there's sutton happening here

for what it's worth, every few months i search for don sutton cards. i'm mainly looking for his post-dodger oddballs that aren't in my collection yet, but will still bite on dodger sutton cards too! one of my recent searches turned up a 2019 panini diamond kings 1983 retro signature materials holo blue parallel

for a ridiculously low price, especially as it is numbered to only 10. 

that prompted me to keep looking, and i found some more decent deals.

that's a 2015 panini cooperstown red parallel numbered to 35

and that is a 2004 playoff absolute memorabilia spectrum parallel

this 2016 topps gypsy queen card

is a short print

this 2018 topps tribute card

is just the base

and a couple from 2021 - topps allen & ginter x

and a refractor parallel

from 2021 topps chrome platinum anniversary 

you may have noticed that all of the cards above are pre-perm sutton. that's not how i remember him, so let's see some curly hair!

here is a parallel from 2022 topps chrome platinum anniversary

it's a yellow ray wave refractor, and it makes me think of corn.

panini has been including sutton in recent sets...

that's a 2024 panini crusade red parallel, and this

is his 2024 panini donruss diamond king insert. sutton was a diamond king as a brewer in 1985, but never as a dodger, so this was the only card featured in this post that i went looking for specifically.

my searching found me looking at 2024 panini prizm cards, however, and i bit on sutton's ruby wave prizm parallel

i stopped short of rainbow hunting, though. at least for sutton.

i couldn't help myself when i saw tommy lasorda's card

from base to ruby wave and various colors and patterns in between.

i wish topps had featured sutton in last year's 1989 35th anniversary inserts, but seeing him in other releases is a pleasure, too.

tales of an autumn trade

even though it's not quite officially winter, the temperatures here in the twin cities have not been autumnal at all. even when i returned from an extended trip abroad, it was colder than normal. one of the bright spots, however, was an envelope from madding at cards on cards in my pile of mail.

jackie robinson's autumn tales insert

from 2024 topps update was one of the highlights of the envelope. the back of the card tells the story of robinson stealing home in the 1955 world series to ignite the dodgers. topps decided, however, to not reuse an image of robinson stealing home in that series but rather a photo of him scoring the game winning run on june 18, 1952 against the cubs, courtesy of a gil hodges sacrifice fly. the giveaway to me was the number on the front of robinson's jersey. the dodgers only wore those numbers on their home uniforms during their last few years in brooklyn, and i've seen the images of robinson and yogi berra often enough to know that robinson stole home (yes, yogi, he was safe) at yankee stadium.

here's another good one - a shohei ohtani and yoshinobu yamamoto holiday foil parallel

i have to think that at some point topps cools it with these japanese player combo cards, but i suppose it is a way to have more ohtani cards so never mind.

kerry sent me my first look at 2024 topps stadium club with this clayton kershaw base

i'm not really a fan of the design, but i had also ordered some of this product directly from topps so now i have a fair amount of it. you'll see some of that stuff in future posts i am sure.

the other stadium club card in the envelope was a nice green parallel of ohtani

it's numbered to 199. there are green chrome refractor parallels in this year's stadium club, but those aren't numbered. go figure.

kerry still goes for some panini product, and sent me a couple of jorge de paula cards. this one is a blue ice parallel

from 2024 panini chronicles - crusade, and this one is a green laser parallel

from 2024 panini donruss. i've stopped adding panini dodger checklists to my want lists, but i will still gladly accept the cards!

kerry even went into the wayback machine and sent a 2001 pacific eric karros base card

that i needed, and also sent a needed dave hansen gold rush parallel

from 1994 score. i am down to just three or four more needs to complete that team set.

the most obscure items kerry sent, however were stickers from 1991 panini. here's the dodger logo

and here's kal daniels

when's the last time you saw a kal daniels reference on a card blog? i was pretty excited when the dodgers acquired him from the reds, but after a pretty good first year in los angeles, his knees decided that they had different plans for his career.

thanks kerry! i've already put the next envelope in the mail!

definitely some dodgers on cards for the permanent collection

here's another group of cards sent my way by madding/cards on cards, who is one of the handful of regular trade partners i have at the moment.

my favorite card from this installment is this 2021 panini donruss don sutton card

not only is it old man sutton with the glorious perm showing lots of gray, it's a season stat line parallel numbered to 91 as in his whip from 1972 (which was 0.91 but that is less than 1 so wouldn't work for card numbering). as a bonus, it's a jersey number match as it is number 20 in the print run! a perfect card for the number 1 don sutton collector on tcdb!

there was one other dodger pitcher included in the envelope, and it was yoshinobu yamamoto on his 2024 bowman card

kerry also included future dodger pitcher shohei ohtani's 2024 bowman card, and i showed that card off in a post about his 50/50 achievement.

not too long before these cards arrived, i had been perusing the 2024 panini donruss checklist and determined that the only card i was really interested in was jackie robinson's. well, kerry delivered for me without even knowing!

here's a licensed robinson card from 2024 topps

2024 marks 75 years from jackie's first all-star game appearance for what it's worth.

kerry also sent some 2024 topps chrome cards - a mookie betts base

and a freddie freeman refractor

and if he pulled any ohtanis i hope he kept them to trade in at the local card shop.

here's one more card from the envelope - a 2022 panini chronicles mookie betts card

it is a vertex card, and these days i am not sure whether or not that is a base card subset or an insert. at least with topps fusion back in the day i knew what was what. panini has me so confused.

thanks for another round of trading kerry!

worth the price of admission

i went to the semi-annual big old card show in st. paul a couple of weeks ago. this was a hotel show last fall, but has been held in the st. paul rivercentre for the last two occurrences, which is a big improvement in terms of space.

i went on the friday - it was open on thursday to vendors and vip types - and so i am sure i missed some of the larger crowds who were likely there on saturday and sunday. still, most tables were full and some patrons were in full body odor mode.

as you might imagine, most tables seemed focused on slabbed stuff, and there were more than a couple tables that were solely pokemon, but i still found some bargain boxes to dig through, which is my card show jam. i wound up with about 200 cards in total, and i didn't pay more than $2 for any of them. in fact, the average price turned out to be around 70 cents - a bit more if you factor in the cost of admission which was $15.

for that price, i was given a paper ticket, and not a qr code

that was unexpected as i didn't know paper tickets were still a thing at any venue.

as we move to the cards, i will go straight to what was worth the price of admission. this 2024 topps chrome shohei ohtani card

is presumably worth $20 due to the anticipated mvp buyback program and ohtani's status as the national league frontrunner. the dealer i bought it from had it in a 50 cent box. that same dealer had this 2024 topps trading card day ohtani

for the same price. i wound up buying some other cards from his box just to spend a little bit more for him.

another dealer had this 2024 topps chrome black ohtani

in a dollar box. here's yoshinobu yamamoto's 2024 topps chrome card

that was in the same 50 cent box as the ohtani chrome card.

some other dodger favorites that i picked up at the show include this 2023 topps heritage bill buckner 50th (really 49th) anniversary card

and a 2015 topps heritage adrian gonzalez action variation card

from a quarter box of 70s and 80s cards came this 1984 sports design products duke snider card

and the lone card that i paid $2 for was this 2020 topps corey seager photo variation

i am always going to pull albert pujols dodger cards from these bargain boxes, and some of the ones i found were these three chrome parallels/ben baller edition cards

i also found a sheldon neuse dodger card - it's a 2022 panini donruss pink fireworks parallel autograph

of a guy who played in 33 games for the dodgers in 2021. i don't think he has a non-autograph card showing him as a dodger.

i am not going to add panini sets to my dodger want lists anymore, but i did still spend a few minutes looking through a big monster box of 2024 donruss. i was mostly looking for parallels for others but did grab a jackie robinson foil parallel

plus a couple of vladimir guerrero inserts

that first one is an homage to the 1984 action all-stars oddball release. another seller had this 1999 pacific revolution tripleheader

which was a no-brainer for me to pick up for some loose change.

i did not know that 2024 topps dynamic duals was a thing, nor that it was out, but someone was selling a few singles and i grabbed a dusty baker and lou piniella mashup

i figure we will continue to see johnnie b baker show up in future card releases which is fine by me.

speaking of mash ups, here is a 2022 topps stadium chrome bo jackson card showing him shaking hands with ronald reagan

i thought that someone might want the card, but there is a scratch on it above ronnie's head, so i put this one in my lurkers collection.

my double play collection benefitted from the show with this 2023 topps chrome josh smith sepia refractor parallel

and this 2006 topps chrome felipe lopez red refractor parallel

the lopez parallel is numbered to 90, but that's not the lowest numbered card i picked up at the show. i will probably show more of those cards in a different post, but here is a sample of the variety of parallels and serial numbered cards that i added to my stacks

i was also somewhat surprised to be able to buy a fernando tatis jr rookie card for less than a buck

even if it is from a set like 2019 topps holiday.

there was so much more to my haul, but i will stop there for now. maybe there will be another post with cards from this show, but i have another show's worth of stuff to show off so who knows.