thankful for penny sleeves

it was great to hear from jon and then receive some cards from him shortly before thanksgiving. he's always been a supporter of my collection and blogs and he provided me with some great content for both!

first up is a 2011 topps lineage diamond anniversary parallel of an out of place vladimir guerrero

i think we are in for a host of parallels - even more than last year - with topps celebrating its diamond anniversary (again?) this year. 75 years since the 1951 set was released. in 2011 they were celebrating their 60th and i guess both 60 and 75 are diamond anniversaries. go figure.

here are some reprint cards of some dodger greats

to be exact, these are reprints of 1948 swell sport thrills cards of pete reiser, jackie robinson, pee wee reese, and carl furillo. the set was at one time included in tcdb, but it has since been removed for some reason.

at first i thought maybe jon had sent doubles - a mini-bipping! - of this zack wheat 2013 panini cooperstown lumberjacks insert

but those are two different cards with different numbers on the back. a closer look reveals plenty of difference between the two cards. and, there is a third one to be tracked down, which is very similar to the second and has "consistently great" text in place of the "1959" text

on to los angeles now, with a couple of mike piazza cards

that's his sparkly 1995 score summit nth degree parallel and this is a 1997 fleer ultra season crowns insert

that i would have sworn to be a pacific card.

thank you jon and wishing you all the best in 2026!

heritage high apple pie in the sky hopes

i was looking forward to busting my 2025 topps heritage high numbers box that i ordered directly from topps because we are heading into the era of baseball that i began following, and i was hoping for some cards that featured some of the players of my youth - preferably dodgers. i was also hoping to see some cards in the "traded" design.

i found the former (not dodgers) but not the latter. i don't understand how topps ignored the "traded" cards with 2021 heritage (they did have some in the minor league version) and now again in 2025 after remembering about them in 2023 (but as super short prints). anyway, i still really enjoyed opening these packs! here's my take:

cards like trevor story's

give me hope for the upcoming heritage releases. tightly cropped candids were all over the place heading into the later 1970s. josh rojas' card

goes full profile a la bobby bonds, steve braun, and george brett in 1978. i can't wait for 2027. i also like how the rojas card captures the white sox' 125 year anniversary patch. to me, baseball cards work best when they document the individuality of each season in terms of players and uniforms.

kiké hernandez' card is another good unposed candid example

and i was lucky enough to find it in chrome, too

for what it's worth, kiké has a nice photo variation in the set, showing him in one of his mop up pitching appearances with his pitching helmet on his head. it's a bit pricey at the moment so i am hoping that things settle at some point in the future and i can find one for my collection.

the other dodger chrome card in my box was alex call's blue chrome refractor

call is a guy that could have had a "traded" card, but i am glad to see him in the set in any fashion. fourth outfielders don't see a lot of checklists these days.

harrison bader, whose light blue sparkle chrome refractor is shown below

is an interesting case in this year's heritage high. he's a phillie there, as he finished the season in philly. he began the season here in minnesota, and he actually has another card in the set showing him as a twin

that's the chrome parallel of his short print card. here are the backs:

the backs are pretty similar, with the acquired text being updated along with the birth and home states for some reason. the bullet text at the bottom is different, too. i am guessing that topps was too far along with printing to remove bader's twins card? not sure how that would be the case though since they printed phillie cards of him, too. 

time out for some dodger base cards. their team checklist is mostly rookies, including a guy who was a real headscratcher for me. more on him in a bit. here's jack dreyer

and kirby yates

you can see the tried and true heritage backgrounds for both of those guys courtesy of the camelback spring training complex. inserted backgrounds still abound - check out omar cruz

for example. i sure do hope these go by the wayside in the future but photo day will likely remain indoors so they are likely to remain.

i came across these four cards back-to-back-to-back-to-back in a pack

overexposed or washed out? they were the only four cards in the pack like that so i am guessing this is how all of their cards look.

let me show a few packs as they were when i opened them to give you a better feel for the product, starting with the first pack i ripped.

pack 1

good luck for me with the dreyer chrome refractor. the "perfect 10" insert (hello mike trout) might be a replacement for the "now and then" insert? the design (top border, at least) seems more 50's than 70's but that's just me.

pack 2

the jose quintana is a short print, and it's really the only straight up "base" short print i got in the box.

the others were all varieties of some sort. another dodger base card and a logan vanwey chrome refractor.

pack 3

the nootbaar card is also a short print

but it features the "cartoon" variation which is the position icon. i like how his glove is color coordinated with the card. the yoshinobu yamamoto perfect 10 card is appreciated, as is the matt gorski base card. gorski was the headscratcher i mentioned earlier. he made his big league debut with the pirates early in 2025 and then was released and signed by the dodgers. he hasn't appeared in any games for any team in the dodger organization, as he was injured for the majority of the season. cool that he has a card though.

pack 4

one more dodger base card with evan phillips and a nice action shot of mike yastrzemski (they spelled it correctly) to break up the posed monotony. the christian koss (double play second base icon!) card is a chrome parallel (i'll revisit that card in a future post) and rich hill's card is another light blue sparkle chrome refractor, the back of which confused me initially

topps decided to truncate hill's big league record in favor of legibility and single team line items rather than smaller text and combined team stats for each year. that's fair, but when i saw that he had a nickname variation, i went looking for the "dick mountain" card. instead, topps says his nickname is "field of genes". i hadn't heard that one before.

here are some of the other parallels that came my way - the dark blue borders

more light blue sparkle refractors

a couple more chrome parallels

and another blue refractor chrome parallel

justin turner's card 

is a standout for me because it's not posed, and it features the tokyo series patch.

there were quite a few second basemen in my box, so i pulled their cards for the double play icon

i especially appreciate the luke keaschall card.

these late season sets are always ones that i scour for other mini-collection cards, such as memorial patches. the ke'bryan hayes and craig yoho cards

both show patches that the reds and brewers wore for pete rose and bob uecker, respectively. the hayes is a great example, with the yoho image not being a strong contender for my collection. i'll hope for better with 2026 flagship.

brett baty's card

would have been a perfect option for ed kranepool's patch, but the image is cropped just a bit too closely.

two more base cards that i took note of - travis d'arnaud

and robert hassell the third

the d'arnaud card gives us a good look at the pitchcom system earpiece which i haven't noticed on cardbaoard before, and hassell sees and raises nootbaar's glove game.

inserts! inserts! inserts! i really was looking forward to finding some bicentennial stars, and i wound up with steve carlton

whom i considered to be the best pitcher in the national league back then. i also found one of hank aaron's "76 retirees" inserts

from early in his career. the other players in this set are tony oliva and billy williams. no frank robinson?!

the award winners inserts still exist - here's chris sale

as do the rookie performers (my find was james wood)

but i think the combo cards are gone.

i did find a pair of cards from the "undefeated" insert set - both joe morgan

one "base" and one holo parallel. these are the cards that resulted in me learning about pete rose's card that i posted about last week.

i will wrap up this long and winding post with the last two packs of the box

pack 23

hey now! there's my guaranteed auto or relic, and it's both! plus a dark blue short print parallel of nick kurtz! here's a closer look at the auto relic

this is a great pull for the release - a through the years autograph relic of ronald acuna jr numbered to 25. here's the back:

funny enough, my mega box of the regular heritage also netted an acuna hit.

pack 24

and we finish with another blue chrome refractor of a red (old friend connor joe) and a light blue sparkle chrome refractor of kurtz.

all in all, i am very pleased with this box. so much so that i've pre-ordered my 2026 series 1 stuff to keep the good mojo going!

anyone still using psa?

it's been about 20 years since i've sent any cards in for grading, but when i did, i split my submissions between beckett and psa. in total, i've probably submitted a total of 10 cards, so i was by no means heavy into the grading scene.

it's a polarizing topic within the hobby, and i've recently seen more disdain for psa because of their "buyback" offers. having a program to buy back cards graded by psa as a 9 and then reevaluating them and potentially giving them a 10 grade and then reselling is pretty corrupt if that is, in fact, happening.

i did recently buy this card 

 

on the secondary market. i had thought about going for a psa rainbow of steve garvey's 1978 topps card (i have the psa 10 already, but sold my psa 9 a couple of years ago) but i scrapped that idea and instead figured i should get graded examples of all of his flagship base cards. 1976 was one i needed, but once it arrived i questioned this pursuit. i'd be looking for psa 7 or 8 at a minimum, and while i have a psa 8 version of his 1971 rookie card, his 1972 high number would be pricey. we'll see.

i talked with the owner of one of the local card shops recently about psa submissions and he said that he has stopped submitting cards for customers. he was running into issues with customers not paying for the grading because the time lapse between submission and return allowed for markets to change. i guess he wasn't collecting the full initial price up front? at any rate, he still sends his own cards and is excited to get the upcharge emails when a card grades highly. seems weird to me, but he's in this as a business so i understand.

if i decide i want more graded cards, i will continue to let others submit cards and then pick them up for less than the cost of grading, thank you very much.

flip a card

i have a few care packages to acknowledge - some from months back - and i am trying to get back on track!

to start, bo at baseball cards come to life sent me some cards that hit my mini-collections, including this first card that hits two of them. this 1995 upper deck sp john valentin card is very obviously at tatooine card 

but flip it over, and it's a double play card!

perhaps i should flip it in the air and see which side lands face up to determine where to house it in my collection. my friends and i never flipped cards the way i know some of you and many other collectors did. we just played the game on the back of the 1978 topps cards and traded.

anyway, that card lives as a tatooine card but this card from the same set of tim naehring

is a full on double play card for the collection.

i believe i may have claimed this 1999 topps stadium club card of dmitri young

and i did so because it fits in my "names/numbers on the back" mini-collection.

bo found a couple of obscure items for my dodger stadium collection - a 1982 fleer stamp of dave collins and a 1986 fleer miniature card of jose cruz

i appreciate bo's eagle eye!

easier to spot is the dodger stadium background on this 1987 fleer limited edition lenny dykstra card

and this 1989 fleer limited edition orel hershiser card

i miss those old field level scoreboards.

greg maddux's 1997 fleer card

also features a dodger stadium background, with a couple of dodger personnel people in the background.

bo didn't neglect my team collection, adding a couple of cards from 1997 fleer flair

those are showcase row 2 cards of brett butler and chan ho park, the latter of whom has made a hobby resurgence in 2025.

thanks for the cards, bo!

in other news, i skipped the monthly card show earlier today. while collecting is a way for me to de-stress, being out and about today for a card show didn't rise to the level of necessity. many of you have expressed concern over what is happening here in minnesota and it is concern well placed.