. i figured i would find some 2024 topps chrome at the show the next day, but i was wrong. still, i left with some cards and i will share some of them in a future post. stay tuned!

all in a week

i went to a card show on april 15 - jackie robinson day - and my favorite purchase of the day was this 2022 topps on-demand rookie of the year 75th anniversary set card of the first rookie of the year

this show was not the regular monthly show, but rather the bi-annual show that the owner of one of the local card shops organizes in a church gymnasium. fittingly, i wore my dodger jackie robinson t-shirt

that i bought at dodger stadium back on opening day in 1997. 

the show was the end of a baseball card themed week for me, in that i stopped in at two local card shops on a couple of the days prior to the show.  on tuesday, an appointment got me close to a shop in the southwest part of the twin cities, so i stopped in for some supplies and to dig through a couple of their monster boxes of singles.

this is the card shop with a bunch of those boxes, but they are stored in such a way as to be difficult to access. the shop is so cluttered that there is really nowhere to put the boxes. it is mildly frustrating, but i still like to look through them so it isn't bad enough to keep me away. i picked out a couple of 2023 topps heritage purple refractors

and a 1994 signature rookies draft picks bonus signature jed hansen card

for the double play collection. most of the cards i pulled were for others, but these three are keepers. i picked up another double play card

but wound up selling it. it is a fairly rare "auction" card from 1998 topps gallery. it wound up covering my outlay for all of the cards i bought from this shop.

a couple of days later, i found myself near another card shop, and stopped in to see what they had to offer. this is the shop whose inventory of singles are either in display cases or part of an online inventory. the last time i was in, i heard one of the workers say that they were considering setting out some dime boxes, and sure enough, i saw some on a table. it turned out that they were quarter boxes, but still worth looking through.

it was a mish-mash of all sports, but i found a few for me and a few for others, including this 1997 fleer flair showcase row 0 brett butler

and a 2015-16 upper deck hockey card of luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuc robitaille

the big story here is that i also bought a box of 2023 topps big league. i was undecided about this product when i first saw images of the cards at cardboard connection, but nick at dime boxes sent me a couple of singles, and so i figured i would add more of the cards to my collection. i had originally hoped to find singles at the aforementioned card show that was coming up later in the week, but this shop had boxes priced at $50 so i went ahead and pulled the trigger.

i think we all agree that the tier system topps applied to this set (similar to what panini has done with their select release) is dumb and annoying for a product like this. it does, however, allow for nice pulls like this:

red foil adley rutschman rookie!

my blue foil sp was jose altuve, so i will just keep going with an example of the regular foil short prints by showing this corbin burnes card

with opening day out of the picture, big league is your one-stop shop for bad photoshopping:

i would much prefer to have seen these guys as dodgers in the set. even if that meant not getting a jd martinez dodger card yet.

there's jd's card along with a few other dodger base cards.

as for non-dodgers, here's ketel marte turning two

and then there are the inserts...

i am not necessarily a fan of the idea of the city connect uniforms, but i do like some of them, including colorado's

the dodgers wore their city connect stuff in a game last weekend, although it was a mashup. they wore the blue "los dodgers" jerseys, but white pants, and the hat was not the "los dodgers" hat but rather a blue hat with the white interlocking "la" but with a black bill. it didn't look good.

bo jackson looks good on modern cardboard, though, and i was happy to find his 8 bit ballers

and roll call

cards among my inserts.

i found two of the three dodger big leaguers inserts

as well.

and then on saturday was the card show. i wound up purchasing cards from four different dealers. the first dealer was one that i had bought from at a previous show, and i was looking forward to looking through his 50 cent box.  it wasn't as fun as the last time, but i still picked out 23 cards that i got for $10.

here are some of the dodgers i pulled

that's a pretty bland batch of cards now that i look at it, but i was happy to find a few parallels and that chrome decades' best jackie robinson card.

here are some non-dodgers that were among the 23 cards i found

i guess i actually bought 24 cards because the roses were in the same penny sleeve and i didn't notice until i got home. i was really just after the framed parallel.

and yes, that is a basketball card in the scan. in fact, it's a 2021-22 panini donruss optic anthony davis insert

i had been looking at some articles about the nba play-in games earlier in the week and noticed that all players were wearing a memorial patch for bill russell (the celtics great, not the dodgers' shortstop of the team of my youth) and figured i would keep an eye out for a card showing that patch. instead, i found the davis card that shows the black band worn for former commissioner david stern, and the circular patch that the lakers wore for kobe bryant. i figured i would add it to the few non-baseball cards in my memorial collection.

the next dealer was another guy i had bought from in the past, but he was more organized this time with higher prices on his singles. i wound up buying a $10 grab bag and the jackie robinson card at the top of this post for a total of $10. the grab bag was mostly inserts and rookies, and i was guaranteed either an auto or a relic. i got a relic 

from 2017 topps tribute of xander bogaerts. i thought maybe it was a black parallel, but no, it looks like this is jus the base. i had to remind myself that i was at the show to buy cards that i could see rather than packs or bags like this. hopefully future gcrl remembers this.

next up was a dealer i hadn't seen before who had four monster boxes with cards set at 50 cents plus other dollar boxes. i wound up with 32 cards from the 50 cent boxes and 6 from the dollar boxes. he gave me a slight discount and i got them all for $20. i'll just show a couple of the more unusual cards, like this 2021 topps x mickey mantle collection card

it really looks like it is homemade. i think they tried to print it as if it were vintage but it doesn't look right. i can't believe it is a fake, but who knows.

i had never seen npb cards at a show, but this guy had a few. this is a 2021 topps npb card of former yankee zelous wheeler

it's a blue parallel, actually.

the last dealer was one that i had bought from before and provided some pretty good deals with their bargain boxes. this could have been due to some math errors since the person tracking things was keeping track of costs on a post-it note. this time, however, i think any math errors were not in my favor. 

i wound up with 52 cards from the 50 cent boxes (all came in semi-rigid holders so bonus), plus 42 cards from the 7/$1 boxes and then 29 other cards that varied in cost from 25 cents to $3 each. i spent $50 for the 113 cards so i am not really complaining.

it was nice to finally see some 2021 topps chrome platinum anniversary cards in the bargain boxes, and i was able to add a few dodger base cards that i needed

the zach mckinstry parallel was not in the 7/$1 box, but was only 50 cents so still a bargain.  

i also found some 2022 topps chrome sonic parallels in the fifty cent box, including a black and white ray wave refractor of albert pujols

i wrote a short post about this set the other day. it is definitely not a necessary set, but i do like the refractor parallels.  here's a purple and yellow refractor of jorge soler

that was also just 50 cents.

this seller also had some cheap relics and autos. i found a 2020 panini chronicles classic autographs card of dodger legend terrance gore

gore appeared in 2 games for the dodgers. he played half an inning on defense in one appearance and pinch ran in the other. he doesn't have too many dodger cards as a result, although he did appear in 2020 topps update. i don't chase these sorts of autos (certified as a dodger when they were a dodger) like wrigley wax does with his cubs, but i was pretty happy to find even a sticker auto of an obscure dodger!

however, perhaps my favorite find from this dealer was this card from 2021 topps big league

it's one of those ssp home team tradition cards (the dodger dog was featured for us dodger fans), and i know bernie brewer's slide is a fairly popular thing. not a bad find for a quarter.

this post is already too long so i won't show any of the other cards i picked up. all in all, it was a good week on the card front.

and then there was the hotel show i went to this past friday.........