flip a card

i have a few care packages to acknowledge - some from months back - and i am trying to get back on track!

to start, bo at baseball cards come to life sent me some cards that hit my mini-collections, including this first card that hits two of them. this 1995 upper deck sp john valentin card is very obviously at tatooine card 

but flip it over, and it's a double play card!

perhaps i should flip it in the air and see which side lands face up to determine where to house it in my collection. my friends and i never flipped cards the way i know some of you and many other collectors did. we just played the game on the back of the 1978 topps cards and traded.

anyway, that card lives as a tatooine card but this card from the same set of tim naehring

is a full on double play card for the collection.

i believe i may have claimed this 1999 topps stadium club card of dmitri young

and i did so because it fits in my "names/numbers on the back" mini-collection.

bo found a couple of obscure items for my dodger stadium collection - a 1982 fleer stamp of dave collins and a 1986 fleer miniature card of jose cruz

i appreciate bo's eagle eye!

easier to spot is the dodger stadium background on this 1987 fleer limited edition lenny dykstra card

and this 1989 fleer limited edition orel hershiser card

i miss those old field level scoreboards.

greg maddux's 1997 fleer card

also features a dodger stadium background, with a couple of dodger personnel people in the background.

bo didn't neglect my team collection, adding a couple of cards from 1997 fleer flair

those are showcase row 2 cards of brett butler and chan ho park, the latter of whom has made a hobby resurgence in 2025.

thanks for the cards, bo!

in other news, i skipped the monthly card show earlier today. while collecting is a way for me to de-stress, being out and about today for a card show didn't rise to the level of necessity. many of you have expressed concern over what is happening here in minnesota and it is concern well placed.

isn't it iconic?

it's been a while since 2025 topps heritage was released and i mentioned that i was working on a post related to the player icons that make the 1976 set so memorable. today, i finally publish that post, and it starts with a red parallel of darren baker's rookie card

it's not his flagship golden mirror variation, but i do like this card. aside from the color match, it features the familiar second base icon with sweet double play action. i've added baker and a host of other cards to my double play collection since that initial post. here's a colt keith chrome parallel

and a bunch of base keystone players

i also picked up a marcus semien variation

for the double play collection. semien's regular card has the all-star star instead of the player icon. of course topps calls these "cartoon variations". more on those later.

there is also an insert set devoted to the player icons, and i added both jose altuve

and semien to my dp collection

as the second basemen represented in the set.

this insert set has both a cardboard and a foil version - here's elly de la cruz to demonstrate

and here's first baseman freddie freeman

to represent the dodger collection. these cards use the 1976 icons and topps calls these inserts "1976 player icons" and not cartoons so i don't understand how the variations are cartoon variations.

anyway, here's a reminder of what all of the 1976 player icons looked like:

i had to use carl yastrzemski's first baseman icon since there were no dodgers given that one back in 1976. steve garvey had the all-star star and when he plays every day there really isn't anyone else to show at that position (as a primary). the designated hitters are from tony oliva and hank aaron cards, respectively (thanks brett alan!)

now, here are the variatons in 2025:

one of the first things i noticed is more detail or shading of the figures, and also that the position text is mostly left justified. 

you can probably tell that the right handed pitcher icon comes from shohei ohtani's variation

that i was fortunate to pick up in a lot of heritage cards i purchased a while back. the lefthanded pitcher icon comes from tarik skubal's card

which i used to own. i tried to convince myself that the icon is based on clayton kershaw 

but i don't think it is. that silver pack card from 2025 topps series 2 is sort of close, but not really. maybe it's justin verlander based. any ideas?

another item of note is that there are a few designated hitters in the 2025 set, including leftys and rightys, just like in 1976. topps used the same player icons for those players:

the lefty is from joc pederson's card and the righty is from marcell ozuna's. here's the variation:

it comes from kyle schwarber's variant card. schwarber hits lefthanded and his base card features the same icon as on joc's card. his chrome parallel, however, features the righty dh. go figure. i did not find a lefty dh variation, but i make no claims that it doesn't exist.

here's a blue parallel of joc's card that i found in a pack

along with ozuna's that was also pack pulled by me

topps also used that dh icon on the batting related league leader cards. here's the american league home run leaders to represent leftys

along with the a.l. batting leaders for the rightys

i would need to be convinced by a preponderance of evidence that the icon used on those cards is not based on carl yastrzemski. his 2012 topps archives deckle edge insert

is pretty demonstrative of my thinking.

topps used the same icons for the league leaders in 2025

including the shortstop icon for the stolen base leaders (minus the baseball)

and the pitcher icons on the pitching league leader cards

topps was pretty true to the original with this leading firemen card, as it is the only leader card that covers both leagues. they are still short on data - the back (as it was in 1976) shows only previous winners and their teams

with no mention of "points" or how the points are calculated. today, i can google this and find out that relievers get 3 points for a save, 2 for a win, and are deducted 2 for a loss. us kids in the 70's just shrugged our shoulders and figured that topps and rolaids knew what they were doing.

it's worth noting that topps took another run at player icons as part of their "1976 redefined" insert set. here's corey seager's card

as an example. the icons are all different from the variations of the base set, and this one in particular screams chipper jones. the jump/throw image is similar to chipper's 1993 upper deck card but matches his 2023 topps stadium club card spot on.

mini post for mini collections

here's a quick post celebrating some of my mini-collections and some recent cards added to said collections.

2015 topps chrome derek jeter

this one is for the "final tributes" collection as it includes all of the captain's career stats on the back

i grabbed this card from a bargain box at a show earlier this year.

same with this 2022 topps stadium club chrome hank aaron card

that features willie mays and so goes into my "lurkers" collection.

2002 donruss originals albert pujols

2015 topps rookies rising gold parallel

2016 topps stadium club bryce harper

2018 panini donruss nolan ryan retro 1984 variation

these cards all slot into my "names/numbers on the back" collection. the pujols is a card i've had since 2002, but the gold card and the harper came from those same bargain boxes as the jeter. i picked up the nolan ryan card in a san jose card shop when i was there back in the spring. 

2020 topps chrome dee gordon sepia refractor

2024 topps holiday carlos correa

these two are obviously for my "double play" collection. i found the gordon in a bargain box at a show, but the correa was sent to me by rod at padrographs.

thanks rod!

tell me you made a mistake without telling me you made a mistake

a few weeks ago, i showed this card

in a post that was all about 2024 topps chrome update. it's a ketel marte all-star game insert, showing him turning two in the 2024 midsummer classic. not too long after that, i put in a claim on thorzul's annual "trade me anything" event for this card

which is marte's all-star game card from 2024 topps update.

as we all noticed when update first came out, these inserts were sneaky in that they still referenced the team each player plays for rather than the all-star game itself. i noted that rafael devers and mookie betts both had all-star game inserts that were only discernable as such by looking at the card backs. with chrome update, topps corrected that mistake, and the inserts are easy to spot even when the player featured isn't in the all-star uniform.

here is mookie's chrome all-star game card, along with the other dodgers

including shohei ohtani

i picked these up as part of a dodger chrome update lot to further my team collecting cause. also included in the lot was this freddie freeman all-etch insert

and a couple of rookie 1989 inserts of yoshinobu yamamoto and andy pages

anyway, back to thorzul's trade, it was anything but a mistake. even though he had no extra dodgers to offer up this year, i found some cards to acquire in addition to the marte double play turn including these four all-star inserts.

while i prefer that teams wear their own uniforms in the all-star game, i didn't mind these as they were throwbacks of a sort to the 1933 all-star game duds worn by the national league team. i also requested two of the 1989 inserts - ozzie albies

and mickey mantle

i'm always on the lookout for braves inserts to add to stacks for sluggo, and it's nice to see mantle back on topps designs after being monopolized by panini for the last few years.

i also asked thorzul for some cards left over from last year's trade me anything and wound up with dwight gooden's all aces insert

i am tempted to use this card for the william shea memorial but i think i will stick with the card that was produced in real time.

here's cody bellinger's gold parallel from last year's update

i was tempted to continue collecting bellinger cards after he left the dodgers, and i even contemplated doing the same for walker buehler starting in 2025, but i decided that since i didn't do that for matt kemp i wouldn't do it for belly or buehler. in fact, i think i would reinstate my orel hershiser or steve sax post-dodger pcs before i take up any other player - unless clayton kershaw were to go somewhere else.

i also asked for a couple more yankees - bernie williams' 1988 silver pack card

and don mattingly's mvp medallion thing

it seems that topps has gone away from these manufactured medallion and patch cards, but they sometimes turned out ok. award retrospectives make more sense to me than batting helmets, for example.

this was a great way to close out the year by receiving cards from thorzul. can't wait for the next installment of trade me anything!