what's your damage?

i have not seen any non-flagship topps baseball product on the target shelves this year. not even celebration mega boxes. just series 1 and 2, with a few of the collector's boxes for those releases. so, when i walked by the card aisle one day last week, i was surprised to see a handful of blasters (or value boxes) of 2026 topps chrome.

i've already opened a blaster sent directly by topps, and i am still waiting for my mega box to show up, but i decided to try my luck with retail. i bought two of the boxes, including one that was absolutely mangled.

that's the theory, though - right? damaged boxes contain "sick hits". let's find out.

i was a bit concerned about card condition, but things were ok in the first few packs. here's pack 1:

a 3:1 insert/parallel ratio is not bad, unless you are trying to complete the base set. not sure anyone is doing that with chrome these days. also, i really do like the "seams" parallel. reds cards look especially nice in that design.

pack 2:

only one insert, but it's a good one for me! have a closer look at the shohei ohtani wrecking crew card

it's not a big hit by any means, but i will take it for my dodger collection

pack 3:

i like the idea of the "past to present" inserts, but am not sure about the execution. still, i'd like to pick up the jackie robinson/mookie betts card. the cole ragans card is a refractor, by the way.

pack 4:

two mets and a raywave refractor. these cards had just a touch of abnormal warping or even bending near one of the corners. at this point i figured that the rest of the cards would probably be damaged.

pack 5:

here's the red, white and blue parallel for the blaster. it and the other three cards look fine on the front, but the backs all have a tiny bit of creasing

it's hard to see in the scans, but there are small creases from the bottom edge (bottom edge of the cards as shown in the scan, that is) up the center of the card.

pack 6:

well would you look at that! a retail rookie autograph, and it's (former) dodger jack little. these four cards have that same creasing on the back

and the crease extends a bit further towards the center of the card. i will show a better example of the creasing, but first, here's another look at the dodger autograph that i pulled from a pack (that doesn't happen to me too often)

here's the back:

still hard to see, but the creasing runs from the right edge of the card towards the center.

pack 7:

the ratio is reversed from pack 1, with a 3:1 base to refractor parallel ratio. lots of yellow on jacob wilson's card! 

these cards have the crease running pretty much all the way through the center of the card

here's a photo of the back of bryce eldridge's card that shows the crease pretty well

for the record, i am not going to seek any replacement cards - the fault for this is probably target's fault and not topps' anyway. besides, i knew what i was getting into with this blaster. and as far as the theory goes, i found an ohtani insert and a rookie autograph, so maybe there is something to it.

the other blaster i bought yielded some similar inserts and parallels, but no autograph. i was able to add three cards from it to my dodger collection, including yoshinobu yamamoto's base card

roki sasaki's red, white and blue refractor

and yamamoto's perspectives insert

these inserts look nice in chrome fashion, so i am glad that they weren't a flagship insert like they were back in 2017 or whenever topps last put them out.

i plan for my next 2026 topps chrome post to feature the haul from my mega box, but who knows what might happen if i stop at a target in the meantime.

heritage took me long enough

i certainly didn't expect to wait more than three months to post my 2026 topps heritage dodger team set, but here we are thanks to an inordinate number of short prints. of course, my main focus when it comes to heritage these years is the 50th (not really) anniversary buybacks of a certain infield. for the first time, i was able to find all four cards of steve garvey

ron cey

bill russell

and dave lopes

fairly easily, although there was some stress involved related to best offers sent. of the four, russell turned out to be the most elusive, although i haven't seen more than three garveys pop up for sale. these four dodgers have appeared in sets since 1973/2022 topps heritage, but i didn't find a lopes rookie buyback that year. in 2023 (1974 design), garvey's buyback was an mvp auto so not a 50th anniversary stamped card. the last two years, i've not found a garvey buyback at all. here's the back of his 1977 card

with the rennie stennett cartoon. i think modern metrics would not recognize garvey as an "outstanding glove man". while we're at it, here's the back of russell's card

because it features a playboy bunny.

now here's a back from 2026 heritage

it's clayton kershaw's final tribute card, and his cartoon includes his first name, which is rare for this set. here's the front

i have one for the team set and one for the final tribute binder.

let's run through the rest of the team set...

mookie betts

edwin diaz

freddie freeman

hyeseong kim

shohei ohtani

andy pages

dalton rushing

roki sasaki

emmet sheehan

will smith

yoshinobu yamamoto

2025 nlcs (shohei ohtani)

with some less than impressive team batting stats on the back

those are just the nlcs stats, so not really the dodgers' "postseason" stats.

now for those short prints, here are the three world series highlight cards

the first one has the dodger batting stats on the back

and the second one

features tyler glasnow (who doesn't have a base card) and the blue jays' offensive stats

the third one

has the pitching details

not all of the stats, however. still, nice to see kershaw's clutch 0.1 innings of work represented.

other dodger short prints include jack dreyer

teoscar hernandez

and max muncy

whose card back pays tribute to r. jackson

that's reggie, not ron. i hope topps did this on purpose, pairing the mr. october cartoon with muncy's text, both referencing 14 postseason homers. both achieved that in the span of 10 years, but muncy's have crossed the 2010s and 2020s.

the other dodger short prints are the four-on-one rookie cards

paul gervases, justin dean, alex freeland, and jack little are the dodgers featured. these days, justin dean is in the cubs' organization, and little is with the tigers' system. gervase and freeland have both appeared for the dodgers this season. with dean being claimed by the giants right after the world series, i worried that there would be no dodger card of the world series hero, but we have this one to cherish.

next year's heritage release will be a big deal for me, and i will certainly work hard to collect the dodger buybacks. i didn't really have that intent this year outside of the four infielders, but i found some fairly cheaply and so didn't pass them up. i now have most of the team set in buyback form, including dusty baker

whose card back i enjoy because of the mark fidrych cartoon

bill buckner on his final dodger card

ed goodson

burt hooton

whose card back shows that even topps was not immune to the "burt/bert" confusion. for the record, it's "burt", not "bert", and topps got it right two out of three times on this card

i might see if i have an extra '77 hooton to add to my double play collection thanks to the tinker to evers to chance cartoon.

charlie hough

whose card back i scanned for some reason

lee lacy

whose card back i scanned because of the brooklyn dodger symphony (sym-phony?) cartoon

dave lopes league leader

whose back i scanned because of the names on the stolen base leader board

prime 1970s guys right there. don baylor with over 50 steals and buckner pushing 30 (he did have 30 swipes one year) are numbers that in later years would seem unthinkable for them.

manny mota

who did not pinch hit for pedro borbon, but whose card back let me know who it was that caught roger maris' 61st home run

durante passed away in 2022, and i assume he was aware that he was featured on this card. the story goes that he was on a date with his future wife, so perhaps that is meant to be her in the cartoon as well. 

rick rhoden

whose card back confused me because of denny mclain being depicted as a southpaw in the cartoon

it also reminds me of just how good rhoden was.

reggie smith

whose card back is not all that interesting

although it is from this and other smith card backs that i came to realize he and don sutton were born on the same day. i don't have sutton's buyback, but i do have elias sosa's

and stan wall's

sosa's 2015 topps originals buyback of his 1978 card has been elusive and is probably one of my most wanted cards that is not on my nefarious 9 list. so far, i've settled for some other dodger buybacks oft he reliever but i still look for the 2015 buyback regularly. as for wall, his was the first non-infielder buyback i purchased this year.

steve yeager

rounds out the field for the then-active players in buyback form, but i have my eye on a couple others out there. his card back ages satchel paige in a humorous way

i am not quite as old as paige was when he last appeared in the major leagues, but i now take offense to the need for a cane at what i now consider to be a young age!

the last buyback i have (as of now) is maury wills' turn back the clock card

such a great card for dodger collectors. i was hoping heritage would feature some tbtc moments from dodger (or dodger stadium) history this year, but they did not. some instances i had in mind were sandy koufax's final season (1966), rick monday saves the flag (1976), fernandomania (1981), and the 4-in-1 game (2006). i made a tbtc card that should have been of the monday event a long time ago, as well as a 2007 topps season highlight card of the 4-in-1 game. i really would have liked to have seen real cardboard for those events.

i previously showed the clubhouse collection cards i've picked up from this year's heritage release, but i didn't show this "flashbacks" relic card of garvey's

that features satchel paige? on the back

if it were satchel, the quote might be something different.

there are also autographs to consider, and the only one i've added is garvey's

the back is pretty generic

i would think they could have reversed the image of the cartoon for a righty like garvey. the cartoon becomes a throwaway when it has no relevance so why bother?

as for parallels, i pulled this yellow jack dreyer card

myself. there are reportedly 480 dark yellow parallels of each card based on published print run data.

the rest of these parallels came from sportlots, or maybe one or two from ebay.

light purple andy pages

with a print run of 580

base chrome of teoscar hernandez, clayton kershaw, and will smith

each one of 4,330

chrome refractors of kershaw and hyeseong kim

also unnumbered this year, but a reported run of 1,700 instead of the expected 1,977

teoscar hernandez chrome light blue sparkle

is one of 1,935 

dalton rushing chrome burgundy sparkle

with a print run of 580

i more recently decided to go for as large of a rainbow as possible with the kershaw cards. so far, i have red, dark yellow, green, light purple, dark gray, pink sparkle, silver sparkle, light blue sparkle, burgundy sparkle

i wouldn't mind adding others to this effort!

i also picked up a non-dodger insert

that bryce harper ready and action insert goes in the tatooine collection.

so, my 2026 heritage dodger team set is complete, at least until high numbers comes out. speaking of which, i've still not completed the 2025 high numbers team set. i did add a couple of blue parallels to my collection earlier this year

but that tommy edman card might be as close as i get to having his base short print card. time will tell.

stay tuned!