where is my line?

being a player collector can be as difficult as you want it to be. conversely, it can be very simple. i am definitely in the middle; probably skewed more towards difficult, at least when it comes to steve garvey cards.

including "named" cards in a player collection is the very basic building block.

these are easy - it's their card!

i would say the next tier are cards which feature the player as a prominent subject in the photo, but they are not named. an example of this would be a postseason summary card or a card

like so.

from there, i would go to team cards

i discussed their place in player collecting in this post.

and then there are the cards wherein a player appears on another player's card as a "lurker" or "cameo", if you prefer.

it's not their card, but they are happy to be there.

i would say that this is pretty much where my line is drawn. i have a pretty sketchy lurker card

in my garvey collection, i admit, so maybe some of these other types of cards should be added as well.

i'm talking about "name" cameos - as in checklists 

or card back text. collecting cutch covered this topic in this post and i've come across some decent candidates for my garvey collection, like the 1986 fleer star sticker box card checklist above, and this 2005 topps rookie cup davey lopes blue parallel card back

other strong examples are the cards i wrote about in this post and this post, too. 

so far, i haven't added these cards to my garvey collection, although i do have a signed 1978 checklist in the pc and my partial signed set binder.

i have a lot of non-card items in my garvey collection which is a relatively new (last 10 years or so) phenomenon. this includes ticket stubs that bear garvey's photo. greg at plaschke, thy sweater is argyle is collecting ticket stubs for games in which mike trout did cool stuff which is a heck of a endeavor, but i don't plan to do that for garvey's 272 dingers or his 1,207 consecutive games. what an undertaking that would be!

still, if you merge a garvey ticket stub with a card, i don't care whose card it is - i am adding it to the pc! so that's why i have an alfonso soriano card

an aaron rowand card

and a ryan braun card

in my steve garvey collection. those three cards are from 2009 topps a ticket to stardom, and they are great. the card set just happened to coincide with the fantastic tickets the dodgers issued in 2008 for their 50th year in los angeles. 

i don't see any garvey stubs in cards over at comc right now, but maybe some other player collectors will find something to add. where's your line?

the swedish thing

the first dodger game of the season should be over by the time this post publishes, but today's post has nothing to do with opening day. rather, it is a quick look at a recent addition to my collection. i previously showed my 1977-79 sportscaster steve garvey card in this post almost exactly ten years ago, and now i have another one to show:

except this one is different on the back:

swedish version! that is a lot of consonants and umlauts. 

i had no idea there were swedish versions of these cards, but i suppose, being manufactured in italy, that there are a number of different language variations out there. anyone know of others?

for the record, google translate tells me that the subheader "bollpojke som värdefullaste spelaren" translates from swedish to english as "ball boy as the most valuable player" vs. "batboy to mvp" on the english version. still gets the point across, i think.

trevlig öppningsdag, everybody!