frankly i wasn't sure this was going to happen

even though it's not perfect, i am a big fan of the 2004 upper deck legends timeless teams release. heck, i even dedicated a blog to it - my only set blog (so far). i completed the base set and a separate dodger team set long ago, and i have no real inclination to complete any of the parallel sets. however, i keep picking at them when the opportunity arises.

i am hoping to complete the dodger autograph team set someday - i am currently needing these five:

#97 ron cey (print run of 25)
#98 steve garvey (print run of 25)

#99 tommy john
#143 steve garvey (print run of 35)

#183 steve garvey (print run of 50)

the first three are all from the dodgers' 1974 subset, and the last two are from 1977 and 1980, respectively. of course, i need two of that #98 garvey as his is the only pc of mine that gets fed before the team collection. i already have one each of #143 and #183 in the garvey collection, but those don't count towards the team collection. more on the dodger needs in a bit.

even though i don't plan on pursuing a full autographed set, i did set a goal of having at least one autograph from each year/team subset, and for a long time, i was missing only the 1966 orioles. there are only four subjects included in that subset - boog powell, brooks robinson, frank robinson, and jim palmer. of those four, only frank robinson and jim palmer are short prints (print runs of 35 and 50, respectively) but i did not see any of them offered for sale on ebay, beckett marketplace, or sportlots over the course of the last few years that i have been actively looking. i have autographs from other subsets from brooks and boog, and i had the gold version of palmer's 1966 auto already, but none of the 1966 base. i set up a number of ebay alerts and waited, as i said, for years. finally, someone listed one of frank robinson's cards for sale

at first, i thought that this was likely a card signed after market because of the psa/dna certification. there's been a version of boog powell's card on ebay for awhile that tricked me for a minute before i realized it was signed at a show. however, i diligently investigated and found that the frank was, in fact, pack pulled.

here's the back:

now, it is one of life's great mysteries as to why someone would send this in to psa for autograph certification when it is already certified on the back. especially since they didn't ask for the card itself to be graded. the mind boggles.  

i couldn't get the card out of the slab quick enough. it looks great in its natural state, i think

so, with this card in hand, i crossed off the goal of having representation in my collection from every year and team subset. this includes complete team sets of the 1972 tigers (al kaline, bill freehan, dick mcauliffe, jim northrup, john hiller, mickey lolich, mickey stanley, and willie horton), 1979 pirates (bert blyleven, bill madlock, dave parker, and phil garner) and the 1986 angels (bob boone, bobby grich, brian downing, don sutton, terry forster, rick burleson, and wally joyner). i also have complete dodger sets in my dodger collection of the 1981 and 1988 dodgers, and my 1977 and 1980 dodger team sets are technically complete although the garveys from those two are housed in the pc.

anyway, you would think that would be enough and i would stop with the autograph pursuit, right? well, accomplishing that goal did get me to delete a few saved searches, but i kept the more generic ones. and i am glad that i did because i have added some nice cards to the collection since picking up the frank robinson auto.

exhibit a:

my second al kaline auto in the set which means i have both of his solo autos from the set. awesome!

exhibit b:

this hall of famer autograph was way cheaper than it should have been. this is my second hard signed carlton fisk card and first (his only solo) card from this set.

i also added a card of fisk's red sox teammate cecil cooper

i first knew of cooper as a brewer thanks to his 1978 topps card. that card, incidentally, was the very first card i ever found out in the wild. it was water damaged and sitting by a chair near a motel pool that we went to that summer for swimming lessons. i wish i still had that thing. i don't still have it, unfortunately, but i did add another cooper auto from the set

featuring him as a brewer. he has another auto in the set as part of the 1981 brew crew, but that one is a short print.

the first post-frank robinson autograph that i purchased was this one

it is awesome to have a certified chet lemon autograph. i've since added his 1984 subset auto, too. now if only i had a larry herndon auto (unfortunately he was not included in this set).

i alluded to the fact that i have 3 of the 4 garvey autos from the set, and here is the most recent one i obtained:

lots of red, white, and dodger blue there. as there is on the back:

i am down to needing just one ron cey auto - he also has four in the set - as i picked up this card just before new year's

this one is limited to 50, but the seller didn't note it as a short print. i got it for a decent price as a result, or maybe nobody else is looking for the card. who knows.

i still need a non-sp tommy john auto, but snapped up one of his two yankee autos from the set

this one is a short print, limited to 50.

finally, the card that completed my 1988 dodgers team auto set was this one:

steve sax has two autographs in the set, neither of which is short printed. however, i saw one of these go for over $80 a year or two ago. i got this one as part of a lot which kept the cost way, way, way down. i love it when sellers hide the goods.

so that's it for autos. i currently have 143 of the 300 in the set, and that doesn't include the ones that are in my dodger collection. 143 means i need one more to get to 16 full sheets of autos in the set binder, so i will add at least one more for that reason alone. it might be nice to shoot for half of the set, though. we will see.

one decision i have made is to try to obtain at least one bronze parallel from each year and team subset. this dan ford card

fills the gap for the 1979 halos.

i have a long way to go with this endeavor, as i need representatives from the 1965 twins, 1967 red sox, 1968 cardinals, 1974 dodgers, 1975 a's, 1979 reds, 1980 phillies, 1981 brewers, 1981 yankees, 1983 orioles, 1987 twins, 1988 dodgers, and 1991 twins. some of those may be tough. i am one bronze card short of having 7 full pages of the parallels (outside of my dodger collection), so adding one more will be a start.

the other parallels are gold, and i added a couple of those lately, including the gold parallel of the frank robinson card that kicked off the post

these are numbered to 5, so i have no goals in mind when it comes to adding them. either the price or the subject (preferably both) have to be right for me to take a shot at them. that was the case with robinson and with this one

i will look past the fact that this is not kirk gibson's 1988 card and celebrate it anyway. i now have 9 of these parallels outside of my dodger collection and the full page looks nice.

lastly, i've added a gold parallel autograph in the last few weeks:

this had an insanely low buy it now price that i would suspect the seller had meant to have as the opening bid. they honored my purchase either way and i am very happy to have this card in the collection. i am probably happier to have this bill buckner gold auto parallel than i would be to have his 1974 subset dodger autograph gold parallel. that's how much i like this card.

i have 7 gold autographs outside of my dodger collection and would love to complete a sheet, so i will be keeping my eye out. after that, there are probably more milestones i will aim for even though they will likely never be reached.