topps overcorrected a bit

after missing out on a team break for the inaugural release of topps chrome platinum anniversary in 2021, i joined a team break of the 2022 release, and was able to complete the dodger team set a couple times over while also finding a couple of parallels for my collection. in 2024, i joined a smaller break of the 2023 product, and came away with some decent cards to kickstart my team set building effort. there was no chrome platinum anniversary set released for 2024, allowing topps to actually align the card design with the platinum anniversary of the year that it was released. 

this has always been my biggest beef with topps heritage. starting in 2001 with the 1952 design seemed misaligned to me at the beginning, and soon thereafter led to an annual annoyance around 50th anniversary buybacks that aren't really 50th anniversary buybacks. anyway, the 2025 release of chrome platinum anniversary would feature the 1955 design in a satisfying act of synchronicity, and that pleased me. however, it wasn't until the middle of 2026 that the product was released.

regardless, i was looking forward to the product, but unfortunately my team break success was pre-ohtani, and with the 2025 release, the prices for dodger slots in breaks has been way more than i was willing to pay. instead, i've been building the base team set through a steady stream of sportlots orders.

the first card to arrive was tyler glasnow's

and it was sooned joined by nine others

chan ho park's baseball card resurgence was a big part of 2025, and it's nice to see kirk gibson get some dodger cardboard time.

here are a trio of rookies from 2025

with river ryan being the odd man out as he is no longer a dodger due to the tarik skubal trade.

roki sasaki

was part of a single card order from a seller who is losing money on shipping.

most of the cards came as part of larger orders where i found a couple of dodger cards from other sets in order to maximize my shipping cost investment. these two cards - hideo nomo and blake snell

were from one such order. as was hyeseong kim's card

topps has brought orel hershiser

back to us collectors, and i appreciate that. i do wish he had more cards like this and fewer autograph only releases though. it seems he has been given the steve garvey treatment in that regard.

here's a trio of dodger legends that arrived together - jackie robinson, sandy koufax, and clayton kershaw

and here's a couple more - duke snider and mookie betts

jackie, sandy, and the duke were all in the original 1955 set, so it's nice to see them again 70 (71) years later.

i did not have adrian gonzalez

dodger cards on my 2025 or 2026 bingo card but i will accept it.

the last card i needed was ohtani's

and it was easily the most expensive with an all-in cost of just under nine bucks.

the card that i was most excited about was dusty baker's

now that he has retired from managing, i hope we see more cards of him in dodger blue. i even scanned the back

baker is my go-to on baseball reference's immaculate grid for dodger silver slugger, and i've used him for gold glover as well when garvey was already used in a different category.

that baker card, as well as this betts/robinson 1955 double header insert

would both be candidates for my favorite dodger card of the year except for the facts that this is a 2025 release (officially) and that there was a 2026 topps card of clayton kershaw to wrap up his hall of fame career.

i used ebay to add that insert above as well as the full six card 1955 world series dodger team set

the cards above, and the backs below, are shown in numerical order even though that means they are not in chronological order. you will see what i mean, as roy campanella's card starts with game 3 

no johnny podres card for game 7 which is a surprise, but pee wee reese is an acceptable substitute.

back to game 1 with jackie

duke's exploits in game 4 lead into gil hodges' in game 7

and to round out the team set, topps fit in another koufax card even though he wasn't part of the world series. again, it's something that i am a-ok with.

there are a multitude of parallels for these cards, as well as the autograph subsets. i've held myself to only picking up a couple of those. steve garvey is always a target, and so i added his base auto

with a very basic back

as well as his aqua refractor 

numbered to 150.

i've noted that a number of resellers don't understand the concept of a facsimile autograph that is part of the 1955 card design. there are so many listings for "auto" cards that are just base cards or base parallels. 

to date, the only base parallel that i have purchased is this platinum toile gold parallel of hideo nomo

it's numbered to 50 and is a nice example of the excess that has defined parallels of chrome platinum anniversary to date.

last minute update! earlier today i received these three blue prism refractor parallels

after purchasing them as a lot for about a buck apiece.

it's probably too much to ask for 2026 topps chrome platinum anniversary featuring the fantastic 1956 topps design to actually be released in 2026. hopefully topps gets things on track at some point.

a team set 30 years in the waiting

about three years ago, i came across this 1996 topps mike piazza card

here's the back:

if you are familiar with the 1996 topps set, you know that the card front and back are a mismatch. the "star power" subsets had a monthly breakdown of stats. here are the two piazza card backs from the 1996 topps set for your reference:

however, i didn't buy the card because of the back situation - i bought it because it has this addition under the topps logo

that graphic (which matches a jersey patch the dodgers wore) denotes the 35th season of dodger stadium which occurred in 1996 (note to topps - this is how heritage buybacks should be named, as this wasn't the 35th anniversary but rather the 35th year that the dodgers played in the stadium. saying a 1977 card has a 50th anniversary in 2026 is just wrong).

sorry for the rant. 

a little bit of research told me that this was a 1996 topps team topps dodgers card, from a factory sealed set! now, this predates the team sets that are sequentially numbered with a team related prefix by ten years, and i was very unaware that this set even existed.

since finding the piazza card, i've had a couple of ebay searches running with no luck until late last year when someone in alaska of all places listed this 

for sale. still sealed! i placed a bid and wound up being the only bidder, winning the set for less than the current blister team sets sell for.

i did consider keeping it sealed, but ultimately opened it to reveal the full set within:

the backs are identical to the flagship backs - here's nomo's card back

with just those two piazza backs being swapped. 

i took a photo of the back of the packaging, because it held more information

the package contained a 16 card team set, plus a bonus 15 card pack and a bonus "big" topps card. here are the team set and the bonus card pack - front:

and back:

even though there are rockies on both sides of the bonus pack, it's not a rockies team set. there are just 13 random cards from 1996 topps in between with no additional logos. in fact, only a few teams were given these team sets - braves, orioles, cubs, white sox, indians, dodgers, yankees, mariners, and rangers - according to tcdb. each set had a special logo (some have a team specific logo like the dodgers and some have a "team topps" logo). to make things stranger, these were sold only at walmart (again, according to tcdb).

here's a scan of the cardboard insert

with a checklist of sorts on the back

so where is this big topps card? i was thinking it would be nestled in there somewhere, but no - it was the back of the package

so it's just a normal nomo card printed on a bigger piece of cardboard. weird. here's the back:

what an oddball thing.

assuming there is a 2026 topps factory dodger team set, i think i will add this to the running list of team set posts i've made. now if only i could find a complete set of the 2004 fleer dodger team set - the one with the blue design....

got yer ginter?

i already shared the 2025 topps allen & ginter cards that i found in a hanger pack courtesy of a nearby lcs, but i also picked up some cards from that release from other sources.

i had preordered a couple of blasters directly from topps, and they arrived shortly after the official release date. i'll show some of the more interesting (to me) cards, including the livvy dunne base card

it's reminiscent of years gone by when kate upton made an a&g appearance. it's nice to see topps expanding the checklist a bit to include players like cesar tovar

who haven't been seen in modern releases for a while. i sort of understand orel hershiser reappearing in card sets this year as he has a hobby connection, but to see the late tovar included was a very welcome surprise. he has a ssp card in 2025 topps series 2 that celebrates his feat of playing an inning at every position in a single game, so perhaps having him in more sets is tied to that appearance.

old stalwarts remain on the checklist, of course, including mr. cub, whom i found in miniature variety

along with george brett

complete with that particularly overused image.

there were more minis to be found - here's one of the other non-baseball subjects

it's actress emma roberts, and it's an a&g back

i understand that she is a collector? or at least a breaker?

caden dana is a baseball player, and this is his gold border mini parallel

some of the insert sets are minis, as usual. here is the new mexico state bird

beep beep.

and here is a jellyfish

i found some high numbers, including a vladimir guerrero 

for my player collection

as for dodgers, i found hyeseong kim

and river ryan

ryan's card seems to be more yellowed than kim's. i noticed this with a few of the cards but i don't think it's a thing.

i had good dodger mini success - finding mookie betts' black border parallel

plus a kirk gibson chrome parallel

and a shohei ohtani 1889 n22 mini

the omnipresent wicked curves inserts including don drysdale 

and yoshinobu yamamoto

while i found freddie freeman and the rest of the 2024 dodgers celebrating their sweet victory

over the yankees in 2024.

that wasn't enough for me, so i bought a couple of lots of ginter off of ebay. with the first lot, i wound up with more dodgers

i included the duplicate of ryan to show how different his card stock looks. gary sheffield was a bit of a surprise to me but i'm always glad to see cards like his show up assigned to the dodgers.

i also found hideo nomo's mini parallel

plus a black border of kim's.

i now know that kentucky's state bird is the cardinal

is it missouri's? well, i don't have that card but it is not.

the other lot i purchased was focused on the full size inserts, and i added the sandy koufax and don sutton wicked curve cards to my collection

i spy jim gilliam behind koufax and i am pretty certain that steve garvey is the player behind sutton. so certain, in fact, that i've added a second sutton card to my collection to document the nl iron man in the background.

as for the sweet victory cards, i added the kirk gibson dodger card celebrating game 1 of the 1988 world series and the mookie betts (with an uncredited cody bellinger appearance) card that celebrates the dodgers' 2020 title

here's the back of gibby's card

of which i have added a duplicate to my "games i attended in person" mini-collection.

gibson also got a card for his 1984 world series title

and, to show that i can have non-dodger related content, here's scott rolen celebrating the cardinals' world series title

in 2006.

not all of the cards were world series victory celebrations. this andruw jones card

celebrates the 1999 nlcs. most are world series focused, however, and this chris sale card

lives in my name/number on the back collection even though he's standing in dodger stadium celebrating the 2018 dodger loss

a couple of wicked curves cards that struck my fancy were bert blyleven's

he's got good stirrup game, and catfish hunter's

i miss the oakland a's.

once i got through those lots, there were still some cards i wanted, so i went to sportlots. i bought orel hershiser's wicked curves card

and blake snell's

as well as that of clayton kershaw

along with his silver portrait parallel

i also needed kershaw's base card

plus several more dodgers, like mookie betts

and gibson

and these four

and these three, too.

and, if you think i have brian cranston's card in my dodger collection...

...you're gd right.

finally, i used ebay again to pick up some of my primary targets from this set. steve garvey has both a mini framed relic and a full sized relic, so here they are

along with the gold filigree parallel of the full sized relic

one of the lots i bought inlcuded one of the garvey full size relics, so i was able to add one to the dodger collection which doesn't happen often. buying multiples of the same card to feed different collections may seem strange to some, and i would expect there are a lot of folks looking at me like this

but my enthusiasm for doing so is not curbed. keep on collectin'!