diamond priority

keeping with my renewed focus on team set completion, i spent some time earlier this year revisiting a set that sat unfinished for 14 years. back in 2011, topps issued some new parallels to their flagship set to celebrate their diamond anniversary, and the diamond parallels were pretty sharp in my opinion. 

as of the first of the year, i was only missing those parallels of the "legends" variations - in the case of the dodgers, that meant the typical brooklyn era hall of famers and one los angeles dodger goat. without further ado, these are the parallels that completed my 2011 topps (series 1, 2, and update) diamond anniversary parallel team set:

jackie robinson

roy campanella

duke snider

sandy koufax

and pee wee reese

koufax also had a legends variation in update, but i had the diamond parallel already.

with that set out of the way, i also decided to complete the cognac parallels. 

pee wee reese

and jackie robinson

were two of the bigger cards i needed, but i also went and tracked down some lesser remembered dodgers like vicente padilla

cards like his are sometimes tougher to find than the big names, but in this case i didn't have much difficulty at all. here are the other cards i needed to complete the team set:

hong-chih kuo

chad billingsley

casey blake

ivan dejesus jr

kenley jansen

and sandy koufax

in this instance, i also needed koufax's card from update

pov when the mailman delivers a card i need to complete a team parallel set!

i am not sure if i will work to complete any of the current slate of parallels in team set form, but i have enjoyed knocking out some of these from the 2010's, so who know.

still scratching that 17 year itch

it wasn't too long after i had completed the 2007 topps chrome dodger team set that i decided to go after the blue refractor parallels. the base chrome cards seemed pretty lackluster, and with the chunky borders, the blue refractors were fantastically blue! it took me a while, but i got there, and i recently finished off the regular refractor and white refractor team sets, too.

here's the base dodger team set for comparison purposes later on.

j.d drew, andre ethier, rafael furcal

jeff kent, brad penny, juan pierre

chad billingsley, jason schmidt, matt kemp

randy wolf, takashi saito, russell martin

derek lowe, greg maddux, delwyn young  

the black borders don't do the base chrome any favors, and shame on topps (and other companies at the time) for including autographs as base cards.

now here is the blue refractor team set - note that there was no delwyn young card in the blue refractor style

j.d drew, andre ethier, rafael furcal

jeff kent, brad penny, juan pierre

chad billingsley, jason schmidt, matt kemp

randy wolf, takashi saito, russell martin

derek lowe, greg maddux  

having the blue refractors but not the regular refractors gnawed on me a bit, so i got that job done.

j.d drew, andre ethier, rafael furcal

jeff kent, brad penny, juan pierre

chad billingsley, jason schmidt, matt kemp

randy wolf, takashi saito, russell martin

derek lowe, greg maddux, delwyn young                

much, much brighter, of course. the young card is numbered to 500 in refractor form.

now for the white border refractors

j.d drew, andre ethier, rafael furcal

jeff kent, brad penny, juan pierre

chad billingsley, jason schmidt, matt kemp

randy wolf, takashi saito, russell martin

derek lowe, greg maddux, delwyn young    

the "pop" on these is largely background dependent. speaking of backgrounds, there was no nomar garciaparra chrome card in 2007, but he is in the background of chad billingsley's card.

the white refractors are numbered to 660 - hard to see on the scanned card back

but the delwyn young auto is only numbered to 200

interestingly enough, i have no xfractors in my collection. maybe that's next. or, the red refractor parallels. there is always something to chase!

lion eyes

this post is a couple of months out of sync, as it is based on the fifth sign of the zodiac - leo - which governs from july 23 through august 22. i had it all laid out and i guess forgot to hit publish. keep that in mind as you read on as i had planned to show this card back in mid august:

it's a 2022 topps gypsy queen gq gems insert featuring walker buehler who was born on july 28, 1994, and is therefore a leo. represented by a lion, leo's gemstone is something called peridot, but this card shows a ruby. based on a quick internet search, leos also "respond" to rubies.

i am not a leo, but seeing that card got me thinking about what other dodgers could be represented on a card like that. here are a few:

nomar garciaparra

that's a 2007 fleer mini die-cut card of nomah, who was born on july 23, 1973.

don drysdale

shown on a 2008 donruss sports legend museum collection card, was also born on july 23, but in 1936. it's interesting to me that they scrubbed drysdale clean of logos and the dodgers' script. on other 2008 cards they didn't go to such extremes.

pee wee reese

was another dodger born on july 23 - in 1918. he's shown on a 2019 topps stadium club red foil parallel, so that would be a card that was issued over 100 years after pee wee was born.

max scherzer

was born on july 27, 1984. his card here is a 2021 panini contenders base card that includes a photo of him from his short stint with the dodgers.

chad billingsley

is two days younger than scherzer, having entered this world on july 29, 1984. his 2007 topps chrome white refractor features fellow leo garciaparra in the background. i've added quite a few chrome parallels from 2007 and 2008 in the past year. they may be two of the best years (along with 2003) for chrome parallels, in my opinion.

ryan pepiot

is also a leo on the later end of the spectrum. he was born on august 21, 1997. that card is a 2022 topps update red foil parallel, by the way. pepiot was only 10 when that card of nomar i showed earlier was released. zoinks.

and then there are randy wolf

and jeff weaver

shown on a 2009 topps walmart black parallel for wolf, and a 2009 topps update target throwback parallel for weaver. both of these guys were born on august 22, 1976, and they were dodger teammates in 2009.

of course, it's been done before as don sutton and reggie smith were dodger teammates for several seasons and they shared april 2, 1945 as their birthday. that makes them aries, which would be a separate post if topps had used a dodger to represent that sign instead of nolan arenado. it probably would have made for a more interesting post since their birthstone is the diamond which translates well to baseball. however, with the demise of gq, we probably won't get any more inserts related to the zodiac unless a&g steps in, but they already did a birthday related insert set in 2010. 

happy (belated) birthday to these (and all the other) dodger leos!

where's the now with?

those of you who have been around for awhile know how much i love o-pee-chee cards. heck, i dedicated a whole separate blog to documenting the variations through the years. i was also very excited about the 2009 upper deck o-pee-chee release back when it came out. sure, i was disappointed that they were not able to hijack an actual topps design masquerading as o-pee-chee (like they had for 2002 vintage) and also that they eschewed the variations that made o-pee-chee cards so great during the late 1970's through the early 1990's.

that said, they did have some cards that weren't in those original o-pee-chee releases such as a variety of inserts and even game used cards. the game used cards are quite colorful, and i've had this one featuring a trio of twins 

in my "meaningful and just because" catch-all mini-collection for quite some time. by the way, i think it was a huge miss to not line up the players - joe nathan, joe mauer, and michael cuddyer - with their positions - p, c, and o - respectively.

i was also sure to pick up this one featuring a trio of dodgers - andre ethier, james loney, and matt kemp

early on as well.

it took me a bit longer to add the other true dodger relic cards to my collection, but i have them now. they feature russell martin

along with fellow backstops victor martinez and joe mauer, and chad billingsley

with the guy who was really roberto hernandez but went by fausto carmona and future dodger zack greinke.

that was it as far as dodgers on the official checklist, but i spied a couple other cards that i could reasonably consider dodger cards, like this brad penny card

that he shares with a couple of roys - oswalt and halladay.  penny is shown as a dodger but listed with his new team, the red sox.  he also shows up on a card with josh beckett and aj burnett

on a card where all three players could have used some "now with..." text. same for this last one, which features takashi saito along with brad lidge and billy wagner

each of whom were on the move between the 2008 and 2009 seasons. 

2009 o-pee-chee was a fun set to collect, but it certainly wasn't o-pee-chee in anything other than name. if only there were some "now with..." sprinkled throughout!