this shouldn't be left unacknowledged

last thursday was national left handers day which is a day usually celebrated by night owl, who sent me some cards back in february. the scans have languished long enough; it's time to share.

first up, of course, is a lefty.

that's a 2022 topps rainbow foil parallel, and this is a 2019 panini donruss optic mvp insert

which is fitting for the 2014 national league mvp.

next up is a "hybrid" lefty - freddie freeman throws right but bats left, and this is a 2023 topps update black gold insert

freeman showed up again with his 2022 topps gallery card, and he was paired with full fledged righty andre jackson

jackson's 2022 topps gold label class 1 black parallel

was also included.

from 2022 panini donruss, here are a couple of rightys - walker buehler and mookie betts

the betts card is the holo red parallel, and not the "red" parallel which is actually red and white striped (and numbered).

righty betts is also represented by his 2022 topps stadium club trophy hunters insert

and he has had good success in hunting trophies indeed.

more rightys - 2021 panini chronicles albert pujols

2022 topps stadium club justin turner red foil parallel

2023 panini donruss andy pages holo orange parallel

2024 topps archives teoscar hernandez black foil parallel

and, to show that pitchers can have parallel fun as well, here's a 2017 topps gypsy queen jose de leon parallel

those are all parallels of base cards, but inserts get the parallel treatment as well. this is a 2022 topps fire trea turner en fuego gold minted parallel

and i'll end the haul from night owl with a "base" 2022 panini mosaic max muncy straight fire insert

muncy, obviously, bats left.

now, while night owl didn't send me the next card, he was responsible for it getting added to my collection

that's a 1992 topps pre-production tommy lasorda gold card. that lasorda card is among my favorite dodger cards of all time, thanks to the skipper jogging with gary carter, kevin gross, john candelaria, orel hershiser, and bobby ojeda. anyway, here's the back:

i did not know of this card's existence until night owl posted about it. apparently, there is another variation with an oval on the back instead of the diamond. i won't be chasing that, but i did add a second version of the card to my collection so that i could put one in my dodger stadium mini-collection.

here's the actual gold parallel as it was eventually put out by topps

and there was also a "winner" version available by mail-in

while the actual cards added the "manager" box above the "dodgers" box, the biggest difference from pre-production to production was the back

gone is the text and the larger photo of dodger stadium, and in are the stats and a smaller photo. a;so added to the final version are tommy's vitals - height, weight, and handedness. in case you weren't aware, he was a lefty.

meanwhile, i tracked down some other cards on my own of another certain lefty

that may look like a 1994 topps fernando valenzuela card, but it's actually the bilingual or spanish parallel

sort of an o-pee-chee card for mexico.

finally, here's a full-on spanish card of el toro - a 1997 pacific crown collection latinos of the major leagues insert

the back shows him at the plate, which is always nice to see

thanks to greg, kershaw, tommy, fernando, and ned flanders for celebrating leftys. and additional thanks to greg for the cards!

ring that bell

today is a good day to show juan bell's 1993 leaf card. especially the back

there are two bells there, in fact, making the card pretty meta. the liberty bell, as fans of the national treasure movies will tell you, was kept in the house of pass and stow (the steeple of what is now known as independence hall). you can see "pass and" on the card, but the big item that draws your eye is the crack which occurred in the early 19th century, well after pass and stow recast the original bell.

anyway, it's independence day and there are other cards that make sense to post. over the past few months, i've picked up a couple of topps' independence day parallels.

2022 has perhaps the lamest design - here's andre jackson

design aside, this card appealed to me slightly because it is numbered 01 out of 76

and it pairs nicely with this 2025 topps heritage high numbers evan phillips "color of the year" parallel

that is bookended at 76/76.

of course, this year is 2026 which makes it the country's semiquincentennial. earlier in the year, i was looking for cards that showcased the memorial patch that the brewers wore in 2025 to honor bob uecker and came across this isaac collins gold parallel

it is very patriotically numbered 1776/2026 on the back

and, while it won't represent the uecker patch in my collection, it is unique enough to land in my "meaningful and just because" collection.

semiquincentennial means 250th, and this tommy edman purple rainbow foil parallel

is numbered to 250 as most purple parallels are these days. however, this particular one is 250/250

and so is a semiquincentennial card in and of itself. 

more traditional 4th of july appropriate cards celebrate the red, white & blue, like this 2021 panini prizm justin turner parallel

although perhaps i should have turned it upside down.

and, last but not least, here is an independence day parallel from 2026 topps featuring blake snell

in recent years, topps has put more 'merica in the design of these. here's the back

jackie robinson number!

happy birthday america! i hope you survive another 250 years, but at least get through these next couple in a recognizable fashion.

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.