who's been fifteen?

just 15 days to go until the dodgers kick off the 2024 season against the padres in seoul. here are some cards appropriate for the day.

2005 playoff absolute memorabilia shawn green tools of the trade red parallel

15 shows up twice on the card, which is one of a number of parallels from this release. red might be the "base". i don't know anymore.

15 shows up twice on this card as well

that is a 2003 fleer mystique shawn green card, and it is definitely the base version.  green is one of 31 dodgers to wear number 15 in the franchise's history. he had worn 15 with the blue jays before being traded to the dodgers, and he wore 15 with the diamondbacks following his departure from los angeles. with the mets, however, that was carlos beltran's number, so he switched to 20.

after green, scott erickson took the number (presumably because his preferred 19 was retired by the dodgers) and wore it for his lone season with the dodgers. the following year, rafael furcal came to town. here's a 2006 bowman heritage silver foil parallel of furcal

furcal had worn number 1 for the braves, but that number was retired for pee wee reese so he pivoted to 15 as a dodger. he continued to wear 15 for the remainder of his career which included stops with the cardinals and marlins. the cardinals, of course, retired number 1 for ozzie smith, but the number would have been available to furcal with the marlins. i guess by then he was set with 15 - at least for the nine games that his tenure with the marlins lasted.

after furcal, number 15 wasn't worn by any player until austin barnes came along. here's his 2021 topps blue star parallel card

that offers a glimpse of his number thanks to his backwards helmet.

for me, however, there is but one person i identify with number 15, and that is davey lopes, seen here on a 2001 upper deck prospect premieres heroes of baseball bat card

who's your favorite 15?

i started 2024 with a 20/25

one of my first pick-ups in the new year came via sportlots, and it's not the kind of card i usually find there. as i do maybe once every six months, i searched the site for steve garvey cards on the off chance that a seller added an uncommon parallel to their inventory, and i was surprised to find that exact scenario had played out!

a seller had a 2005 playoff absolute memorabilia spectrum gold card listed and i scooped it up

there in the middle of the back you can see that it is numbered 20/25. this sort of low number parallel is fairly rare on sportlots, at least for garvey cards. the price wasn't bad either - much less than i would have been asked to pay on ebay.

here's the front

spectrum parallels are shiny.

of course, with sportlots there is always the temptation to add cards to maximize value of shipping, and this seller's rate for 10 cards was the same as for 2-4 and not much more than the rate for a single card. so, i added 9 more dodgers to the order and paid with credit that i had from selling a 2023 update set on the site.

i didn't scan all of the additional cards, but i did scan these two 2019 topps allen & ginter ginter greats cards of clayton kershaw

and sandy koufax

that completed the dodger team set for me. i also added a few cards from 2017 topps allen & ginter x, including jackie robinson

not a bad start to the year for my steve garvey and dodger collections!

now with 100% more hall of famers!

i've had this card for over 15 years

and for almost all of that time, it featured one hall of famer. these days, it features two!  it's a team tandems card from 2005 playoff absolute memorabilia featuring harmon killebrew and the newly elected hall of famer tony oliva.  being here in twins territory, i have developed a sort of affinity for the team and was on the lookout for cards like this back in the early years of their renaissance under ron gardenhire.

similarly, you might think that this card

went from two hall of famers to three with the election of david ortiz. however, there are three more players on the back:

none of whom will be enshrined. i'm happy torii hunter has been getting some votes, but i don't see him ever being enshrined unless a future eras committee is stacked with his old managers and teammates. that second card is from the same set as the first, but is a team six spectrum card. that means it has a refractor type quality to it.

both of these cards were tucked away in my neglected monster boxes that i've been going through. it's been fun to see these non-dodger cards that i obtained in the early 2000s again.

cards for christmas, but not the ones i expected

it's late january, so i may as well get this post up. i've been holding off in hopes that my secret santa cards would eventually show up, but it looks like the grinch prevailed this year. this is not a reflection on jon, who courageously hosted this endeavor again in 2019, but rather on the person who signed up, assumedly accepted cards from another, but failed to do their part.

still, i did receive some cards around the holidays, including some nice ones from kerry at cards on cards

those are some target throwback parallels of casey blake and manny ramirez from 2009 topps. it is a little weird that it has been so long since manny tore up the national league for the dodgers.

here's a more recent card, a 2019 panini donruss optic corey seager illusions insert

with the dodgers having shown interest in francisco lindor this offseason, it will be interesting to see what kind of year seager has in 2020.

also from 2019 is this perennial all-stars card of clayton kershaw from topps update

the photo here is from the 2014 all-star game at target field.

last card i will show from kerry is this 2019 topps fire walker buehler flamethrowers blue chip parallel

i am showing this card because it fits in nicely with some other cards i received for christmas.

santa was nice enough to put a couple of packs in my stocking, including a 2019 topps fire pack.  i did pretty well for a dodger collector, as the pack yielded this clayton kershaw en fuego blue chip parallel

as well as this kershaw and sandy koufax lasting legacies blue chip parallel

see? pretty good pack for a dodger collector. that doesn't happen to me too often.

i also received a ttm return right around christmas.  former yankee george zeber was kind enough to sign and return my 1978 topps card

i had sent out four 1978 requests earlier in the fall. they were the first requests i had sent out in quite a while, as i've pretty much exhausted the list of 1978 topps subjects who sign.  every once in a while, however, i will check sportscardforum and find a recent success for a player from that set that i hadn't noticed before. such was the case with zeber. zeber had two at bats against the dodgers in the 1977 world series, but i didn't hold that against him.

finally, i will show the last card that i purchased in 2019. it showed up just before new year's.

so that is a 2005 playoff absolute memorabilia padres team quads single relic spectrum card.  it goes straight to the steve garvey collection.

i've picked up a few cards so far in 2020, but am focusing primarily on the garvey collection and trying to finish my 1965 topps set. happy belated new year, everybody!

some year end garvey gets

i was busy looking for steve garvey cards to add to my collection in 2016, and i found quite a few.  here are some that recently arrived.

2013 panini extra edition bloodlines dual auto #/25

this one was on comc with a reasonable price that i put an offer on to make even more reasonable.  it features garvey and his son ryan, who was in the rockie organization at the time, on the other side of the card.  sticker autos for both!

here are a couple of cards that i found on the beckett marketplace just a couple of weeks ago. they are from 2005 playoff absolute memorabilia, and are the padres' team quad cards from the set

rickey henderson, tony gwynn, willie mccovey, and garvey.

here's the spectrum version

i have three of the different game used versions of this card, but never picked up the base.  in fact, i hadn't seen either of these cards for years.

this is the zip code parallel from 2013 panini hometown heroes that was part of my comc order

i had the state version already, but not this one.  i would have preferred garvey to have been featured under the 90012 zip code.

that's enough padres stuff - here's a dodger card (sort of) of the garv that was undervalued on comc in my opinion.  it's a 2015 topps original 1975 topps nlcs card

comc did not identify this as a garvey card, and the seller had a pretty low price on it.  i was very happy to stumble upon it.

you'll notice that none of these are from 2016, but don't worry - i've picked up quite a few garvey cards from this year's releases.  i'll be showing many of them, including my favorite, in a future post.

happy new year!