triple crowning achievements

a couple of decades ago, as i began assembling my topps "sampler sets", i paused to admire the 1967 league leader cards. my m.o. in regards to my sampler sets was to have at least one example of a league leader card for each year, but the '67 set piqued my interest for a couple of reasons.

first, they represented sandy koufax's only appearances in the set. second, frank robinson's 1966 triple crown meant that he was in the first position on the three american league offensive leader cards. similarly, koufax ended his career with a triple crown feat of his own and was likewise placed on the national league pitching leader cards.

i made the decision back then to complete the league leader card subsets that celebrated these triple crown achievements to include in my sampler set. when i disassembled those sets around 2014 to focus on completing my topps dodger team sets from the 1950's (still working on '52 and '53) and 1960's, the koufax cards went into my dodger collection and the robinson cards languished in a monster box.

sometime last year, i made the decision to reinstate the sampler sets. having completed the 1955 bowman set and realizing that it would be the last vintage set i would complete, i wanted to have the cards from the topps sets i didn't have completed represented in my collection. so, i dusted off what i had kept from 1952, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1966, 1967, 1968, and 1969. when i got to the 1967 cards, i again paused at the sight of the league leader cards.

after thinking about it for a bit, i decided to complete the full league leader subset and keep it with some other subsets of cards i have completed. so, let's (finally) see some cards!

here is sandy koufax's triple crown in card form

and the backs:

i've always wondered why it was "pitching leaders" on the front and "victory leaders" on the back of these cards. anyway, sandy's line was 27 wins, a 1.73 era, and 317 strikeouts. it was a runaway triple crown, really. koufax won the cy young award unanimously, and remember, this was when there was just one award for all of major league baseball. he also received more first place votes for the national league mvp award than the winner, roberto clemente, just missing his second such accolade.

not to be undone, here is frank robinson's triple crown in card form:

and the backs:

the twins gave robby a good challenge, but he also ran away with the triple crown with a .316 average, 49 home runs, and 122 rbi. robinson unanimously won the mvp as you would have expected with a season like that, leading the orioles to the pennant to boot. and yes, i know that they won the world series, too, but that wouldn't have factored in to the mvp voting.

here are the american league pitching leader cards

and their backs

interesting to me to not see many oriole pitchers place highly in these categories.

here are the national league batting leader cards

and their backs

clemente had a great year, and so did richie allen, hank aaron, and the alou brothers. felipe alou actually received two first place votes in the mvp voting, with allen getting one of his own.

after all that, i picked up a couple more of these cards because i reinstated my sampler sets late last year. i'll have some posts up at some point this summer to share them. i've also added some more modern league leader cards to my dodger collection recently.

2023 topps national league batting leaders gold parallel

2024 topps national league batting leaders royal blue parallel

2022 topps national league pitching leaders gold star parallels

lots of dodger representation there. note that i am still a fan of a single league leader card that shows the leader for each league on the same card, but that's because i grew up on the 1978 topps set and that's how it was that year.  i'll also note that i decided not to pick up all of the league leader cards for carl yastrzemski's triple crown (nor miguel cabrera's for that matter), but i do have clayton kershaw's in my dodger team set.

daves to be different

i happened to be adding cards to my sportlots inventory, and it's a pain when the new cards are of older stature. i have to go into the monster boxes on the bottom of my stack to get them in the right place, knowing full well that the likelihood of someone actually buying a card from 1990 topps is pretty low.

all was not lost, however, as i took some time to peruse some of the other cards already in my inventory and found a couple of anomalies worth a few words here. first up is dave dravecky's 1990 score card

this is, at face value, an interesting card because the photo shows dravecky waving his cap with his arm in a sling. for those of us who remember, dravecky broke his arm during a game following recovery from surgery to remove a cancerous tumor. so, the photo is to be respected as a record of that and not just a random photo of him pitching in a game. what really sets the card apart from the rest of the set, however, is the back

rather than a portrait shot like every other card, score used a photo of dravecky warming up before making his first start after surgery, and even captioned the photo for us. this sort of willingness to vary from the norm should be appreciated, applauded, and replicated on more cards to this day.

the card also opted for more text than stats in order to explain the challenges that dravecky faced. unfortunately, he did not return to the majors in 1990, so the card is effectively a final tribute for him.

the other card i pulled to scan is dave clark's 1989 fleer card

it is the only card i am aware of in the set (to be fair, i have not completed this set nor seen every card in the set) that lists "rookie" as part of an individual player card. the designation does not appear on the back

i didn't bother to peruse comc's library to see if there are others like this in 1989 fleer. even if there are, it's fun to find some anomalies among the monotony of junk wax era sets.

back to back shows

april was a pretty busy month in terms of card shows in the twin cities. the twin cities collector club had a supplemental show in the east metro the same day that one of the local card & collectible shops was having their annual warehouse sale. the following weekend, there was the big semi-annual show at the rivercentre, and the weekend after that was the semi-annual church show on the same day as the regular monthly club show. whew.

i only made it to two of those shows - the east metro show on the 11th and the convention center show on the 17th. with the first of those shows, i was out of town in the morning but was able to make a quick stop. there are fewer dealers at this show than the regular club show, but the guy who has the best bargain boxes (in my opinion) was there. i spent all of my limited time at his table, and here's a sampling of what i took.

2018 topps update ozzie albies and ronald acuna jr

i didn't need this card, but i took it anyway.

a trio of 2019 topps greatest moments/players, including a card about the pine tar incident!

the musial is a blue parallel. the pine tar card is a 150 year parallel, so it's numbered to 150. i had no idea there was a card dedicated to the most famous of baseball tantrums.

2026 silver crackle foilboard 1991 parallel of rickey henderson

2025 topps gold holofoil parallels of kyle higashioka

and austin martin

2019 topps justin smoak logoman commemorative patch gold parallel

2025 topps factory set rookie variations of dylan crews

and roki sasaki

the back denotes that this is a "complete sets" card. 

i assume that the non-variant cards from those sets do not have that text.

most of what i looked for were dodger parallels and inserts, and i found a few, like a 2025 topps holiday gold christmas lights parallel

and a freddie freeman evergreen insert from the same set

here's a 2025 topps update gold parallel of world series hero miguel rojas

and a mvp insert from that set featuring roy campanella

i was hoping to find more 2026 topps heritage, but there wasn't a lot. still, i did pick up a couple of light blue sparkle refractor parallels of jack dreyer

and jordan dean (plus three other guys)

both of those cards are short prints in the regular set, so this is a case of having a parallel before the "base".

that used up all of the time i had to spend at that show, but the following friday, i had much more time to peruse the larger show. unfortunately, it was not a bargain shopper show even when compared to the past couple of years. dollar boxes were few and far between which surprised me because the number of sellers at this show was mind boggling. they had opened up a second area of the convention center floor with 200 additional tables from what they had the last time i went to this show. it was a lot, but a lot of slabbed product all over the place.

i wound up visiting only a handful of tables, digging through dollar boxes and one fifty cent box. here's some of what i found.

a 2009 topps walmart cereal platinum jackie robinson refractor

that i didn't already have was a nice find.

2016 topps chrome refractors of frankie montas

and ross stripling

with stripling's being of the sepia variety. i've been paying more attention to refractor parallels lately.

here's a 2018 bowman's best yu darvish refractor

and a 2022 panini diamond kings clayton kershaw blue artist's proof

that were overpriced in the dollar box, but i wound up with a slight discount from every seller i visited.

i paid more than a dollar for some on card autos of oswaldo osorio

and james outman

from 2023 bowman's best. the outman was priced at $5 and it was enough for me to finally bite on one of his signed cards. i don't think he will be around much longer in minnesota, if he is still around now. he's had a rough start to the season unfortunately.

here are some more dodger parallels i found - 2024 topps gold jd martinez

a pair of xfractors from 2024 topps chrome (outman) and 2024 topps chrome update (kiermaier), respectively

a 2025 panini select manny ramirez prizm

and a 2025 topps teoscar hernandez spring training border

a couple other cards for my double play mini collections were found - this 2023 topps gunnar henderson 1988 insert

and a 2008 upper deck derek jeter "jeter chronicles" insert

these cards feature guest appearances by vladimir guerrero jr and michael cuddyer, respectively.

there were quite a few yankees cards in these boxes, and many of them caught my eye. here's a four pack of don mattingly 1984 topps rookie reprint treatments

clockwise from upper left - 2003 topps shoebox collection, 2019 topps complete sets chrome greatest cards reprints, 2021 topps doubleheaders, and 2018 topps archives rookie history. here are the backs, all jumbled up

clockwise from the upper left we have 2021 topps doubleheaders, 2018 topps archives rookie history, 2003 topps shoebox collection, and 2019 topps complete sets chrome greatest cards reprints. i think the chrome one is probably the one seen least often.

i was a fan of the 2025 topps heritage high number bicentennial stars inserts (even though don sutton was the only dodger included) and took home a mike schmidt card

from that insert set. i also have a soft spot for 2007 topps chrome color refractors which explains how this scott kazmir card made it into my stack

one of the first sellers i encountered had a bunch of old fleer cards in his dollar boxes. these are fleer prior to 1981, when there were no licenses but lots of laughlin illustrations. i found a dodger card from 1974 fleer cloth patches laughlin's wildest days and plays

that highlights a game between the pirates and dodgers (superbas, actually). here is the back:

i also took one of the quiz cards from the 1972 fleer release

i bought it because it features the dodger logo, but also because all of the answers are yankees, including babe ruth and lou gehrig. of course, question number 2 is wrong - they meant to ask about rbi, not hits. i am now thinking i should have bought more of these.

i did venture away from dodgers when it came to 1968 and 1969 fleer cloth patch emblem inserts. this one

is a "fact card" from 1969, and this one

is a team logo quiz card from 1968. each of those last three cards are blank backs.

for no real reason, i also chose a couple of 1977 hostess twinkies cards. hall of famer lou brock

and hall of pretty good member bill buckner

were the two i chose. the black bars on the back identify them as twinkies cards, and underneath that airbrushing on buckner's card is a dodger hat.

one of the more unique cards i found in these boxes was this 1999 upper deck encore gabe kapler batting practice cap relic card

these are not too abundant, and in fact, the kapler card has never been in comc's inventory. i didn't realize that until i got it home. i wonder if there is a kapler super collector out there pining for this card.

back to yankees stuff, i found a couple of intriguing babe ruth cards i hadn't seen before. the first one has his mug on a 1952 topps design

it's from the 2010 topps new york yankees 27 world series titles set. and then there was this 1995 topps card that looked familiar

except it was colorized. it turned out to be a 1995 megacards the sporting news conlon collection version of the card that was included as part of the 1995 topps flagship set. here's the back:

the "3c" number also differentiates it from card number 3 in the topps set.

the last card i will show was overpriced but i bought it anyway since it fits nicely into my name/number on the back collection

and the 2015 topps stadium club mariano rivera card makes a nice bookend with the albies/acuna card up top.

i'm not sure when i will make it to another show, but it probably won't be in back-to-back weeks like these ones. stay tuned!