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.

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.

a second look at series 2

my mega box of 2026 topps series 2 showed up a few weeks ago, but i held off on this post until i finished my dodger team set. that happened on monday, so here we are. this won't be all dodgers, though, as there were some cards featuring other teams that i enjoyed.

double play turns on cardboard seem to be less frequent these days, but here is a very nice jp crawford card

i don't seek out cards that feature cards, but i think it makes sense for topps to go this route given the state of the hobby

not sure why "stars align" was the title of this pack ripping themed card, but i don't work for topps. here's the back

"sweet hit" is mentioned but not "sick pull".

gerrit cole's card

features a photo of him pitching during game 5 of the 2024 world series, assumedly just before the wheels came off and the dodgers erased the 5-0 deficit in the 5th inning.

harrison bader's card

has me wondering what the rush was to get him into series 2 as a giant rather than waiting for update. this is an obvious photoshop that we didn't really need. i suppose that perhaps topps recognized that bader split 2025 between two teams and then signed with the giants for 2026. it's possible that by the time this year's update rolls around, he might not be on the giants anymore. for the record, this photo is bader scoring a winning run on a walk-off sac fly for the phillies. 

jake mangum's card

has me thinking that the ball is headed into the third base dugout.

denzel clarke

has some nice cards to date, and the only thing i don't like about this is the cramming of "athletics" into a space meant for three letters. why create a design element that doesn't work for all of the teams? it's ponderous.

the guardians' team card

is cropped nicely

the next two cards are dodgers in disguise. here's jack little

and justin dean

both of these cards have these world champions airbrushed into their new uniforms. here are the backs

that show their limited dodger experience. the little card is in my dodger stadium collection, as is josh hader's

which features a very similar looking shot.

i've added luis matos' card

to the "header" part of my retired numbers collection, as it shows orlando cepeda's number on display in pac bell/at&t park

i found kazuma okamoto's rookie card

with some impressive npb stats on the back

plus his teammate trey yesavage's rookie card

as for parallels, i found alec bohm

and gavin lux

in rainbow foil form, and cedric mullins

on an aqua rainbow foil parallel of a parallel.

here's a javier sanoja holofoil parallel

the inserts were a bit more interesting, with 1991 cards of carter jensen and nick kurtz

plus a 1991 all-star card of joe mauer

1991 topps was a favorite set of mine during the junk wax era, and the all-star card design is still my favorite of the separate all-star subsets that began in 1982.

here are a couple of the silver crackle foil 1991 parallels

juan soto, whatever, but i like finding new dale murphy cards.

the most plentiful inserts are the "titans of the game" cards that don't have that moniker on the front in series 2. i found tarik skubal

three rookies

plus one more

i read somewhere that topps intentionally left the "titans of the game" off of the fronts because the players' heads often obscured the "a" so the card looked like "tit ns of the game". not sure if that is true.

the other plentiful insert set is "stars of mlb". here are the ones that were in my mega box

back to inserts, i was fortunate to find a couple of dodger cards, including a silver crackle 1991 card of blake snell

plus freddie freeman's 1991 all-star card

base cards were in line with the expected distribution, and i was able to cross freeman

justin wrobleski, miguel rojas, hyeseong kim

tyler glasnow

and the shohei ohtani, yoshinobu yamamoto, and roki sasaki combo cards

off of my list. typically, topps reserves images showing the commissioner's trophy to golden mirror parallel status, so i was happy to see it on that "risen sons" card.

if you don't want to see any more dodger cards, go ahead and leave now.

to complete my team set, i went to sportlots and ordered the cards of jack dreyer, edwin diaz, emmet sheehan

kyle tucker, will smith

andy pages

and shoehei ohtani

i actually like that ohtani gets cards in series 1 and 2 since that means we get full stats on the back. hitting stats in series 1 and pitching stats in series 2

i did my best to fill out these orders with parallels and inserts that were reasonably priced. here's a sandglitter wrobleski

stars of mlb yamamoto and freeman

titans of the game freeman

and alex freeland

glove work mookie betts

and crooked numbers sandy koufax

382 strikeouts blows my mind, and then to think that nolan ryan reached 383 is beyond ridiculous.

this one is not from series 2, but it came with one of the orders so i'll show it here - clayton kershaw's perennial all-stars

i was hoping to find more cheap parallels and inserts at the june card show, but came away with only these three - rainbow foil kim

and a holiday and gold tucker

finally, i picked up a few cards on ebay, including clayton kershaw's crooked numbers insert

the base version of snell's 1991 card

this trio of 1991 all-star cards

plus glove work inserts of freeman and jackie robinson

those all came together in a lot.

as for singles, i've only bought one of the steve garvey 1991 auto cards

although parallels abound

this one was pretty inexpensive, perhaps due to the off-centered signature but i don't mind.

i am more pleased to have been able to add one of the world series champion autos again this year. this time, i bought a tommy edman orange parallel auto numbered to 25

that had a low buy it now price. here's the back

i would like to add a couple more of these, but prices are a bit out of line as you might expect.

i will probably purchase some update directly from topps and then wait for 2027 heritage. stay tuned!