is it still a thing?

tomorrow is june 7, or 6/7. last year, that was a big deal for some reason. reels of people losing their minds over references to "67" were all over the place. i am too old to understand, but to me, 67 means "garvey-yeager".

heres a 2025 panini national treasures steve garvey timeless talents autographed card

that shows his uniform number, and here's a 2024 topps heritage 50th anniversary buyback of steve yeager's 1975 topps card

that, unfortunately, does not show his number 7.

both cards were new to my collection late last year. here's the back of the garvey card

showing panini spending no time with the reverse sides of these cards.

i wonder if there were a brief spike in the value of cards like seth lugo's 2025 topps cards (this is his topps chrome refractor parallel)

given the 67 hype. doubtful, but stranger things have happened.

some favorites on card autos

i decided at some point in 2024 to seek out autographed cards of my favorite non-dodgers of the year. i have a card for each player representing the season in which they were my favorite, and i already have autograph cards of my favorite dodgers scattered throughout my dodger and steve garvey collections, and some of my non-dodger favorites were already in my hall of famer collection with autographed cards or in a couple of cases, other parts of my collection. still, there were a couple of non-dodger favorites that i was missing and in the end, i decided to add a new autograph for each member of this group to keep with my year-to-year favorites card collection.

i've finally finished this effort, so without further ado, here are the cards that i added for all of my yearly non-dodger favorites, from don baylor to byron buxton.

don baylor (1978-1979): 2000 fleer greats of the game autograph

baylor had a monster year in 1979 and led the angels to the postseason for the first time. however, i was already a big fan of pete rose, and i switched my favoritism to him starting with the 1980 season.

pete rose (1980-1982): 2016 panini pantheon milestone scripts /25

rose was the first of my favorite players - dodger or non-dodger - to win the world series as a favorite of mine. i definitely wanted this card to be from rose's philly days, and i was happy to find it for a pretty decent price (this was before rose passed away). i can remember a lot about the phillies' win over the royals to this day. once my favorite dodger left los angeles, however, i dropped pete like a hot potato.

steve garvey (1983-1987): 1999 fleer sports illustrated autograph

i now have three of these particular autograph cards in my collection - one in this one, one in my garvey collection, and one in my collection of cards featuring games that i've attended in person. garvey took the padres to their first, and his last, fall classic during this stretch where he was my favorite non-dodger. i held out hope that he would return in 1988, but he went unsigned (collusion? he thought so) and accepted the padres' offer to retire his number early in the season. with rose also retired, i moved on to another longtime favorite, and elevated him to the top spot.

paul molitor (1988-1994): 2025 topps chrome world series champion autograph /100

like rose, molitor won a world series while he was my favorite non-dodger, and i was happy to be able to land this card celebrating his title with the blue jays in 1993. i followed molitor closely until he retired, but after the strike, i did a bit of a reset, and switched my favorite to a different blue jay.

shawn green (1995-1999): 1999 topps autograph

when green joined the dodgers, i turned to my favorite of the american league shortstop triumvirate.

nomar garciaparra (2000-2005): 2023 topps finest autograph

nomar joined the dodgers which was fun for me but meant i needed a new favorite non-dodger. vladimir guerrero (my son was becoming an angels fan at this time) answered the call.

vladimir guerrero (2006-2007): 2025 topps finest creators autograph

the hometown team won out in terms of my son's fandom, so i switched my non-dodger favoritism to local hero joe mauer.

joe mauer (2008-2018): 2022 topps museum collection archival autograph /50

with mauer retiring, a former favorite dodger took over.

matt kemp (2019-2020): 2019 topps heritage real one autograph

kemp retired after the 2020 season, and i decided to go younger with my favorite for 2021.

fernando tatis jr (2021-2022): 2020 topps tribute iconic perspectives autograph /99

i stuck with tatis through his suspension before i realized that i was really paying more attention to the twins' center fielder.

byron buxton (2023-present): 2021 topps five star autograph blue parallel /25

that buxton card is pretty cool - 25/25 and all that. plus he raised his name to the 25th power!

i don't see anyone unseating buxton in the near future unless he retires. when healthy, he is a beast and he is always fun to watch.

i'll note that i also picked up another dodger autograph of nomar garciaparra - a 2016 topps archives signature series /6

this 2006 topps updates & highlights card was nomar's first and last topps flagship card as a dodger. he was included in most other 2006 topps releases (plus 2007 topps cosigners), but i was eagerly anticipating his update card. it turned out to only be an all-star card which i thought was weird at the time - not giving him a base card as a dodger. anyway, here's the back:

nomar was my favorite dodger that year, but was supplanted by matt kemp in 2007. 

my favorites of the year

as we close out another year, it's time to look back at some of the cards i've added to my "annual" collections. i've already shown the first of these cards (topps flagship #350), but this post will cover my selections for the other annual collections: topps flagship through the years, favorite dodger, favorite non-dodger, and favorite 2025 dodger and non-dodger cards that i've acquired. first up is the first card that went into these collections, and it's the card i chose to represent 2025 topps in my flagship through the years collection

gunnar henderson's card provides plenty of action and color, and it shows him breaking through the card design. the only real complaint i had about this design was the horizontal cards that were used for player base cards. team cards with the three letter abbreviation (except for the athletics) would have been fine, but to have a player's card with such a different design element or approach seemed wrong to me.

my favorite dodger in 2025 was still clayton kershaw, and i have his topps 1990 35th anniversary card

representing him in that collection for the final time.

my favorite non-dodger in 2025 was still byron buxton, whose 2025 topps chrome xfractor

makes the collection. i feel like all buxton cards should show him making an incredible catch - there are plenty of different plays to choose from! 

as for my favorite cards that i've obtained from 2025 releases, the 2024 dodgers

gave me a lot to be excited about, and that excitement carried over into the 2025 calendar with all of the card releases. that card above is from 2024 topps heritage high numbers, which makes it ineligible - not that it was in the running anyway.

back in 2021, i chose the topps heritage card celebrating the dodgers' world series victory as my favorite that year. this year's heritage card - seen here in its royal blue parallel version

is fantastic and wonderful, but my mind was made up well before heritage was released. that's because when i first saw this card...

favorite dodger card of the year: 

will smith's golden mirror variation knocked out all challengers. knowing that walker buehler wasn't going to get a dodger card in 2025 made this card featuring that moment a classic. it took me a bit to find a second one of these at a decent price to add to the annual collections binder but i made it happen. this card will never not bring a smile to my face.

as for non-dodgers, i was happy early on in 2025 to find brooks lee's flagship rookie card

it features a photo from his rookie debut which i did not attend. i went to the game the following day and had hoped that he wouldn't debut until then. i've mentioned before that he is from near where i grew up and went to the same college as ozzie smith so i had been keeping an eye on his minor league progression.

later in the year, i found tyler o'neill's card in a pack

and admired the stadium club level photography and the pitted green monster. a great card for sure. rod from padrographs also sent me this trevor larnach card 

during the season. it was the very first team color border parallel i'd ever seen in person and i really liked it - so many logos! 

one other contender is the newest card to make its entry - it's jc escarra's topps update golden mirror variation

it first caught my attention because he is wearing jackie robinson's number 42 on his chest protector. of course, these 42 cards have largely been variations (here's the back)

and i am still on the lookout for the dodgers' 2024 topps team card golden mirror with the players wearing the iconic number. i might have decided to pass on escarra's card but when i noticed the detail on his chest protector

i had to have it. in the end, it belongs in my "42" collection as a close second. in time, it might become the favorite non-dodger card i acquired this year, but right now...

favorite non-dodger card of the year:

the fact that i pulled this topps chrome brooks lee rookie image variation refractor from a pack myself made it an instant favorite. sure, lee's season wasn't up to expectations, but he's young and will hopefully break out in 2026.

this is the ninth time that a twins card (tenth if you consider charlie brown to be a twin) has sat in this position and i suppose that makes sense. i assure you, however, that this choice is about lee and a card that i pulled myself and not the team.

i am looking forward to seeing what 2026 brings in the way of cardboard. happy new year!

mall rats and giveaway winners

yesterday morning i took some time to check out the near-to-me mall show that sets up a few times a year. they always include the weekend before christmas in their schedule and i wanted to only show up at the very start of the show for a couple of reasons. one, there was a club show on saturday which is more predictable in terms of product, and two, i want to avoid malls this time of year during later hours and actual weekends. however, i wasn't able to get there until the early afternoon.

to my surprise, the mall wasn't that busy and there were a lot more tables set up than the last mall show i attended in october. unfortunately, there were very few diggable boxes of any interest to me. hence, the "rats" in the title post.

i made a couple of laps and did manage to find some cards to bring home, and in hindsight i am not too disappointed! while i purchased cards from four sellers, i am only going to share cards from one of them.

this 2023 topps chrome james outman card

is a "radiating rookies" insert

and i was told it was a case hit. same for this 2025 topps chrome mookie betts lightning leaders card

i pulled these from a monster box of toploaded cards with no pricing. the guy behind the table said that he would price cards from the box at one or two bucks, typically. i built a short stack that included this 2025 topps heritage alcs/nlcs yellow parallel

and a couple of parallels from 2024 topps stadium club - sepia jackie robinson and gold foil roy campanella

the campanella isn't numbered, but the gold foils look like they should be. this 2023 topps gilded collection rookies cast in gold card of james outman

is numbered - /199.

as for non-dodgers, i did grab some of those, too. here's a gold parallel from 2025 topps update of the brent rooker/lawrence butler combo card

it's a nice looking card, and the back

namechecks big mac and golden gopher great terry steinbach, along with jimmie foxx and the immortal bob johnson.

here's a 2025 topps vintage stock parallel of marco gonzales

with the back

all dressed up for christmas.

i had no reason to choose this 2025 topps josh rojas card

which is a memorial day camo parallel, numbered to 25

but it didn't rocket up the cost of the rest of the cards, so i left it in my purchase.

last card i will show is this 2025 topps lucas erceg team color border parallel

and speaking of teams and parallels...

earlier on friday, i randomized the list of names/teams from my giveaway post earlier in the week. i was a bit surprised to see so many entries and decided to bump things up to four winners as a result. here are the standard three randomizations:

with the winners being tony, tom, mark, and crh614. be sure to email me your addresses at gcrl at comcast dot net  (even you, tom, just so i can be sure i have the current one). 

keep in mind that these are "above and beyond my normal number of mailings" mailings, meaning that there will be other mailings sent, too. if anyone else in the list above wants to send me their address, i'll pull a couple of cards for them as well.  

all told, the stack of cards i pulled from the seller were priced at $30 which was just above $2/card and i thought a pretty good deal given the scarcity of some of the cards i pulled. he didn't have any change, so i added a couple of scrub autos from his box to get to $40. one of the autos i grabbed was this 2025 topps edgardo henriquez card

the other one is going out to one of the randomized winners.