clubhouse presence

the theme of many of my posts over the last few months has been "focus". there are certain sets or inserts that i am paying closer attention to, given the fact that there are too many to acquire and a scattershot approach doesn't really resonate with me at the moment.

one of the inserts that i have chosen to focus on more is the "clubhouse collection" relics found in topps heritage releases. in recent years, steve garvey has been on the checklist, which got me thinking about other dodgers throughout the years. i already had some of these cards in my collection, but have spent some time over the last year or so to purposefully add a few more.

this is (obviously) an auto/relic clubhouse collection card featuring garvey

that comes from 2025 topps heritage high number. it is hand numbered (as clubhouse collection cards are) on the back

that is 1/25, as topps puts a line through the 7. i don't know anyone who writes the number 1 that way, but whatever. also, note the cartoon on the back:

looks like an early version of tcdb at work there.

2001 was the first year of heritage, and there were only a few relic cards included. the dodgers were represented, with shawn green being the subject

here's the back:

nice to see wes parker's name there! topps abandoned the writeups sometime in the 2010's as we will see in a bit. they also went away from the hologram stickers pretty quickly.

jumping to 2004, here's another shawn green relic

with the back:

with another cartoon related to baseball card collecting

the relics were pretty small in 2007, and while the green above was identified as "uniform", this duke snider

is more specifically "pants". here's the back

with a generic cartoon.

from that same year, we were treated to a rafael furcal bat card

that has the same generic cartoon on the back

he had a really good year for the dodgers in 2006, setting or matching career highs in several categories, but i guess topps felt that his previous history was more important.

here's a card from 2012 heritage - it's should-have-been 2011 mvp matt kemp

at this point, things are just referred to as "memorabilia". here's the back:

he really did have a monster year in 2011. i don't quite get the cartoon. 

i picked up another kemp card, this one from 2015.

and now we see the backs

having a very minimalist approach.

fast forward to 2023 topps heritage high numbers for this miguel vargas card

i do like that topps used the 1974 traded design for those cards. of all the ones in this post, this is the first one that i could easily identify the year that it belongs to.

same goes for this 2024 topps heritage high number dual relic of garvey and freddie freeman

it's numbered to 75 on the back

and, applying what we've learned, it's number 14/75. i don't know what the book of "relics" is that the cartoon is showing. is that someone's card binder that contains only relics? does anyone store their collection that way? i suppose there are some that do - my relics are contained within my year-by-year team collection or various player or mini-collections.

here's another dual relic card of the dodger first basemen of then and now.

it's from 2025 topps heritage high number and is numbered there on the front. the back is pretty generic

with no cartoon whatsoever!

this year, i've managed to pick up will smith's clubhouse collection card

with an even more boring back

while i could see the 1976 design elements on the 2025 heritage cards, these don't say 1977 to me other than the full white borders. the text is giving 1960's or early 70's vibes.

garvey has another dual relic in this release, and this time he shares space with smith and not freeman. here's the one i've been able to secure

now numbered to 77 to match the year. the back is as you would expect

i probably should have scanned or reposted other examples i have from other years of heritage, but i think this is enough. i'll continue to focus on these cards (i'd love to pick up one of the triple relic dodger cards out there) and am really looking forward to next year. i hope the design of the clubhouse collection cards then is more obviously showcasing the 1978 set design. stay tuned!

chrome priority

long gone are the days where it was possible to collect all of the cards of any given player, let alone team. and, while i've tried to finish off a dodger junk wax year (1989) there are still a few oddballs that i haven't tracked down yet - partially due to a lack of focus - and there are probably other dodger cards from that year that i don't know about.

over the last year or so, i've tried to be a bit more focused when looking back and picking up dodger cards from past years and i've had some success doing so. whether it's targeting a specific team set, insert set, parallel, or something that spans both of the latter, i've been able to fill some holes in my collection that are more meaningful to me than random cards here and there. case in point, i went out to add more topps heritage chrome parallels to my collection.

with don mattingly in the news late last year for making it to the fall classic for the first time (he was a coach for the blue jays if you didn't know), i'll start with his 2011 topps heritage chrome parallel.

mattingly was the dodger skipper when their current run of nl west dominance began but he was gone before they returned to the world series. here's the back:

i thought that numbering the chrome "base" to the year of the topps design made sense once they made that switch. unfortunately, topps hasn't maintained that element with these cards.

i should note that it's been over two years since i published this post detailing my status with these cards, but i hadn't forgotten about my appreciation of them. here are some more i added in 2025 that weren't shown in other posts

the hiroki kuroda and ross stripling cards completed my 2011 topps heritage and 2016 topps heritage high numbers chrome dodger team sets, respectively, while the aj pollock card from 2019 topps heritage high numbers was the second to join my collection from that set.

i picked up my first chrome parallel from 2002 topps heritage in the form of chan ho park

which features the "original" heritage chrome parallel numbering on the back:

limited to 553 copies, just as the 2001 cards (using the 1952 topps design) were limited to a print run of 552.

in 2003, the chrome cards (here's kazuhisa ishii's)

switched to the full year numbering to match the card design year

so /1954 for these cards. the refractors then used the 500 series numbering.

topps introduced non-numbered, retail colored refractors in 2011, although i think they skipped 2012 and 2013 before becoming a mainstay. here's a 2015 purple chrome refractor of yasmani grandal

from 2015 topps heritage high numbers.

in 2013, topps switched the numbering of base chrome parallels again. here's a 2018 topps heritage high numbers matt kemp chrome parallel

that shows the /999 numbering on the back

you'll note that topps didn't really prepare a space for the serial numbering on the back of any of these cards.

ok - speed round with some other heritage chrome pickups from last year!

2019 max muncy purple refractor

2020 high numbers mookie betts chrome /999

2021 high numbers albert pujols chrome /999

and purple refractor

2022 walker buehler chrome /999

2023 high numbers clayton kershaw chrome /999

and purple refractor

plus a 2024 high number purple refractor of "zero year" card recipient andre lipcius

in 2024, topps really changed things up. they released a limited number of chrome parallels as they typically did with the initial heritage release. these were numbered to 999 as they had been for years. then, when high numbers came out, all of the cards that had not been paralleled in the initial release were included, but numbered to 699. here's the chrome parallel of the yogi berra/roy campanella card

that i found in a pack of heritage high. note that they also moved the numbering to the front of the card. this change didn't make the numbering any easier to read, however. i suppose i should also note that topps decided to show berra's actual 1951 card here, even though they used a modified version of it back in 1975. the campy side is the same - it's a card that didn't exist until 1975.

in 2025, topps got rid of the numbering for the base chrome and base refractor cards altogether. here's freddie freeman's card

plus some sparkle refractors - dusty baker (and son)

and teoscar hernandez

these next few from 2025 heritage high numbers arrived in early 2026 - light blue sparkle refractors of alex call

and kiké hernandez (along with a regular refractor of kiké)

this next bit is more for me to make things easier as i continue to track down the dodger base chrome parallels. after 25 years of these sets, i still need a lot of them, and here's a year by year breakdown of my needs vs. haves:

2001 - need 2 (have 1)

2002 - need 4 (have 1)

2003 - need 2 (have 3)

2004 - need 1 (have 1)

2005 - need 1 (have 3)

2006 - complete (have 4)

2007 - complete (have 3)

2008 - complete (have 10)

2009 - complete (have 10)

2010 - complete (have 6)

2011 - complete (have 9)

2012 - need 1 (have 4)

2013 - need 3 (have 2)

2014 - need 5 (have 2)

2015 - need 4 (have 5)

2015 high numbers - need 4 (have 1)

2016 - need 2 (have 1)

2016 high numbers - complete (have 4)

2017 - need 2 (have 2)

2017 high numbers - need 3 (have 1)

2018 - need 7 (have 1)

2018 high numbers - complete (have 1)

2019 - need 5 (have 4) 

2019 high numbers - need 1 (have 2)

2020 - need 8 (have 4)

2020 high numbers - need 3 (have 1)

2021 - need 4 (have 1)

2021 high numbers - need 6 (have 1)

2022 - need 4 (have 1)

2022 high numbers - need 1 (have 1)

2023 - need 3 (have 1)

2023 high numbers - need 4 (have 1)

2024 - need 4 (have 1)

2024 high numbers - need 27 (have 1)

2025 - need 22 (have 6)

2025 high numbers - need 8 (have 2)

the 2026 topps heritage checklist is out, and the dodgers have 22 base chrome cards (the full set is paralleled). i've pre-ordered some product from topps and am looking forward to adding to this list! stay tuned!

not as advertised

we may well see the 2023 baseball season come to a close tonight if the rangers can win another road game. seeing corey seager continue his strong play in the postseason makes me a bit wistful for what might have been if he had decided to remain with the dodgers, especially given the diametrically opposed results for the two teams this season.

first up here is a 2011 topps heritage advertising panel that i picked up recently

with the back 

that has nothing to do with the front as you would expect from an ad panel. i show it only because it sort of fits with the title - the dodgers weren't as advertised once the postseason began.

the dodgers won the west (again), just like they did back in 2013 - a title which warranted a mural on the outfield wall that showed up on yasiel puig's 2014 topps photo variation card

before the dodgers went full advertising on the outfield wall.

i picked up a couple more variations from 2014 topps featuring hyun-jin ryu and hanley ramirez

celebrating in ways that i was hoping to see more of this year.

i was hoping to see another pennant which would have made this 2023 panini donruss duke snider card

much more relevant.

same for these 2017 topps update sandy koufax cards - heroes of autumn

and storied world series

that could have been used to draw a parallel to the performance of some other postseason participant wearing the dodger uniform.

finally, i was hoping that this 2022 topps stadium club clayton kershaw trophy hunters card

would have stood in for a different trophy that the dodgers would have hoisted.

back to "wait 'til next year" i guess. in the meantime, i can live vicariously through old friends nathan eovaldi

and corey seager.

what the heck, i may as well give the guy his due and recognize him as a ranger

he may well win his second world series mvp trophy tonight!