smooth sailing out of los angeles

as a team collector, i don't typically avoid dodger cards in bargain bins unless i am certain that i already own them. i do pause, however, when i find parallels of guys like dennis santana, which was the case at a show last year. i wound up bringing home these 2019 panini donruss optic and 2019 topps parallels

but i would have preferred them to be of a current dodger. 

santana seems to have found his groove in pittsburgh which makes me happy. the dodgers in recent years have been quick to jettison young talent that they have developed in exchange for other teams' talent. in santana's case, they dealt him to the rangers for a minor league pitcher who toiled in the dodgers' minor league system through last season, and is now a free agent. i get that they are dealing from a surplus, but i still appreciate the older dodger way that allows me to collect and cheer for "homegrown" players for an extended period of time, as with clayton kershaw or will smith.

other dodgers whose departures i understood but to some degree regretted include joc pederson 

that's a 2016 topps update 500 home run futures club insert. spoiler alert - joc won't get close to 500 homers, but he hit some big ones for the dodgers and i am glad he is no longer in the national league west so i can root for him a little more.

cody bellinger, seen here on a 2022 panini prizm illumination insert

and a 2022 topps 1987 insert black parallel

was another one that was tough to see move on in free agency even though his performance with the dodgers in his last years had not warranted a big contract. i hope he has a nice season for the yankees but is at home in october. i do think the game is more fun when the yankees are good, but i really want the blue jays to get another crack at a title.

i was ready to be a ryan pepiot fan, but adding a proven starter in tyler glasnow was a deal too good for the dodgers to pass up. pepiot's 2022 topps chrome update purple refractor

was the last one i needed for that dodger team set of parallels.

just a couple of weeks ago, it was announced by the rays that pepiot was headed to the il and replaced on the 40 man roster by michael grove, seen here on a 2023 topps chrome sepia parallel

grove is also injured at the moment. i was ready to be a fan of his as well, but now all i will have are random cards to find at shows.

another example of a short time dodger that had a lot of cards available for me to collect is miguel vargas. this is his 2024 topps yellow parallel

and i am sure i will be finding vargas dodger cards in bargain boxes for years to come. will i buy them? time will tell. adding tommy edman and michael kopech in the trade that sent vargas to the white sox was a great move by the dodger front office, so i hope that vargas finds his way in chicago and lives up to a bit of the hype that surrounded him in his earliest dodger days to pay back that championship level deal that is currently a bust for the sox.

gavin stone, seen here on his 2023 topps chrome update refractor

and landon knack, shown on his 2025 topps gold parallel

are still dodgers as of now. they are both on the injured list, and who knows what will happen once they are healthy. there's not a lot of room on the pitching staff at the moment, so it's possible that these two become trade bait once they prove themselves healthy. i hope not, especially knack who i like, but i get it if it is the case.

and then there are guys like dalton rushing. 

his 2025 panini donruss card is one of many that i already have of him, and who knows how long he will be a dodger? blocked by his fellow university of louisville alum will smith, who is signed to a long-term deal, and too good to be in triple-a, he's not getting a lot of playing time. so far this year he is playing very well when he does play, but is it just enough to entice another team to make an offer that fills a different dodger need later in the season?

we will have to wait and find out who will join the likes of santana in the former dodger makes good elsewhere camp, and then subsequently haunts the bargain boxes and collections of team collectors like me.

show me two times, baby. show me twice today.

as you might have figured from the title of the post, i like the doors. you might have also deduced that there were two card shows in the twin cities today. well, not today today, but today as in when i started writing this post (november 15).

neither show was the monthly club show, instead there was the biannual church show (put on by one of the owners of one of the local card shops) and then a "monthly" show that doesn't always happen every month. it is put on by the same folks who do the big show at the rivercentre space in downtown st. paul twice a year. i didn't plan on going to both, but when i left the first one, i figured i might as well head the few miles north to see what's what.

before i get to that, i'll share some of what i found at the church show. i purchased cards from four sellers and also received some cards from brian of highly subjective, completely arbitrary fame. the first seller has discounted boxes that have yielded some decent finds in the past, so i dug through for a bit. i started with the "half-off sticker" box that was autos, relics, and manufactured things.

i found some mookie betts cards i needed - a couple of things from 2022 topps

and one from 2023 topps

plus a 2021 panini mosaic encased gavin lux mosaic autograph

i was happy to pay the seven bucks for those.

i also added a 2022 topps stadium club chrome green refractor auto of zack short

for a buck because i liked the look of the card and his signature. it's numbered to 99, too. the other two items i took from this box were both priced at four bucks, so they were two bucks each. they were a small stack of cards in team bags - it turned out that there were 10 cards per bag. i'll do a separate post to highlight them and see if you think it was worth the gamble.

this seller also had some fifty cent boxes (or three for a dollar) as well as a quarter box (or seven for a dollar). i wound up with nine fifty cent cards, including a 2020 bowman's best cody bellinger insert

that i turned out not to need, and this 2022 topps stadium club chrome lars nootbaar card

that i will add to my retired numbers tangential collection because it shows murals for august busch and ted simmons (no photo for simmons that year). at some point i'll probably seek out the refractor of this card because shiny. and kudos to the cardinals for maintaining their murals!

to finish up, i found 21 quarter cards to take home, including a red holo parallel of keibert ruiz's 2021 panini donruss card

and a red foil parallel of eric davis' 2023 topps stadium club card

i'm still looking for an eric davis dodger auto though.

after that, i stopped at one of the bargain vintage sellers and looked through his dollar and fifty cent boxes. it was good to dig through vintage again, after not doing so for quite a while. i recently decided to revisit an old vintage project, so i wound up pulling quite a few cards. one of them was this 1962 topps elio chacon card

it is unrelated to the project i am working on - i just grabbed it for the lurker collection since i am pretty certain that is frank robinson in the background. one thing i was looking for was a 1960 topps coaches card, and i wound up buying six of them, including these three

i don't need all three for my project so let me know if you are in need of one.

i also bought a couple of vintage cards from the show organizer out of his vintage bargain tub. these two cards

do figure into my project, but i will explain later.

in between those sellers is when i saw brian and talked with him for a bit. he's still working on his venezuelan set, but has some big cards in his way. he said that he also opened a bunch of 2025-26 topps basketball and had plenty to trade, so if you are interested in those sorts of cards, look him up. we swapped cards, of course, and here is some of what he handed over to me

2025 topps max muncy diamante parallel

2022 topps finest flashbacks chris taylor gold refractor parallel

numbered to 50

2025 topps now luis arraez

apparently, arraez got his 1,000th hit on the field behind the mos eisley cantina.

the other seller i bought cards from spanned two separate purchases. they were set up on a corner, and my first pass ended before i turned and saw their second table. in my walk through at the start of the show, i noticed that they had a couple of baseball monster boxes priced at 4/$1. there was a big guy already camped out in front of the boxes so i figured i would circle back later. when i did, the guy was still there. i asked if i could start looking and you would think i had asked him to give up his seat altogether and while he was at it give me his lunch money. i assured him i was not looking to cut in front of him but that i would look through what he had already put back. he didn't make any room for me, so i quit after finding 12 cards in the first row and a half of the box he was done with.

there was quite a variety of things, as evidenced by these cards

1996 pinnacle eric karros starburst parallel

2025 topps heritage andy pages chrome parallel

2022 topps allen & ginter chrome vladimir guerrero

and a trio of 2024 panini select orange flash prizms - johnny pesky, dick williams, and jim bunning

so, when i turned the corner and saw a small box of "$1, $2, $5 autos/relics" i decided to take a peek. it's no surprise that deals like this are populated with andre jackson relics - these two 

are from 2022 panini chronicles and capstone, respectively. jackson has been pitching in japan the last couple of years with some success, and i'm happy for him.

finally, i found a 2025 panini donruss bob feller relic

in that box that is numbered to 99, and i couldn't pass up the old-timey wool swatch! i wound up with six relic cards for ten bucks and decided that was the end of the church show for me. it was still fairly early, so i headed up highway 100 to the other show.

the parking lot was pretty full, and i had immediate regret as soon as i walked in. i would say the venue was as crowded as the national - fewer people, of course, but in a smaller space. i did one and a half laps around the room and saw that is was at least 75% pokemon and those that had sportscards didn't have much in the way of bulk or bargain boxes - not that i could have bellied up to a table if they had. there were even some people there with strollers and one guy had a collapsible wagon. there was no room to maneuver any of that.

i left quickly and empty handed, so i'll show an andre jackson card that has been in my scanned folder since i pulled it from a bargain box at a show sometime in the past year. it's from 2022 topps gallery

it's a "private issue" parallel but it's nothing to be embarrassed about.

i was glad to get to a regular show again (the last show i went to was a disappointing mall show that i'll review in a future post) and i'm glad i stopped at the second show just so i know i don't have to have any fomo about missing those in the future. and, i'm happy as always to have seen brian, talked about cards, and added some to my collection.

a bird in the air (and more) from a birds on the bat collector that blends with other recent pickups

so i have run out of different ways to title a post featuring (mostly) cards that were sent by madding of cards on cards. "cards from cards on cards" is stale and not all of the cards are "dodgers on cards from cards on cards", so why not mix it up.

as the title of the post implies (very strongly), here is a card of a bird (a blue jay, to be exact) in the air that was sent to me by kerry.

it's a 2000 fleer ultra tony batista gold medallion edition card, and fits oh so nicely into my double play collection.

seeing it arrive reminded me that i had picked up some other new-to-me double play cards, such as this 1993 fleer casey candaele card

and these two 1992 leaf black gold parallels featuring carlos baerga and tim naehring

one more double play card i finally added to my collection is pat kelly'2 1994 fleer flair card. it features at least two double play images - one on the front

and one on the back

and the larger image on the front could be a dp pivot as well. only the inset photo on the front officially counts for my collection, however.

back to cards from cards on cards (had to work that in somewhere), here are a couple of 2025 panini donruss cards i received

kellon lindsey was the dodgers' first round pick in 2024, and he spent most of this season in a-ball. mike piazza was famously a 63rd round pick of the dodgers. up until now, the only 2025 donruss card i had was pee wee reese's. however, a couple of months ago i added a 2025 panini donruss optic card to my collection

that's piazza's green scope prizm parallel. it is numbered to 65 on the back

and was a cheap add to an ebay purchase i made. i don't think it was more than a buck.

kerry also sent some 2025 panini crusade cards to me - here are kendall george and bobby miller

george was the dodgers' first round pick in 2023 and spent this past year playing pretty well at the high-a level. miller, on the other hand, hasn't been able to replicate his 2023 success and spent most of last year at triple-a.  here's lindsey again

with a blue cracked ice parallel.

these aren't the first crusade cards i've seen from 2025, as steve garvey is on the checklist and i quickly snapped up a couple of his base cards

one for the pc and one for the dodger collection. here's the back

some pretty complimentary text there. garvey hit .417 (10 for 24) in the 1981 world series (and even walked twice!) but he had no extra base hits or rbi so i am not sure he was "especially" clutch in that series. he was, for a brief moment, announced as one of the three mvp winners (his name was mixed up with steve yeager's) but i don't think that series was his best in terms of "clutch".

of course, you know there are parallels, and i have picked up four of them

those are silver, red, and blue. this one is purple

and it is refreshing to not see them named "velocity" or whatever. the last three are numbered, by the way.

back to licensed cards now, with a 2025 topps shohei ohtani 1990 insert

and a freddie freeman holofoil parallel

courtesy of kerry. their swings, or follow-throughs, are pretty similar.

those two cards match up with a couple of 2025 bowman cards i added to a sportlots order recently

freeman's card is interesting because of the clock. this is one of the few cards i've seen with the clock so pronounced, and i am not sure why it is at over a minute. it's not a time clock (it's not 1:05 in the afternoon) it's the pitch clock, and i don't think freddie is in the on deck circle. not sure why he'd be in the box ready to go so early on. any thoughts?

here are a few more from kerry - a 1996 pacific ismael valdes prisms card

and a 2021 panini mosaic duke snider vintage insert

i didn't have anything in my scanned folder to match up with the valdes card, but i did have some vintage in there. i am saving that for a different post, however.

similarly, here's a 2024 topps heritage chrome silver border refractor of kyle hurt

that kerry sent. i have a post partially drafted to revisit my heritage chrome pursuits, so stay tuned for more of these sorts of cards. 

and then there is this 2025 topps hunter feduccia team color border card

kerry is the second person to send me one of these semi-rare parallels and i will show the other one in a separate post.

finally, kerry included this 2021 topps finest walker buehler card

which pairs up super nicely with buehler's autograph card from the same set

that i added a week or so before kerry's envelope arrived. i guess when you get released and are on your third team in two years, some folks start to shed your cards and so i got a really great deal (at least as far as i am concerned) on this card - $4.99! i will spend that for buehler autos all day long.

thanks kerry! as you can see, the cards you sent fit nicely in my collection alongside some other newly acquired cards. i would say "good luck ducks" but they are playing the gophers this weekend so i will say "ski u mah" instead.