collecting box tops

does your elementary school participate in collecting box tops for education? for many of us, the program came after our time in school, but i was and am aware of it as a consumer of general mills products. in the 1970's and early 80's, my elementary school participated in the now defunct campbell's soup label collecting, and there were times when we had unlabeled cans in our pantry as a result of my eagerness to help my classroom ranking. this resulted in a sort of game of chance when we decided on a meal that included soup.

anyway, when 2023 topps heritage high numbers was released, i was interested mainly in finding one particular box topper. i had already acquired the ron cey and davey lopes heritage buybacks, along with the steve garvey heritage mvp buyback autograph card, from the initial heritage release, but bill russell's 1974 topps card in stamped buyback form had eluded me.

thankfully, one popped up on ebay pretty quickly - and for a low price, too.

i also added the dodger team card to my collection

even though topps no longer rotates the stamps. all four dodger infielders are on the card, in the middle row. garvey is the fourth player from the left, between lee lacy and joe ferguson. lopes is to ferguson's left, and cey is to his left. russell is two players over from cey, in front of tommy john.  we are getting to the point where i should hopefully be able to obtain all four of these guys' heritage buybacks in regular stamped form for the first time thanks to the lack of high numbers and rookie cards and mvp years. we will see what 2024 brings.

i later found out that there was another boxtopper to entice me. steve garvey was included on the oversized checklist

i was glad to see that it wasn't just an enlarged reprint of his 1974 card, as awesome as that card is. here's the back

plenty of room on an oversized card for the full career stats! there is also an autographed version of this card, but i've only seen one or two and i am not as zealous as i once was in chasing such things.

seeing bill russell up at the top of the post reminds me - only 18 days until the dodgers open the 2024 season against the padres in seoul!