to give is to receive

most of the giveaways i've hosted have been "almost free" in that claimants can have as many cards as they choose, and need only send one card back to me in return. the most recent giveaway i hosted was a true giveaway so i was a bit surprised when one of the winners, mark z, sent a few cards back my way.

mark took care of a few 1991 needs from my want list, with five cards from 1991 classic including steady eddie murray

along with brett butler, kal daniels, orel hershiser, and ramon martinez

that's the first new kal daniels card i've added to my collection in a long time! 

another 1991 need sent along was this 1991 legends sports memorabilia darryl strawberry card

new dodger strawberry was the subject of an absolute avalanche of oddball cards back then. the homecoming didn't go quite as planned but there was so much excitement early on. i really enjoy finding and receiving new-to-me dodger strawberry cards!

one more card to show, and it's a bit more modern. it's a 2013 topps chrome andre ethier blue refractor parallel

these guys are numbered to 199

i am reminded of the interesting stuff topps put on card backs in the early 2010's. in this case, the career chase of hank aaron's rbi total. ethier amassed another 152 rbi in his career after this card was printed, so he only fell 1,610 short of hammerin' hank's mark. 

that's good stuff, just like these cards. thanks mark!

bonus content!

jon from penny sleeves reached out a couple of weeks ago asking about some player collections of mine and late last week these two cards showed up in my mailbox:

1997 collector's edge masters mark brunell ripped

2000 topps tek vladimir guerrero pattern 7

pattern 7 is "hometown" and topps has "nizao bani" listed for vladdy. he was born in nizao (according to baseball reference) and bani is close by. not sure why they had two towns listed, or if nizao bani is a whole separate entity. i am also reminded that i need to get my brunell cards listed in tcdb.

anyway, more good stuff for the collection. thanks jon!

let's play hockey! and to the game?

i really do appreciate folks who trade cards through the mail. whether it's through tcdb (i have yet to complete a trade that way) or through email or blog posts, it's not a small effort these days to pull cards and get them on their way. it's even more difficult to send cards into this country at the moment, so angus of dawg day cards deserves a hearty thanks for sending me some items in return for my "almost free stuff friday" event.

plus, it is now hockey season (although it's still baseball season in my world), and the local club started out the season strong with a shutout in st. louis. i'll get to the hockey content in a moment...

i really should have held off on my post showing some of the other returns i received, as these items were en route at that time and they really do bring the international flair i alluded to in the post. first up is a near complete dodger team set of stickers from 1992 panini

however, these are the canadian version of the stickers as you could probably tell by the french position translations. it's always fun to see "premier but" on baseball cards or stickers.

missing from the set are the dodger team logo/header sticker and mike scioscia's sticker. i will for sure need to track those down. the backs of the stickers invite you to "au jeu!"

which is how they have translated "play ball". based on my rudimentary french knowledge, i would have thought that "au jeu" would be "to the game" (and not to be confused with "au jus" which is "with juice"). with these stickers printed in italy, were there some further language barriers in place? i would be interested to know how a french speaking umpire would say "play ball", and now that i think about it "to the game" sort of makes sense.

the other card that angus sent was one of my most wanted non-dodger cards - a 2013-14 o-pee-chee luc robitaille card

minimal french, even on the back

but it's understandable as there is not really any room for a bilingual bio. robitaille remains my favorite hockey player and i was happy each time he returned to the kings. i've replaced this robitaille card with a ron cey oddball on my most wanted non-dodger list, but i would think luuuuuuuuuuuuuc would reappear on that list at some point. i really need to get the rest of my collection (including my robitailles) entered into tcdb so i have better access to what i am missing.

thanks angus for the cards and for avoiding strikes and tariffs!

tales of an autumn trade

even though it's not quite officially winter, the temperatures here in the twin cities have not been autumnal at all. even when i returned from an extended trip abroad, it was colder than normal. one of the bright spots, however, was an envelope from madding at cards on cards in my pile of mail.

jackie robinson's autumn tales insert

from 2024 topps update was one of the highlights of the envelope. the back of the card tells the story of robinson stealing home in the 1955 world series to ignite the dodgers. topps decided, however, to not reuse an image of robinson stealing home in that series but rather a photo of him scoring the game winning run on june 18, 1952 against the cubs, courtesy of a gil hodges sacrifice fly. the giveaway to me was the number on the front of robinson's jersey. the dodgers only wore those numbers on their home uniforms during their last few years in brooklyn, and i've seen the images of robinson and yogi berra often enough to know that robinson stole home (yes, yogi, he was safe) at yankee stadium.

here's another good one - a shohei ohtani and yoshinobu yamamoto holiday foil parallel

i have to think that at some point topps cools it with these japanese player combo cards, but i suppose it is a way to have more ohtani cards so never mind.

kerry sent me my first look at 2024 topps stadium club with this clayton kershaw base

i'm not really a fan of the design, but i had also ordered some of this product directly from topps so now i have a fair amount of it. you'll see some of that stuff in future posts i am sure.

the other stadium club card in the envelope was a nice green parallel of ohtani

it's numbered to 199. there are green chrome refractor parallels in this year's stadium club, but those aren't numbered. go figure.

kerry still goes for some panini product, and sent me a couple of jorge de paula cards. this one is a blue ice parallel

from 2024 panini chronicles - crusade, and this one is a green laser parallel

from 2024 panini donruss. i've stopped adding panini dodger checklists to my want lists, but i will still gladly accept the cards!

kerry even went into the wayback machine and sent a 2001 pacific eric karros base card

that i needed, and also sent a needed dave hansen gold rush parallel

from 1994 score. i am down to just three or four more needs to complete that team set.

the most obscure items kerry sent, however were stickers from 1991 panini. here's the dodger logo

and here's kal daniels

when's the last time you saw a kal daniels reference on a card blog? i was pretty excited when the dodgers acquired him from the reds, but after a pretty good first year in los angeles, his knees decided that they had different plans for his career.

thanks kerry! i've already put the next envelope in the mail!