now the plan pays off

it's pretty much a given that i am going to pick up the annual topps now card featuring the celebration of jackie robinson day, and i fully intended to this year when it was released on april 16. however, i could find no ebay listing for a single card. usually there are a number of sellers who will advertise these cards in advance for about half the price that topps charges, but for whatever reason they weren't doing so with the card showing aaron judge and oneil cruz wearing 42 in their games the night before.

i waited almost until the card was no longer available for sale directly from topps and still didn't see it listed on ebay. so, i decided to buy from topps. what's more, i decided to buy five of the cards from topps hoping for a shot at a numbered parallel card. well, i did better than that.

topps sent me one of 42 ssp jackie robinson cards that were not available for sale. these were luck of the draw and i got lucky (for the third time - here's one and two).

here's the back:

written as if there were topps now cards in 1947

and here's the jackie robinson day card itself

no need for words on the back - number 42 speaks for itself.  it turns out that the print run of the card is 914 which is kind of low, but not that low compared to other cards offered this year. i put one of my dupes aside for nick as i know he also collects "42" cards. any others interested?

earlier in the year i did not hesitate to purchase a five-pack of 2024 topps now card #1 in hopes of finding a numbered parallel. that card is shohei ohtani's from the seoul series

here's the back:

it has a print run of over 44,000 and i did not receive anything other than the five cards i ordered.

while i was not in seoul to see ohtani and the dodgers, i did make it to all three games that they played in minnesota against the twins. these games took place in mid april and the dodgers won the first two. there were no topps now worthy events in the first game, but the second and third games resulted in me obtaining a couple of cards.

first, there were some ushers who were handing out 4"x5" cards to youngsters randomly during the third game. i saw a jim kaat card and a tony oliva card, but there could have been others. on the way out, someone had left their oliva card on the ground so i grabbed it

i am not sure if these are leftovers from the twins hall of fame induction game last year (joe mauer was inducted) or if they are just something the twins have going on. i will say that i sat in pretty much the same seats for the last two games and only saw ushers doing this in the third game which was also the only day game.

as for topps, they put out two cards featuring events from the second game of the series - tyler glasnow

and austin martin

glasnow struck out 14 twins without walking any, and did this while throwing fewer than 90 pitches which was apparently card worthy - here's the writeup on the back:

martin got his first big league hit which has been a topps now standard for quite some time.

i am very happy to have these cards in my collection, and i hope to see some more card worthy action later this season when i return to a ballpark. or two.