chrome again chrome again jiggety jig

i've seen a lot of chatter about topps chrome football being a hit or miss, and largely a miss, product in terms of "hits". i typically don't buy boxes for hits but rather for variety and a good shot at some inserts, parallels, and dodger cards. it's entertainment to me, but i will admit that i am often disappointed a bit.

my mega box of 2026 topps chrome baseball arrived a while back, and really the only things worth showing from the packs are this albert pujols perspectives insert

and this aaron judge xfractor parallel

the pujols is a keeper for the tatooine collection, and the judge, in previous years, would have been worth up to $40. this year, it is hardly a blip on the radars of collectors. perhaps i should have stuck to mangled blasters.

i was able to complete my dodger team set 

between all of the product i've opened and a team lot purchase, as well as a couple of other purchases online.

that team lot came with several refractors

prism refractors

and inserts

like the above, although the max muncy refractor came from a non-team lot purchase.

the mookie betts 1991 card

and big ticket players card

were a part of the team lot, however, i had to go and buy this betts and jackie robinson insert individually

i am a big fan of these "past to present" cards, and pairing mookie with jackie is perfect. i also found a motivated seller and picked up the orel hershiser and yoshinobu yamamoto card

as well. those two dodgers are forever linked by world series pitching heroics.

speaking of world series heroics, i added kirk gibson's diamond moments card

and i love seeing his game 1 home run from the 1988 world series written about on cards

i decided not to add one to my "games i've seen in person" collection, but if i find one of these in a bargain bin i probably will add it.

i was happy to find clayton kershaw's rivals card in the team lot

but disappointed that his base card didn't carry through into the set.

finally, i had to target shohei ohtani's base card separately

i bought it on the downslope of its perceived value, but not at the bottom of the curve. it looks like pca will likely be the mvp in the national league this year so i am hoping to pick up a refractor of ohtani at some point thereafter. i did find an unannounced yordan alvarez base card in a lot i purchased, so that's nice. maybe i'll find some throwaway ohtanis at the card shop when i trade that card in.

i remain (mildly) unsetisfied with my 1978 topps autographed efforts

i posted a while back about adding some more signed 1978 topps cards to my collection. in that post, i noted that i was two cards shy of having a second complete dodger team set of signed cards. the first completed set is kept together as a team set, and the second group of dodger cards is part of my semi-serious full signed set endeavor. 

shortly after that post, i decided to go ahead and make sure i had all of the dodgers in that full set build effort, so i picked up signed cards of ted martinez

and the late johnny oates.

i also corrected a wrong that was mentioned in that same post, picking up a 1978 topps dave freisleben signed card

since an earlier seller had sent me a 1976 padrograph instead.

with those three cards in hand, i decided to get six more, so as to keep my set build at a number divisible by nine, which is a bit ocd. i needed some more manager cards, so i picked up a sparky anderson card

as kids in the neighborhood, we thought these were ok cards because of the "as player/as manager" design, but were disappointed that we couldn't "play ball" with the cards on the backs

sparky had just that one year in the majors, where he played in almost all of the phillies' games, but never made any additional appearances.

i also picked up a chuck tanner card

with a couple of inscriptions. tanner's back

shows nothing but big league experience. i wonder if any cub collectors have this card in their team collections the way i have jeff torborg's card in my dodger collection.

i also picked up managers herman franks

and vern rapp

i think now i only need darrell johnson and billy martin.

richie zisk's card is one i've wanted for a while, so i was pleased to find one at a low price

and steve dillard's card

was a sort of random pickup to get me to nine.

not too long after that, however, i saw a few more cards that were missing from my collection, and decided to pick up a few more. this second wind included rico carty

joe niekro

ray fosse

and atlanta brave all-star catcher biff pocoroba

and paul blair

who have all passed away.

plus phil mankowski

and paul hartzell

who were guys that i had looked into ttm opportunities with several years ago but never actually attempted any.

the last two cards i added were of st. louis cardinal hall of famers. i have lou brock's record breaker signed (it was a high priority as it is card #1 in the 1978 topps set), so i decided to add his base card

and then paired that with ted simmons' card

simmons' election to the hall of fame has really brought a lot of signed cards to market, for which i am thankful.

as always, i did as much research as i could on these signatures, and made it a point to not pay more than i was willing to "lose". hopefully they are all legit, but i understand the risk.

i now have 517 unique cards signed from the 726 card set, and 565 counting duplicates (team cards, multi-player cards). next milestone i suppose would be 545 cards which is 75% of the set. that will take a while, if i choose to pursue it. stay tuned!

snack attack

i am no longer a steve garvey completist, not that i ever had any inkling of collecting every garvey item. there was a point, however, where i went after as much as i could, including endless parallels. even with my updated mindset, every so often i see something that makes me do a double take. one of those happened maybe a year ago when i saw a listing for a 1976 hostess "blue arrow" variation. i investigated and figured out that it was a box-cut card - not the actual hostess card that was also cut from boxes but rather one from the box top. i passed, although i used to cut out those sorts of things myself for various player collections.

the aversion to the "arrow variation" lasted until a month ago or so, when i saw a box top offered for sale at a very reasonable price. i went ahead and bought it. and so, here is the "arrow variation" (this one is red as i will explain in a moment)

that is just a cropped image. here is the full box top

you can see the arrow that penetrates the side of the garvey card there. the blue arrow was from a twinkies box, supposedly. it seems that the red arrow is more common, although i had never heard of "king dons" before seeing this item. king dons are obviously ding dongs. i guess kids in certain parts of the country were not allowed to be exposed to ding dongs and so got these poorly named items.

in an unrelated note, no kings!

behind the garvey on the box is the easily recognized vida blue card. i was curious about the third card, so i went looking for an actual 1976 hostess three-card panel

and found that the third card is dave rader's, making the box top consistent with the box bottom. i bought this panel for a low price thanks to the very poor cutting job on the garvey card. here's the back of the panel

stats intact!

the synchronicity between box top images and the garvey-blue-rader panel was not carried through to the comic book ads. i am sure that i have this ad

in one of my superman comics from the era, but i found this extricated image online (i did not purchase). here, garvey's card is shown with joe morgan's and carlton fisk's. this is appropriate from a star power angle, but i really have to question the drawing itself. it appears that there is someone behind the kid in the hat holding up those cards, and who knows how the morgan card is being supported.

other recent related pick ups include larger panels of hostess twinkie garvey cards from 1976

and 1975

the black bars are the tell-tale twinkie element, although the permeating grease stains are also a strong indicator.

one more card to share. it's not a hostess card, but it is more poorly cut than that panel up above

that is a glorious 1975 topps mini steve garvey miscut/diamond cut card. here's the back

the astro player sharing cardboard with garvey is bob watson. i'd love to see the other cards from this particular sheet.

i suppose what this post demonstrates is that i will never say never when it comes to collecting steve garvey items. who knows what the next out of the ordinary item will be. 

i should also note that this post marks the start of my 19th year as a baseball card blogger. my first (crappy) post went live 18 years ago yesterday, and 18 years ago today i posted the first image of a card in my collection - no surprise as to who is featured on that card. i feel like i have a bit more to share, so stay tuned!

hit it cc

well, i am not sure why it didn't happen last year following his induction into the hall of fame, but tonight the yankees are retiring cc sabathia's number 52. 

there aren't a lot of yankee cards that show his number, largely due to the fact that the yankees only have the number on the backs of their jerseys, so i was happy to find this 2017 topps card

for my retired numbers collection.

sabathia's is the 22nd number retired by the yankees. those 22 numbers recognize 24 individuals, with number 8 being retired for both yogi berra and bill dickey, and 42 being retired for mariano rivera and jackie robinson. sabathia is the first player for whom any team has retired number 52.

in sort of related news, i've added a couple more cards to my retired numbers collection in the "header" category. these are cards that show retired numbers in the background or celebrate number retirement ceremonies. the cards i've added are 

one of the cards from the 2001 upper deck pinstripe exclusives joe dimaggio insert set

a 1993 fleer ultra pat mahomes card (featuring the angels' retired number for gene autry)

1993 mother's cookies california angels john orton (showing nolan ryan's retired number over his right shoulder)

1993 topps mark whiten (showing not quite half of bob feller's placard)

a 1997 donruss troy percival card

(which shows rod carew's number 29 in it's entirety if you combine the front and back images)

barry bonds' 2000 ud spx card featuring carl hubbell's retired number placard

carl crawford's 2005 topps opening day card which shows billy martin, reggie jackson, and don mattingly numbers

derek jeter's 2003 topps opening day card featuring gil hodges, an obscured 41 for tom seaver, and half of jackie robinson's number

and javier baez's 2020 topps big league orange parallel card giving glimpses of red schoendients, jack buck, stan musial, and enos slaughter

the flagship version of the crawford and jeter cards, as well as the base of the baez card, are already in my collection as they either represent those respective sets in my "topps flagship through the years" mini-collection or my favorite non-dodger card of the year. now i have versions of them with my retired numbers mini-collection, as it was the retired numbers in the background that drew me to the cards originally. the dimaggio and bonds cards were ones that i came across while looking through my defunct player collections that got boxed up in 2002.

the yankees easily have the highest number of retired numbers in any sport and i wonder if we will see triple digit uniform numbers in my lifetime. certainly, number 99 is well on its way to being retired by the yankees, but i don't know that there are any others in line for the honor at this point. time will tell.