a five barrel salute to my steve garvey collection

steve garvey is officially being inducted in to the 'legends of dodger baseball' club tonight at dodger stadium. this is a way for the dodger organization to recognize 'hall of very good' players, as their uniform number retirement criteria has long required hall of fame induction (except for lifelong dodger jim gilliam). it's not perfect, but i know that the twins do a similar thing - they have a 'twins hall of fame' which includes the likes of joe nathan, jim perry, frank viola, etc, while they have a different criteria for retired numbers.  alas, i'm unable to attend the game, but it seems like a good reason to show off some big garvey additions to my collection.

just over a year ago, i added a 2017 topps museum collection steve garvey bat barrel 1/1 card to my collection.

this is the second bat barrel card of the garv in my collection, although it is the lone solo barrel card.

the other one, also a 1/1, is from 2006 upper deck epic and features not just garvey, but manny mota

and a couple of other steves - sax and yeager.

pedro guerrero's left arm makes an appearance around yeager's neck for good measure.

this is the good stuff.

23 is a magic number

matt at bob walk the plank sent his half of our most recent trade a few weeks back, and the cards he sent reduced my want list for the 2016 topps allen & ginter numbers game insert set to just 23 cards.  (i was trying to fold in some modified schoolhouse rock lyrics here, but am giving up).  coincidentally, one of the cards he sent me was don mattingly's, which celebrates his number which happened to be 23.

so, how many cards did matt eliminate from my quest?  eric hosmer knows the number.

yes, 35 cards put quite a dent in my want list, but there are still opportunities to help me out!

thanks to matt, i also own 2 2016 topps framed cards, and they have both come from him.  first was a yasiel puig card, and now this j.p. howell card

these are thick and heavy and ultimately have no reason to exist, but such is our lot as team collectors.

matt has also sent a few panini cards my way recently, and the two that were part of this package were pretty nice.  first, a ross stripling auto from 2016 panini national treasure

and a mike piazza bat relic from the same set.

the absence of logos is obvious on stripling's card, but panini could and should put out a set of catchers in their gear and the lamentations about no logos would be minimal.

thanks matt! i'll kick off our next round of trading very shortly...

singing a song of six swatch signatures

i've been very pleased with panini's higher end offerings of late. this one comes from 2016 national treasures

that would be pieces of glove, jersey, glove, glove, glove, glove.  and an on-card auto.  very happy to add this one to my steve garvey collection!

and while we are on the subject of panini, the daily dimwit is back at it, lured out of his blogging hiatus to write about some awesome panini gets.  go take a look for the hits, stay for his wits.

gold glove, rainbow jersey, perfect fit

sometimes a card doesn't fit into any part of your collection, but you buy it anyway and keep it, never questioning its existence among the rest of your cards. it's just...cool.

one such card in my collection is this 2001 upper deck gold glove jersey relic card featuring former astro (and dodger) cesar cedeno.

it's like a sherbet neopolitan explosion!

i stumbled across this card that i picked up from a bargain bin at a local card shop about 14 years ago while i was going through one of my monster boxes recently. i hadn't forgotten about it, but wasn't completely sure where it was at the moment.  now, it is officially the first card in my 'cards that i like but don't fit into any of my mini-collections' collection, and is housed more fittingly in a binder page.

if you don't have some cards in your collection that are there just because you like them, i think you might be missing the point.