what have i done to deserve this?

in november, i bought a fair amount of 2024 topps stadium club product. i pre-ordered a blaster and a compact box from topps, added a blaster to a fanatics order (that also included some dodger world series champion gear), and bought a third blaster from target in-store.

here's the first blaster, courtesy of topps:

pack 1:

a couple of yankees and a chrome refractor parallel of jordan lawlar. the red foil in the pack was kyle tucker

he's an astro.

pack 2:

three base and a chrome parallel is par for the course in these packs. here's the red foil parallel from this pack

another astro.

pack 3:

yankee base, yankee insert. and the red foil is....

another astro.

pack 4:

another yankee, and another astro red foil?

yes indeed

pack 5:

one more yankee. this pack did not have a chrome or red foil parallel. instead, it featured a sepia parallel

of keith hernandez

pack 6:

no yankees, but another astro red foil parallel

pack 7:

back to the yankees, but with another keith hernandez parallel

that's the black foil parallel. it's not as obvious as in previous years, i think because of the colored nameplate.

pack 8:

one more yankee, and can you believe it? a non-astro red foil parallel

the fanatics blaster was similar in that the red foils were either reds or guardians. there were no dodgers in that blaster, either.

the blaster from target was another disappointment to this dodger collector. here are the red foil parallels from those packs:

yes, i hit another astro hot box. no dodgers in that blaster either.

the compact box was fun to open, and included some colorful parallels 

and the obligatory auto.

anthony veneziano happens to be a rookie who was on the royals but finished 2024 with the marlins.

here's a new double play card 

for my collection. someone named blaze alexander.

out of all that pack ripping, the only dodger card i netted was this sandy koufax chrome parallel

crazy.

as a result, i wound up buying a dodger team set

with 17 cards in the set, it is even more odd that i didn't stumble upon at least one base dodger card in all of those packs. 

a couple of things caught my eye with these cards. i like the emmet sheehan card with the out of focus lights in the background. it reminds a bit of the photo of pee wee reese and roy campanella at the coliseum that would make a great stadium club card. the other thing i saw was that campanella's number on the front of his jersey is blue, not red. this is a common mistake topps continues to make as they recolor old black & white photographs. here's the back of koufax's card with the same issue

the back of campy's card shows the correct coloring

what is worse is that topps has used that campanella photo with a red number before!

finally, i bought the steve garvey autograph from this release

it's pretty nice, featuring a photo of the garv that i hadn't seen before. maybe someday he will get a regular old base card in this set.