bringing team sets into focus

long gone are the days where it was possible to collect all of the cards of any given player, let alone team. and, while i've tried to finish off a dodger junk wax year (1989) there are still a few oddballs that i haven't tracked down yet - partially due to a lack of focus - and there are probably other dodger cards from that year that i don't know about.

over the last year, i've tried to be a bit more focused when looking back and picking up dodger cards from past years and i've had some success doing so. whether it's targeting a specific team set, insert set, parallel, or something that spans both of the latter, i've been able to fill some holes in my collection that are more meaningful to me than random cards here and there. 

to illustrate that point, here is the first 1952 topps card i have purchased in a long time.

phil haugstad's card gets me one closer to that dodger team set, although i know i will never complete it. i only have one of the high numbers (at least it's jackie robinson) and i still need seven from the lower series. by the way, when it comes to topps flagship sets, only the 1952 and 1953 dodger team sets are incomplete in my collection, but the remaining 1953 cards (jim gilliam, johnny podres, and even dixie howell and bill antonello) are daunting.

as for my full set builds, i only have high numbers to go when it comes to the 1952 homage that is 2001 topps heritage. i finished the low numbers a couple of years ago or so, and the only card i've added since is old friend ramon martinez's

with 85 high numbers still missing, i doubt i will ever finish this set, either.

insert team sets are far easier to complete, and this 2024 topps update sandy koufax autumn tales card

finished off my 4-card dodger team set.

there were only three cards in the 2024 topps around the horn insert team sets, and mookie betts'

was the last one i needed.

as for actual team set base cards, one of the more recent ones i completed was 2001 topps fusion

those two cards were the last ones i needed and i don't know what took me so long to pick them up. it helps to focus, i suppose.

i even went and tracked down the last three cards i needed to complete the 2013 topps target red border parallel dodger team set. the zack greinke and carl crawford cards

came quickly, but the luis cruz card

had me at the mercy of a saved ebay search for several months. finally someone posted a bunch of these parallels for all sorts of players and i was able to finish the set. i still have several missing from the 2013 topps update release, but having this (and the walmart blue border) team sets for the flagship cards is still something.

even better, this 2013 topps update yasiel puig card

was the final emerald parallel i needed to complete my full run - flagship and update - of dodger cards of that particular parallel. puig is as excited as i am to have this completed.

i bought you back

when i shared my first thoughts on 2024 topps heritage a while back, i ended the post with a look at my boxtopper - willie crawford's 1975 topps card bought back and stamped

and since then i've picked up some others. 

my primary focus since 2019 has been to track down buybacks of the infield, and i've had mixed results. in 2019 (1970), only bill russell had a card and i found one easily. in 2020 (1971) i only found russell's card and i am not sure that there are any buybacks of steve garvey's rookie. in 2021 (1972) i found exactly none of the cards as russell, garvey, and ron cey all had high numbered cards in the psychedelic tombstone set. in 2022 (1973), i found russell and garvey, but not cey or davey lopes who were both featured on three-player rookie cards. finally, last year (1974) i was able to collect buybacks for each of the infielders, although garvey's card was only available as a "mvp autograph" buyback.

this year, i've seen exactly one steve garvey base card offered in buyback form and it went for about triple what i paid for his 1973 buyback two years ago. i did pick up his other two cards from the set - the mvp

and nlcs

subset cards - for what were decent prices. ron cey's card

set me back more than i had hoped, but there were others i saw offered that went for much more so i am not complaining.

bill russell's card

was the first i obtained, and was the cheapest of them all. here's davey lopes' card

to round out the infield. next year lopes will have three cards that could be offered as buybacks - his base, record breaker, and league leader cards - and i will take a shot at all of them.

had i not received crawford's card in my box, i probably wouldn't have allowed myself to purchase any other dodger. but i did and so i did. to date, i've added al downing

von joshua

andy messersmith

manny mota

tom paciorek

and world series game 2

featuring joe ferguson returning to the dugout after his home run. it's worth noting that garvey was just a few feet behind the dodger outfielder when the photo was taken as he was on first base when ferguson took vida blue deep.

that does it for buybacks, for now. i am keeping an eye out for another garvey and i was watching a don sutton card but the seller wouldn't budge from their high buy it now price. i did pick up sutton's "other" box topper - the oversized one

because it features a certain dodger first baseman lurking in the background.

in non-boxtopper news, i've completed the dodger team set, non-sp edition. here are some of the latecomers to my collection - joe kelly

shohei ohtani, who inexplicably does not get the bobby murcer all-star treatment

mookie betts

freddie freeman

walker buehler

bobby miller

and will smith

miller's card seems to have the background filter applied less liberally than the others, and looks more like clayton kershaw's short print highlights card

i still need freddie freeman's short print highlights card, but i did pick up his blue sparkle chrome parallel

along with that of emmet sheehan

and kershaw

i went a bit further with kershaw, addiing his chrome refractor

chrome base and chrome hot box purple refractor

as well. i don't understand why topps decided to shoehorn the serial numbering onto the front of the card this year. it doesn't fit. 

here's another hot box parallel of sheehan

and betts

for good measure.

this is our 25th year of heritage, and each year i look forward to the "then & now" inserts. it used to be because of the dodgers of the 50's and 60's, but now we are getting into the timeline where "my guys" might show up. until they do, there are two dodger cards to collect and i've added them both. 

shohei ohtani shares the card with fred lynn

celebrating the american league slugging percentage leaders

and he also appears with mike schmidt

on a card that recognizes the 1975 national league home run leaders and the 2023 american league home run leaders. reggie jackson led the al in '75 and matt olson led the nl in '23, so not sure why this card exists in this fashion. in fact, both cards celebrate feats achieved by ohtani as an angel so i am even less certain as to why he is shown as a dodger.

a couple more inserts i picked up include betts

and kershaw

mirroring each other as new age performers.

i already showed the dusty baker mini card i picked up, and it came with kershaw's

although i have no desire to complete the team set.

bringing the post back to buybacks, here's a 2014 topps 75th anniversary buyback of jimmie hall's 1966 topps card

i am really looking forward to the buybacks in 2027, but as i mentioned previously there will be some nice ones to chase next year as well.

2024 topps heritage thoughts and squirrel!

i mentioned the other day that i picked up some 2024 topps heritage last thursday. after the quick post to share the shortcomings of the fred lynn (and jim rice) baseball flashback card, i am here with some additional th---------squirrel!

this card or sticker, i guess, was in the hanger box i bought at walmart. i didn't really know what it was until i turned it over and saw jeff mcneil's name. i then remembered that these are the zoo's who stickers that represent real life animals used in baseball nicknames. 

i later found the cubs' sticker

in a blaster pack. it stinks that there is no bulldog in the set for orel hershiser, but there is a basset hound for fred mcgriff, whose nickname was crime dog. that seems a bit of a stretch to me, since mcgriff's nickname is really a play on mcgruff the crime dog.

ok. first card i saw was this joey meneses offering

which is ok, i guess. the nationals weren't around in 1975 and i know that others with more expertise (e.g. night owl) are addressing the color combinations of these cards, so i won't bother.

i found a few short prints, including nathan eovaldi

and giancarlo stanton

cards. what is with topps' reluctance to put the player's name on the front of these cards? every one of the players featured highlight cards in the 1975 set had at least their last name mentioned. as for the short printing, i suppose topps is trying to make it harder for set collectors to ignore the short prints by putting them at the beginning of the set. i know 2002 topps traded has been cited as an example of this same approach, and it is, but i remember reading back then that it was a mistake and that topps intended for the rookie cards to be short printed and not the veterans. true? who knows.

i did notice right away thanks to orlando arcia's card

as well as corey seager's

that topps isn't trying to replicate the design choices from the original 1975 set. the all-star cards back then used yellow and red.

that's the same color combination that juan soto received

just reversed. 

i probably should have scanned kyle gibson's card as a better (or at least more obvious) example, but topps did some (digital) airbrushing just like they did back in 1975, including on jonny deluca's card

it's actually not too bad.

ready for some silliness? 1975 topps does not look good with white borders

even though white borders were the norm in the three years leading up to the design. maybe it's the bright color of the team name on gary sanchez's card that makes it look bad.

here's some more silliness - individual manager cards

not only were there no individual manager cards back in the 1975 set, yogi berra wasn't affiliated with the yankees back then. he began the 1975 season managing the mets, and was included on their team card as their manager. to make things more confusing, berra is included as an oversized boxtopper subject, and he is shown as a met. other headscratchers surrounding these manager cards include dusty baker getting a card, and the embarrassment that is red schoendienst's card.

as for whitey herzog (whom topps thinks looks like schoendienst), he was the skipper of the royals for the latter part of the 1975 season, but it looks like topps couldn't find a color picture of him from his days in kansas city, and put his colorized head and neck on a photo of dick howser or some other team member. 

that brings up my biggest issue with this set. it seems like there is some sort of filter or diffuser applied to most of the cards - backgrounds in particular. it also happened the last time we saw the 1975 design with 2019 archives, at least with some of the cards (including catfish hunter's)

miguel amaya looks like he is playing in a low lying fog

but that's not the case

i don't understand why the backgrounds are being filtered like that. one of the only cards i found that didn't seem to have a blurred or diffused background was marco luciano's card

which is actually a bit of a throwback to recent years of heritage with a studio photo presented with a generic spring training field background. so, even that card has a modified background.

here are a couple more giants cards

i scanned them because they give a good view of the vida blue and gaylord perry memorial patches, including their side-by-side display that began after the giants added their advertising patch. both of these cards will go in my memorial patch collection, bumping patrick bailey out.

as annoyed as i was at the backgrounds, i was ecstatic when i found this card in an early pack

that is, until i also pulled a 1959 mvp card that was not a short print or variation. then i went looking and found that topps did not include all of the mvp years from 1975 through 2023, instead choosing a few and also repeating a few from the 1975 set. still, it's nice to see george brett, mike schmidt, and others

who have won the award over the years since 1975 topps was released. i decided to go ahead and complete the subset, but i'm not as excited about it as i was initially.

it looks like topps did ok with the league leader cards

but the postseason cards? not so much. i don't really care that the nlcs card shows a single player

rather than a play from the series that shows both teams in the field (looks like the alcs also went with the single player approach), but it does bother me that the title of the card is "nl champions" and not "nl championship". but, then again, if they went the single player route than maybe it makes sense to just focus the card title on the winning team. however, the text at the bottom is about a player - not a team or a series - so there is really no way to redeem topps on this one.

i found some of the world series cards, too

the third one there is the series recap, although you wouldn't really know it because topps kept the ball with the "game 5" text as well as the card title the same as the others instead of making a change like they did in '75.

so, it's not perfect which is fine but some of the mistakes are just really, really bad. i hope they get their act together by 2027 when my beloved 1978 design is due to be featured.

i almost forgot about some of the other inserts, like the 1975 baseball sensations

and the required then &now

and new age performers

i really hope to see some dodgers back in the "then" part of those inserts next year. i guess it all depends on the categories topps uses.

one of the things i bought at walmart came with guaranteed blue sparkle chrome parallels, and the guys i got were ha-seong kim

christopher morel

and christian yelich

i also got a news flashback card

of the alaskan pipeline.

as for dodgers, i didn't do too badly, with six of them showing up for me

it's weird to see a dodger card with a designated hitter position. and look at amed rosario! he gets the 1975 all-star color combo, but of course, that same combo was used for some non-all-stars back then as well.

i scanned the backs of the clayton kershaw and gavin lux cards

because in hand they look like they are different colors of card stock. either way, the card backs in this set are super hard to read without a bright light shining on them. coincidentally, both kershaw and lux are the answers to their own cards' trivia question.

i was happy to find the kershaw mvp card

along with a dodger insert thanks to freddie freeman's new age performers card

so that was the stuff i bought at walmart, and between the hanger box and monster box, i only had a couple duplicates.

on saturday, my hobby box was delivered, and i was super excited when i saw the yellow top/red bottom dodger buyback card on top as i was opening the box

and even though it's not steve garvey, getting willie crawford for the collection is not half bad.