is it still a thing?

tomorrow is june 7, or 6/7. last year, that was a big deal for some reason. reels of people losing their minds over references to "67" were all over the place. i am too old to understand, but to me, 67 means "garvey-yeager".

heres a 2025 panini national treasures steve garvey timeless talents autographed card

that shows his uniform number, and here's a 2024 topps heritage 50th anniversary buyback of steve yeager's 1975 topps card

that, unfortunately, does not show his number 7.

both cards were new to my collection late last year. here's the back of the garvey card

showing panini spending no time with the reverse sides of these cards.

i wonder if there were a brief spike in the value of cards like seth lugo's 2025 topps cards (this is his topps chrome refractor parallel)

given the 67 hype. doubtful, but stranger things have happened.

another one down, still nine to go - and that doesn't include the one i found that i didn't know about

you might recognize the title of this post as i've used it before. it means that i have added one of my "nefarious 9" - my most wanted cards. of course, that also means that a new card has been added to the list. the list is dead, long live the list.

this time, the card obtained was....

1982 tcma baseball's greatest pitchers burleigh grimes

here's the back

here are the facts about this card:

position on the nefarious 9 list: 4

how long was it on the list? it predated my current tracking, so that means it's been on the list for longer than ten months (march 1, 2025 was when i started these posts tracking the list)

why was it on the list? this card was the last one i needed (i thought) to complete my dodger team set of the "greatest pitchers" and "greatest hitters" sets, regardless of back color (tan or white). more on that in a bit.

how was it obtained? this card was mined out of a 5 for a dollar bargain bin at the monthly collector's club show in december of 2025

what replaced it on the list?  1984 topps stickers #83/357 rick monday and pete o'brien

why was this card added? this is the last sticker that i need to complete the dodger team set from this issue.  last year i added the alejandro pena and steve yeager stickers

that come with bruce benedict and john wathan, respectively. these two additions left me just a monday/o'brien sticker short of another 1980's team set being complete.

back to the tcma card and my thinking that grimes was all i needed for the team set. i hit a vein of these "baseball's greatest" cards in one of the monster boxes and wound up pulling this wes ferrel (ferrell) card

because it didn't look familiar to me. turns out i was right - ferrell is not listed as a dodger on the checklists for the set. instead, he's an indian which is what is shown on the back

it's really great that tcma has a photo of him in a dodger uniform (assuming that is really him) because he appeared in exactly two games (one as a pinch-hitter and one as a relief pitcher) for the brooklyn squad. that was back in 1940 as he was trying to work his way back from elbow problems. it's worth noting that even his 1990 target dodgers 100th anniversary card shows him in a red sox uniform.

at any rate, i now believe that my 1982 tcma baseball's greatest team sets are complete, so it's on to the next one. can you help a blogger out?!

this would have made more sense during the olympics

i've acquired some gold, silver, and bronze of my own without dedicating years of my life to an intense training regimen. all it takes is several saved ebay searches. over the last several months, i've come across a couple of sellers who offered up several parallels from the 2004 upper deck legends timeless teams set, and i pounced on quite a few.

i added a couple of gold parallels to my master set build, including tim mccarver's 1964 subset card

and mookie wilson's 1986 subset card

these are numbered to 5, and i don't really have any plans around this particular parallel. for the bronze parallels, which are numbered to 50, my main goal was to have at least one from every team subset. my recent purchases got me quite close to that goal.

bob gibson 

is card #1 in the set, and it's always nice to start at the beginning. 

this jim kaat card

was the first bronze parallel i've found for a 1965 twin.

jim lonborg

was my first non-dodger pc, so adding his card made a lot of sense to me, and it is the only 1967 red sox bronze i have as well.

lou brock

is now one of four 1967 cardinal bronze parallels in the collection

and i didn't "need" denny mclain

as i already had a couple 1968 tigers in bronze form, but because it's a memorable moments card i pulled the trigger

this steve carlton

is my lone 1968 cardinals bronze

but boog powell

is one of the six i have for the 1969 orioles

here are two bert campaneris bronze parallels

and one vida blue

the blue is the lone 1975 a's bronze card in my collection

i added cecil cooper's card

just because he's cecil cooper

same can be said for george foster

but this one was a happy find as it represents the 1979 reds in the collection

manny trillo

is the only 1980 phillies bronze card i have, and i found it on sportlots!

i had no bronze parallels of the 1983 orioles, but came away from my most recent transaction with two - cal ripken jr

and john shelby

as a dodger fan, i couldn't leave shelby behind.

dwight gooden

lou whitaker

and dave winfield 

were the remainder of my non-dodger bronze additions, but they were opportunity acquisitions and not needed for the one from each team effort.

al downing's 1974 bronze parallel

is a duplicate so i now have a card to represent that team in the "set" build. i added some other dodger bronze cards, but they feed the dodger collection first.

ron cey

steve garvey

tommy john

steve yeager

bill russell

jerry reuss

ron cey

i added a second kirk gibson

to the collection to represent the 1988 dodgers in the set.

i am missing only bronze parallels from the 1987 and 1991 twins teams, so you can be sure i will be keeping an eye out for any of those that might pop up.

i did also add a few more dodger gold parallels while i was at it - al downing

ron cey

davey lopes

pedro guerrero

and ron cey

again. as i said up top, i don't have any illusions about picking up all or even most of these but i will bite from time to time.

as for the silver part of the post, the "base" autographs are sometimes referred to in that way, and i've added three since my last update. first, the late merv rettenmund

and the late luis tiant

and finally another steve garvey

that garvey goes into the dodger collection as i already had one in the pc.

there are still a bunch of parallels out there for sale, but for now i am content. until i see some bronze twinkies.

the joy of a completed (timeless) team set

i was able to delete a saved ebay search that i've had for at least a couple of years after seeing this card 

pop up with a very nice buy it now price. it's now in hand and i now have all of the dodger base (or "silver") autograph cards from 2004 upper deck legends timeless teams! 

there are 42 signed dodger cards at each level, and tommy john's card from the 1974 subset was the last one i needed. i still "need" two of the four steve garvey autos to have all 42 in my dodger binder (the garvey collection gets fed first and is home to all four of his signed cards, but i have two duplicates in the dodger binder). 

tommy john only signed 25 of these cards, so i am more surprised at finding one 20 years later than i am at having it take this long. here's the back

each of his autos in the set (he has four) are short printed, but the 25 print run is the lowest. the other three are 35, 50,  and 75, with the last two being yankee cards.

at the same time, i added three more autographs to the not at all serious set build. jim kaat

jesse orosco

and paul o'neill

get me to 171 unique autograph cards of the 300 in the set. these include other doubles of dodger autos and not the 40 in the dodger binder or the four in the garvey binder, although my autograph post at timeless teams does show all of the unique autos i own.  171 means 19 full 9-pocket pages which has a nice aesthetic. i am not looking to complete the set, but i do keep my eye out from time to time for more of these autograph cards. maybe someday i will push my collection to 20 sheets.

as for the non-autograph parallels, i still have a long way to go. this steve yeager bronze card

that i added recently only gets me to 19 of 42 bronze dodgers in the dodger collection. i am hopeful i can get halfway to a full team set - it's the thrill of the chase!