william dills smith appreciation post

i didn't want to confuse anyone - this is not about the actor or the pitcher (or the guy i know from work) - but rather it is about the dodgers' catcher and your national league all-star at that position, so i used his full name in the post title.

will smith has been an all-star before, but this year, he will start behind the plate for the national league. he is, as far as national league catchers go, the man

it says so right there on that 2020 topps finest card.

through last thursday, smith was hitting .326 with an on base percentage of 0.430. both of those numbers were leading the national league, and in fact, smith was the only qualifying batter hitter over .300! it is possible that smith might become the first dodger backstop and fifth catcher overall to win a batting title. for that we will have to wait and see. in the meantime, here are some more cards of smith that have been languishing in my scanned folder

2020 topps retail factory set foilboard

not a smith card per se, but that is him in the air there after a rookie year walk off home run.

2024 topps archives

2024 topps chrome refractor

2024 topps heritage white border

2024 topps holiday silver glitter

2024 topps stadium club chrome parallel

2025 topps heritage chrome pink sparkle refractor

perhaps if his offensive success continues, we will get some cards showing him without the tools of ignorance.

only three dodger catchers have been all-star game starters in my lifetime - mike scioscia (1990), mike piazza (1994-1997), and russell martin (2007) - so i am happy to see smith make it four this year. however, what i am really looking forward to is seeing his topps heritage card next year with that sweet sweet all-star banner at the bottom. 

getting embossed around

in 2001 i came to realize that i would not be able to complete my steve garvey collection. that year, fleer introduced their rack pack autographs in 2001 fleer platinum. garvey was included, with a run of 15 autographed cards. at first, i understand these to be buybacks that were autographed (garvey's was noted to be his 1987 card), but i see now that tcdb says they were replicas. it didn't matter much, because i never saw one of his cards hit the market, nor have i seen one since. i don't recall ever seeing a rack pack of 2001 fleer platinum, either. completist status denied.

of course, a year or two later the hobby exploded with parallels and short prints and limited print run hits galore so i am not too broken up about not finding one of those platinum autograph cards. in fact, the release that really had me shaking my head was 2003 topps all-time fan favorites. topps included buybacks in this release, "embossed" in some way to differentiate them from the original cards. garvey had a bunch of his dodger flagship cards bought back in quantities ranging from 1 to 99, but again, i never saw one. until last month.

that's his 1979 topps card with the embossing. there are 99 of these in the wild, but they are not numbered, and without any foil additive, i wonder how many have been mistaken for just another 1979 topps double printed garvey card. here's the back:

i took a photo so you could see what the mark looks like

that is a 2003 topps fan favorites vintage card alright. what a great get for this player collector!

bless the ebay seller who listed this and thanks to the other garvey collectors who didn't wage war with me on the auction. maybe one day that platinum auto will show up.

summer blockbuster card show

in addition to catching up with brian and receiving a nice grouping of cards from him, i spent some money at the june club card show. it was a pretty warm day, and the building that houses this show doesn't have air conditioning. there were some large fans set up throughout the space, and i was happy to see that it wasn't too crowded at the opening bell. 

i mentioned in that previous post that included my meet up with brian that i began my day with the same seller that i typically seek out first. he always has some fun stuff to go through and i am always willing to take a large number of cards off of his hands, even if they don't really fit into my collection. case in point: 

this time he had quarter and dollar boxes, but always discounts when you buy in bulk. from the quarter boxes, i grabbed the jaws card up top and some allen & ginter n43 box toppers, like these four from 2007 and 2008

and these movie poster cards from 2021 topps archives

plus my usual assortment of other inserts and parallels.

as for dodgers, i did ok with a 2025 topps clayton kershaw silver cracked foil parallel

a 2022 topps heritage joe kelly red border

and some 2024 topps heritage white border cards

among a host of other dodger cards.  i still think it's crazy that topps went and used yogi berra's actual 1951 card (they didn't do that in 1975) but for roy campanella, they just scanned the 1975 mvp card and didn't even bother to get rid of the black horizontal lines when fitting to the window. lazy.

the dollar boxes had some good stuff in them as well. i know there aren't many marlins card collectors, but i will take a 2025 topps team color border 

of any team for less than a buck.

those aren't serial numbered, but they seem to be relatively scarce. there were plenty of numbered cards in the boxes, however, including a 2023 topps update teoscar hernandez vintage stock parallel

and some 2025 gold foil parallels of different border treatments

numbered to 50 and other various types.

there was a lot to go through, and i wound up leaving one of the boxes unsearched. i did snag a healthy dose of dodger needs, including a 2025 topps heritage clayton kershaw through the years insert

a 2021 topps pedro martinez double header insert

that has his 2008 topps card on the back

and completely ignores his 2009 topps update card documenting his arrival in philadelphia.

here's a 2021 topps brusdar graterol significant statistics insert i needed

but thought was more of a quarter box sort of card. there were more, but the inserts were vastly outnumbered by the parallels. i was happy to find a 2016 topps update corey seager rainbow foil parallel

as well as a whole host of dodger variety

that 2025 topps heritage mookie betts parallel was especially nice to see in the dollar box. in the end, i think my cost per card from ed was about sixty cents per.

i did grab a couple of cards from my minicollections from the dollar boxes - a 2024 topps holiday carlos correa blue foil parallel

and a pair of manu-relics from 2018 topps update for the "42" collection

when they are shown wearing 42, i don't discriminate and will happily buy an astros card. it boggles my mind still that topps will produce jackie robinson day themed cards that don't show the number 42 in the photo used, and there were some of those cards mixed in with the two that i've shown above.

my next stop was at another regular's table because he always has dime boxes. i would up with 114 cards from him, including a 2017 panini donruss corey seager name variation 

a 2019 topps update hyun-jin ryu rainbow foil parallel

a 2022 topps gold label cody bellinger card

2024 topps tony gonsolin yellow parallel

2024 topps chrome cosmic mookie betts base card

2024 topps pristine freddie freeman (all-star) base

2024 topps stadium club tyler glasnow red foil parallel

and some more mini collection stuff in the way of a 2014 topps juickson profar red foil parallel

a 2017 panini donruss jose altuve name variation

and a 2022 topps chrome update owen miller purple refractor parallel

i also went off script and snagged some cards that appealed to me for no particular reason, including a 2009 upper deck 1975 o-pee-chee mini insert of mark teixeira

a trio of 2023 topps archives 1954 tarzan 3d inserts

a 2024 topps heritage high numbers reggie jackson perfectly programmed insert

and, my favorite dime box find of the day, a 2022 topps archives andrew mccutchen background swap variation

this is the guy who also has a dime box that he hosts for a friend. you have to keep the cards separate! so, i settled up with him on the cards from his box, and he rounded down to 11 bucks rather than fish for sixty cents of change.

after i waited for another person to clear out, i wound up pulling 35 cards from the other box including a 2017 topps chrome jason kipnis black refractor of jason kipnis

i wonder why topps didn't bother to number these that year. anyway, i told the guy i had 35 more cards and he said 3 bucks was fine, but i think he was a bit annoyed that i paid separately and cost him 90 cents that i am sure i would have been charged had i bundled them together. sorry not sorry.

next i pulled two bucks worth of 25-cent vintage from a seller who always makes me wish i were working on another vintage set. i couldn't let bill russell's 1971 topps card go unclaimed

and this 1974 topps dodgers team card

was pretty sharp for a quarter

i am still disappointed that 2023 topps heritage didn't give us an updated list of team records via team cards in that set.

the other vintage i grabbed were miscuts - a 1971 topps john cumberland

that is bottom-left justified, a 1972 topps vida blue in action

that has vida looking up instead of to the right where his space is being encroached upon, and a trio of 1973 topps cards

that are kind of all over the place. here are their backs

which makes things a bit easier to see.

the best miscut of the bunch was a 1976 topps traded dock ellis card

because he looks rightfully annoyed at the card creeping into his space.

it was at this point in my time at the show that it started to really smell like a card show and i knew it was time to get going. i made one more lap and found a seller with a $2 autos/relics box. i grabbed three cards

a 2000 ud spx auto numbered 1500/1500 isn't something you see every day, and i remembered someone was looking for one of the triple play relics, but couldn't recall who or which one. i later recalled it was madding, but he's looking for the pants and not the bat. 

i talked that seller down to $5 fpr the trio even though i had six bucks loose in my pocket, and he seemed annoyed with me. whatever. that allowed me to use the other dollar on a card from a seller who had a singular dollar box and everything else in cases. this 2024 topps update alex vesia red crackle foil

just happened to be in the front of one of the rows in that dollar box, so it was an easy grab.

there is usually not a club show in july, but in a couple of weeks, the show migrates to my town for some reason (although it will be smaller than normal). hopefully some of these sellers show up - at least there will be air conditioning!