where has all the panini gone

about a month ago, i stopped in at twin cities sportscards to peruse their wares. i was really hoping that they would have some 2025 topps chrome platinum anniversary in stock (and better yet, busted), but they did not. they still had the nickel boxes and team sorted quarter/fifty cent boxes, however, so i spent a bit of time looking through those cards.

usually, this is where i find the panini and bowman cards that i add to my collection. it turns out that they don't get topps product directly for some fanatics-related reason. so, they have a lot of panini. anyway, even those releases seemed to be in short supply in terms of singles. i did find a 2025 panini prizm gil hodges blue ice parallel

along with a couple of base cards (2025 panini prizm and 2025 panini select) of dodger farmhand james tibbs iii

of course, these aren't dodger cards of tibbs. one is a san francisco giants card (the prizm)

and the other (the select) is a boston red sox card

tibbs was sent by the giants to boston in the rafael devers trade. the dodgers then picked him up in the dustin may trade, and now tibbs is raking in the minors. i am guessing he is going to be dealt later this month to yet another team (the tigers?) in a deadline deal.

i found some other cards, but not as many as i had hoped. so, i'll take this opportunity to fill out the remainder of the post with bowman and panini cards from my scanned folder.

this 2026 bowman mookie betts card

was a recent throw-in from an ebay seller.

these next several cards are remnants from a trade with sluggo from a couple of years ago. 

going back to 2018, here's a donruss card of corey seager

which is actually the blank back version

also from 2018, this donruss optic year in review card of cody bellinger

completed the dodger team set for me (there are two bellinger cards in this insert set)

here's a 2021 bowman cody bellinger 1991 bowman refractor insert

along with a 2021 bowman's best albert pujols refractor parallel

more 2021 panini stuff with a chronicles sandy koufax revolution groove parallel

a mosic cody bellinger will to win insert

a couple of mosaic reactive orange mosaic parallels of mookie betts and seager

a mosaic koufax all-time greats insert

and a prizm koufax old school insert

2022 was also well represented, with a freddie freeman bowman heritage image variation

a diamond kings pee wee reese short print

recognizable by the card number being greater than 100

a dk artist's palette trea turner insert

and a donruss walker buehler holo orange parallel

along with a donruss max muncy trending insert

a diamond parallel of a donruss turner hit list insert

a mosaic bang! turner insert

and a select cody bellinger phenomenon insert

this next card, a 2024 panini prizm don sutton orange pulsar parallel

was one that i purchased on ebay. it's numbered on the back

and, speaking of numbers on the back, one card that i did find at the shop was this 2025 panini select mariano rivera numbers insert

other than jackie robinson, rivera is probably the most iconic 42 in baseball. i love the concept of this recurring insert set, but i would do it a bit differently. i did get a kick out of the back

as panini throws some shade at hall-of-fame voters who think protecting the first ballot status by not voting for players is a noble cause.

i hope that the next time i visit this shop they have a bit more to dig through, but it was still a positive visit and good use of my time.

the closer

i know that he is back in the starting rotation, but roki sasaki has proven to be a closer for me in the early goings of 2026. no fewer than three dodger team sets had sasaki as the last card i needed.

2025 topps allen & ginter

2025 topps archives

and 2025 topps chrome update

all waited for sasaki's card to show up.

i've completed a few more sets that didn't include sasaki recently, including 2016 topps gypsy queen.

that kenta maeda rookie card was the last card i needed. it's a short print so i guess it makes sense that i waited for maeda to return to japan before seeking it out. i'll show the penultimate card i needed for the team set in a different post.

a sportlots seller had the last three cards i needed for 2023 topps chrome platinum anniversary

i understand that topps is planning to reintroduce this set in 2026, but they will call it 2025 so that using the 1955 topps design makes sense from a platinum anniversary standpoint. topps/fanatics just can't seem to get out of its own way sometimes.

another sportlots seller had this 2025 panini prizm pee wee reese card

that shut the door on my team set from that unlicensed release chock full of prospects and retired players and not much in between for licensing reasons.

2025 topps stadium club came down to two cards - hyeseong kim

and yoshinobu yamamoto

both of which came from a sportlots order

my 2026 topps series 1 dodger team set is also now complete, thanks to dalton rushing's card

showing up in my mailbox a few weeks ago.

i've got one other recently completed team set to visit. sasaki was the second to last card i needed to complete the 2025 topps all-star game dodger team set

with shohei ohtani being the closer in this instance

i've slowly been accumulating dodgers from this set via various sources, and now i'll show the cards i haven't shown before (which i believe is all but kim's).

mookie betts

freddie freeman

clayton kershaw

yoshinobu yamamoto

i also added a classic swings insert of betts

as well as kershaw's all-star game greats insert

the back

focuses on the 2022 midsummer classic which was held at dodger stadium and saw kershaw make the start for the national league. synchronicity at its finest.

you knew this was coming - i added another steve garvey parallel from the set. this is his black autograph parallel

numbered to 10. here's the back

interesting that these were exclusive to mega boxes. or is that the only way this set was distributed? i wonder if there will be a 2026 version? and will it include former greats like the inserts did in 2025? if so, get ready for a bunch of phillies. now that i think of it, i could use some new pete rose cards (or to fit in with the title of this post, tug mcgraw), so bring it on!

shows and shops and other forays into the hobby

one of the ways i participate in the hobby that i don't address much is that i sell on sportlots. i say that only to explain this news - wrigley wax is still collecting. i just filled a single card order for him the other day. not sure why the blog went/is quiet, but he appears to be still around, thankfully.

as for more frequent hobby interactions, i attended the mid october mall show. it was a big disappointment from a sports cards stand point, as the majority of the tables were pokemon focused. i did find a few bargains from bargain-ish boxes to keep, such as a 1994 topps ryan thompson gold parallel

and a 2015 panini cooperstown jackie robinson salute to the armed forces card

one of the few baseball card sellers had a few cody bellinger cards that i picked up - 2016 bowman chrome prospects

2017 bowman platinum

2018 bowman's best refractor

2021 topps 70 years of topps

2021 topps chrome black

and 2022 panini diamond kings framed gray

in which he is joined by walter alston.

i was able to add clayton kershaw's 2018 topps stadium club beam team card

a pair of 2023 topps allen & ginter mookie betts silver portrait parallels

and roki sasaki's 2025 topps stars of mlb card

to my dodger collection, too.

some other highlights include this 2021 topps stadium club robin yount red foil parallel

these 2021 panini prizm kyle cody parallels

for a couple of mini-collections, and these 2020 topps chrome frank robinson decades' best

and 2025 topps rip night ken griffey jr cards

just because. i haven't seen many (any?) of those chrome decades' best cards in the wild before.

a week or so later, i made an early morning, mid-week stop at a local card shop. early morning as in 8am. this shop opens at 7am on wednesdays which made it super convenient for me. talking to the owner, he said he opens that early on that day to meet some fanatics related hours requirement. it sounds like fanatics might prefer to have you order directly from them based on the barriers they seem to be constructing for these sorts of retail outlets.

anyway, this shop has nickel boxes that i hadn't dug through in quite a while. they had obviously opened some 2025 panini prizm, because there was a row of one monster box filled with it. i grabbed a bunch of these cards including cal ripken jr's

and then found just about a complete dodger team set

with a hye-seong kim insert, to boot. the only dodger missing from this nickel parade was pee wee reese.

here's another nickel dodger, a 2024 topps update james paxton yellow parallel

it's a laborious effort to dig through what is mostly base cards in these boxes, but it's worth it.

they also have team-sorted quarter/fifty cent boxes. that's where i found vladimir guerrero's 2025 panini prizm dingers insert

the dodgers in these boxes tend to be mostly bowman chrome prospect type things, but there are usually some decent cards within some of the other team slots. case in point:

that's aaron judge's 2025 topps heritage card. except it is also

bat flip variation! good times.

a few weeks later, i stopped at another store in the middle of minnesota while i was driving around for work. they had dollar-plus boxes at the counter and i dug for a little bit. i walked away with a 2024 topps black & white vladimir guerrero jr card

a 2024 topps chrome shohei ohtani all-etch insert

a 1994 upper deck all-time heroes manny mota 125th anniversary parallel

and a 2023 topps stadium club jackie robinson red foil parallel

and yes, i do consider that mota card to be a dodger card even though most of it belongs to the expos.

one other hobby participation effort to share - my first completed trade on tcdb! i shuffled off some 1971 topps cards to mattyb87 and he sent me some nice dodger cards:

2024 topps miguel rojas rainbow foil parallel

i am anticipating a few more miguel rojas cards in 2026.

2024 topps archives tyler glasnow and mookie betts own the game inserts

2025 topps heritage max muncy green parallel

2025 topps tribute freddie freeman

2025 topps will smith world tour domination

this one was nice to see - i hadn't seen or bothered to pick up any of these japan-themed cards as of yet.

a surprise throw in was this 2024 panini prizm don sutton pink ice prizm

which inspired me to add sutton's base prizm card to a sportlots order

and that's how you bring a blog post full circle!

reminder - add your comment to my recent post for a chance to win six non-base cards from the current major league team of your choice. results coming on saturday!