making time for timeless teams

it's been three years since i (finally) finished posting about the 2004 upper deck legends timeless teams set over at timeless teams. it's the only set oriented blog i've done, and i can certainly appreciate the effort that other bloggers who have tackled that task undertook. i've thought about other sets - 1999 upper deck century legends or 2001 fleer greats of the game - but so far have avoided the call.

in the meantime, i've been keeping an eye out for autograph and numbered parallel cards from the set. i will usually take a shot if i think i can get the cards for $10 or less, but i've certainly made exceptions for more popular players. i've had good success with this approach over the last couple of years, and i figured i would show the cards that i've added during that time. some are for my dodger team collection, but most (including couple of dodgers that i already had in the team binders) are for my partial master set. at this point, my goal would be to have at least one auto from each team subset, and i'm almost there - just missing an auto from the 1966 orioles.

the individual autos i've added over the last 20 months or so represent teams from each decade covered by the set. representing the 1960's, we have ray washburn

jim perry

sparky lyle

rico petrocelli

ray washburn - again!

denny mclain

steve carlton

boog powell

brooks robinson

merv rettenmund

eddie watts

ellie hendricks

randy hundley

fergie jenkins

ken holtzman

and ed kranepool

the 1970's players include paul blair

ellie hendricks

al kaline

dick mcauliffe

blue moon odom

billy north

blue moon odom (again)

sal bando

al downing

billy north (again)

joe rudi

fred lynn

pedro borbon

rawly eastwick

sparky anderson

gene tenace

jim perry

don gullet

steve yeager

tommy john

bucky dent

chris chambliss

ed figueroa

brian doyle

ed figueroa (again)

brian downing

ray knight

and phil garner

garner completes the 1979 pirates autograph subset for me - one of two non-dodger team/year subsets i've completed. a note about the tommy john card - it is limited to 35 copies apparently, and this was a case of the seller not knowing what they had and hiding the card in a strange ebay listing. my gain all around!

the 1980's are well represented - especially 1980 itself - by the late don sutton

dusty baker

jerry reuss

brian doyle (again)

new hall of famer jim kaat

luis tiant

bake mcbride

bob boone

and sparky lyle

some others from the 80's include world champions of 1981 - jerry reuss (again)

and my one time favorite dodger steve sax

the brew crew's gorman thomas

and don money

plus al champ rudy may

another gorman thomas

jack morris from the tigers' championship 1984 season

ken griffey sr.

and 1986's al champs dwight evans

and jim rice

and the al west champ angels' bob boone

bobby grich

brian downing

with those three angels, i have completed the 1986 halos autograph subset. it was the first full autograph subset i completed.

now some 1986 world champs in the form of dwight gooden

mookie wilson

wally backman

and former dodger sid fernandez

dan petry

bert blyleven

and kent hrbek

are from 1987

mike scioscia

darryl strawberry

keith hernandez

lenny dykstra

and another mookie wilson

are repping 1988 for good measure.

there weren't too many 1990's teams featured in the set, but i did find a kent hrbek

a joe carter

and jack mcdowell card

for cheap. 

some of those autographs above (in addition to tommy john's) are considered short prints, but none as short printed as this rollie fingers gold parallel

which is numbered to 5. i was certainly willing to make an exception to my pricing guidelines for this card as well as a few of the ones shown above. speaking of which, i decided to splurge a little bit and add another 1/1 to my dodger collection:

these platinum parallels are fairly weak as the "1 of 1" text is stamped on the card after it is signed, and there are no other indicators on the card. the gold autos are much better in distinguishing themselves from the regular silver versions. still, this dusty baker card joins one of the davey lopes cards for which i have the silver (base), gold (#/5), and platinum (1/1) autograph cards.

as for the bronze and gold parallels of the non-signed cards, i found some to add, like boog powell

brooks robinson

frank robinson

jim northrup

mickey lolich

davey johnson

frank robinson again

jim palmer

paul blair

ernie banks

ed kranepool

davey johnson again

jim palmer again

pete richert

bill freehan

ken holtzman

billy north

sal bando

george foster

joe morgan

johnny bench

ken griffey sr.

tony perez

steve yeager

bucky dent

sparky lyle

pedro guerrero

paul molitor

robin yount

bruce hurst

tom seaver

jack morris

jesse orosco

paul o'neill

and jack mcdowell

i also added a gold parallel of gene tenace

and bob grich

i think the grich is the first non-dodger card of which i have the trifecta - base, bronze, and gold.

finally, i used to consider it one of my great collecting disappointments that i didn't have an autographed gold memorable moments parallel in my collection, but with the december 2020 addition of this dickie noles beauty,

i no longer suffer from the lack of such a card. 

similarly, i previously lacked a gold auto parallel of steve garvey in my garvey collection, but was able to add this card

this past spring. i still need a gold non-auto parallel of the garv for my pc, let alone versions for the dodger collection and this semi-master set endeavor.

this remains one of my favorite sets, and i'll keep adding these parallel cards as i see them - as long as the price is right!