one down, still nine to go

i am back with another one of my most wanted cards obtained. the list is dead, long live the list!  here is the latest of these cards to finally make its way to my collection - 1994 upper deck orel hershiser electric diamond parallel

so much blue! the corrugated fiberglass panels that surrounded the dodger bullpen at dodger stadium are long gone, but we have cards like this one to remember it by.  i'll get to the back of the card in a bit...

here are the facts about this card:

position on the nefarious 9 list: 3

how and when was it obtained? this card was part of sportlots order that landed in my mailbox on january 10, 2026

how long was it on the list? it predated my current tracking, so that means it was a most wanted card for more than ten months (march 12, 2025 was when i started these posts tracking the list)

why was it on the list? this card was one of three that i needed for this parallel dodger team set. i was (and am) a big fan of the 1994 upper deck set with the phantom zone inset photo. it was a big departure from the first five upper deck sets and i was there for it. so, i like the idea of completing the electric diamond parallel dodger team set.

what replaced it on the list?  1996 fleer emotion-xl #214 chan ho park

why was this card added? chan ho's card is the last one i need for the dodger team set from that strange yet compelling set.

i mentioned that the hershiser was one of three dodgers i needed to complete the set. well, the other two were part of the same sportlots order - jose offerman

and jim gott

i maintain that gott's card features christian slater but i don't know for sure.

i do want to show the back of gott's card, along with hershiser's

i am led to believe that these images are from the same game. hershiser, who would have started the game, has a wetter infield behind him in the early goings. gott, who would have pitched in relief (he was the dodgers' closer at the time) has a drier infield that might have been wetted down a bit during the 7th inning stretch. 

they are wearing the away grays, and so looking at away games played during the day in 1993, i found two possibilities for the photos:

may 9, 1993 against the giants - hershiser got the win and gott the save

june 13, 1993 against the padres - hershiser got the win and gott the save

if i had to guess, i would say that the photos come from the latter game at jack murphy stadium.

one more card for the post - another one from that sportlots order. it's todd hollandsworth's card from the aforementioned 1996 fleer emotion xl set

adding this card made chan ho park's the last one i needed and made it an easy one to add to the nefarious 9. can you help a blogger out?!

do you miss upper deck baseball?

i was a late adopter to upper deck baseball. i wasn't buying a whole lot of cards by the time 1989 rolled around, and at that time i was loyal to topps when it came to baseball with my limited hobby spending. i did buy a lot of upper deck hockey starting with their 1990-91 release through 1994 or so. still, i didn't pay a lot of attention to upper deck baseball until i saw some 1992 packs for sale at my college campus convenience store.

later on in the 90's, i went back and started building the 1989 set and completed numerous dodger team sets from their flagship (and other releases). reading "card sharks" in the early days of blogging gave me a new appreciation for what the founders of the company were trying to do. as it mentioned in the book, the cards were certainly an upgrade to what the other companies were putting out at the time.

they put out some weird stuff, too, like this 1997 upper deck sp special fx card of eric karros

which demonstrates their commitment to holographic imagery and die-cut experimentation. 

by the end of the 1990's, i was all-in on upper deck baseball. they had, it seemed, more sets with legends than topps and i collected many of them. maybe fleer was the only one giving them a run for their money in that regard. here's a 2005 upper deck artifacts don drysdale card

which is the only one of four dodger "legends" short printed as part of the team set that i currently own.

they put out repetitive and redundant sets, too, like their annual obsession with "x". these three dodgers are from 2009 upper deck spx

they look pretty good scanned, i will admit.

my favorite upper deck baseball flagship set is probably 1994

there was a lot of "stadium club" level photography as andre dawson's card can attest, and i liked the design. topps, of course, took the "phantom zone" inset image and used it in their bowman release the next year, as well as in their 1996 flagship set. that dawson, by the way, is the "electric diamond" parallel, which was upper deck's answer to topps' "gold" full set parallels.

a couple of things that were pointed out in "card sharks" were the large numbers and the holograms on the card backs

one of the pet peeves of the founders (who owned a card shop) were small and/or hard to read card numbers. i am also very frustrated by that as my eyesight declines. the 1990 eddie murray card above is testament to upper deck's commitment to legible card numbers for sure. i don't know if anyone was clamoring for hologram authentication technology back then, but it certainly was a differentiator from the other card manufacturers at the beginning of the junk wax era when reprinting of key cards was somewhat rampant (of course, upper deck reprinted their own cash cow - the 1989 ken griffey jr rookie card - at will).

eventually, upper deck began to stray from some of these design tenants. the numbers got smaller

and there were releases later on in their existence that lacked the holograms on the backs, too. however, in the mid-2000's, they introduced my favorite innovation - one i wish topps would fully embrace. they put the set name on the card back

this was done as far back as 2004 from what i can find - some of their sweet spot base cards from 2004 say "2004 sweet spot" on the backs - but their flagship set in 2007 seems to be the first primary set that included this for all cards. it was issued in two series, and they identified each one on the backs. that nomar garciaparra checklist card is from series 1. that's great to know, although i consider series 1 and 2 of flagship releases to really just be one total set (although i have stopped combining the checklists in my want lists). still, it's a nice touch - one that topps has sort of embraced by putting "series one" or "chrome" under the numbers of their base card releases.

however, here are a couple of insert cards from 2024 topps chrome releases

gerrit cole got an "all-etch" insert in both topps chrome and topps chrome update. they are different, but how do you know which is from which set? in this case, topps added a "u" to the card number

so those who understand the nomenclature might also understand that one of the cards is from the update set. still, would it be so hard to add text above the copyright box stating which sets these cards come from?

here are another two cards, this time from 2025 topps series 1 and series 2

coby mayo was featured in the "stars of mlb" insert set in both releases. here are the card backs:

there is really no way to know which is from series 1 and which is from series 2 without finding a checklist database as topps even restarted the numbering with series 2. i am pretty sure that series 1 is on the left, but i forget at this point.

upper deck treated their cross-release inserts differently. here are a couple of starquest inserts from 2009

the one on the left is one i own and is from their flagship set - series 1. i know this because the back says so

the one on the right is not in my collection but i know straight away that it is from a different release - in this case 2009 upper deck first edition - because they identify that set on both the front of the card and its back:

they are both numbered sq-9, but the set information tells me that they come from different sets. so helpful.

now, upper deck wasn't perfect by any means - check out these 2007 nomar garciaparra and takashi saito cards

that are from series 1

now check out these nomar garciaparra and takashi saito cards

that say they are from series 2

trust, but verify.

i do wish topps would go all-in with set identification and include the information on every card they print. they do it on their autograph and relic cards (for the most part) as well as the base cards (again, for the most part). it would make me miss upper deck a whole lot less.

it's good to know a guy

i had been occasionally checking the local card collector club's website to see when the next church show was going to be held. they are typically held once in the spring and once in the fall. however, there was just a glaring "tbd" on the site for months. running into brian at the monthly club show in august had me thinking about the church show again, and thankfully i got an email from him letting me know that the church show was happening on september 21. better yet, brian and a couple friends were setting up as a vendor.

it turns out that the reason the club website wasn't being updated is that the church show was scheduled for the same day as the monthly club show and they didn't want to publicize the competition. for me, with brian selling, it was a nobrainer to eschew the club show and head to church!

brian had told me that he was going to have two 5000 count monster dime boxes, and when i approached the table, he put the first one down. there in the second row was this card in front

i told brian that having a 1982 donruss steve garvey diamond king in front was a smart move. he said it was all about knowing his customer. of course, i couldn't leave the garv behind.

the first block of cards that i looked at included a bunch of 2024 topps aqua parallels, and i told brian that i was a sucker for those sorts of parallels, too. here's a "color match" fernando tatis jr card

to represent the stack of these that i added to my pile. there were a host of other parallel types that i took, including a 2017 topps fire brooks robinson flame parallel

there were a boatload of straight up inserts, too. here's a 2022 panini prizm vladimir guerrero jr illumination insert

i suspect that the holo version is more "illuminated" than this base insert version.

here are a couple of topps heritage inserts that caught my eye - a nolan ryan card from 2015

and an ernie banks card from 2020

there were some attractive base cards, too. this 1994 upper deck ken griffey jr card

is one of my favorite base cards of all-time so i had to grab one of the two that brian had for sale. and i am not sure that i had seen this 2014 topps stadium club roberto clemente card before

so i took it, too.

i felt that it was worth a dime to acquire this 1974 topps hank aaron card

even though it is in rough shape. as brian noted, "it's 96% intact!"

as for dodgers, there were plenty even though brian has provided me with a steady stream of cards featuring the boys in blue over the years. here's a 2017 topps gypsy queen jackie robinson short print

that i needed, and here's a 2021 topps chrome max muncy all-star game refractor insert

that was also a need. these seem to be less prevalent than the 2022 counterparts, but that may not actually be the case.

back to some cards that i didn't really need but bought nonetheless, here's a 1970 topps dodger team card

and a 1987 topps bill russell card

that i chose to take with me.

one player specific card that was new to me was this 2022 panini donruss vladimir guerrero orange holo

parallel.

i found a lot of cards for my various mini-collections, too.

double play cards like a 2002 donruss originals jeff kent 

and a couple of 2022 panini donruss ryne sandberg cards

the base version is a dupe of one i already had, so it goes into my lurker collection thanks to tony gwynn showing up.

here's another one for the lurker collection - a 2016 topps stadium club manny machado card

featuring cal ripken jr.

brian was wise to have this 2012 topps gypsy queen willie mays glove stories insert in one of the boxes

because i will purchase pretty much any card showing "the catch" for my name/number on the back collection. that's where this 1992 leaf jon olerud card is headed

as is this 1998 donruss collections leaf eric davis card

and this 2019 topps stadium club mookie betts card

i have kind of shied away from adding too many tatooine cards lately, but i did choose this electric blue parallel of jazz chisholm's 2021 topps big league card

as well as this 2021 topps stadium club jose ramirez card

that photo really should have been saved for 2022 topps heritage, as it has 1973 topps written all over it. i see the first base coach's head, the first baseman's arm, the second baseman's leg, and the umpire's arm all disembodied. it's chaos!

at some point while i was digging through the boxes, brian laid out a couple of cards he had set aside for me specifically. this is a 2001 pacific private stock shawn green game gear card

and this is a 1998 topps interleague matchups mystery finest card

that hasn't been peeled. here's the back:

so, does the card front feature mike piazza, eric karros, jim edmonds, or tim salmon? i didn't peel it, but based on the comparison of the impression underneath and images online, i believe this to be jim edmonds' card.

brian also had somehow acquired duplicates of a baseball card breakdown 1975 hostess clayton kershaw custom

so he handed one over to me.

after all was said and done, i had pulled around 460 cards from the two dime boxes. after settling up, brian handed over this 2015 topps stadium club yasiel puig gold foil parallel

it is a beaut of a card.

finally, i had added an unopened pack of 2003 topps opening day to my pile

of course, i opened it when i got home. the mini insert was mike piazza

and the cards were your standard early 2000's variety of guys -todd helton, carlos lee, cliff floyd, and mike sweeney. the floyd card offered a nice view of the ted williams memorial that the red sox wore. i thought it appropriate that the last card in the pack was this one

a sweet minky card from a fellow twin cities card collector. thanks brian!

and, if anyone out there is looking for a pair of john candy's pants, i know a guy who knows a guy.