apathy in the uk

on saturday i showed some cards i had received from madding, and now today i am goint to show a couple more. in an earler pwe, kerry sent a few cards including this 2022 topps uk freddie freeman 1997-98 merlin premier gold redux card

along with regular old brusdar graterol

and max scherzer cards

from the 2021 topps uk release.

i was actually in the uk for a couple of weeks last fall, and seeing these cards arrive, along with my failure to purchase any cards while actually in the uk, inspired me to add a few to a recent comc order.

here's clayton kershaw's 2022 1997-98 merlin premier gold redux card

along with a 2021 topps uk 1978-79 redux cody bellinger card

that last one gives off strong 1977 topps baseball vibes.

i also had one topps uk card sitting in my scanned folder waiting for this post, apparently. it's a 2020 topps uk clayton kershaw card

i did keep an eye out for cards during my time abroad, but saw only a few pokemon packs for sale at a tesco express (or was it a boots?) in london. i did come across some tobacco cards at a christmas market

that were all matted and ready for framing. i assume that these were all reproductions as they looked nice and were well matted - you could see the fronts and backs of each card. not sure why the backs were visible if the intent is to frame the cards. anyway, the only sport i saw was cricket so i passed.

there wasn't much of a baseball presence out and about, either. i probably saw maybe a dozen items of clothing related to major league baseball, and i would guess that 11 of the people wearing the gear were doing so as fashion rather than fandom. most of the items were yankee hats, too. i suppose this is why there are so many packs of uk baseball available here in the states in those drug store repacks (foreshadowing tomorrow's post).

maybe it's different in japan, given that country's high level of interest in the sport. i have no current plans to go, but if and when i do i would hope to be able to add to my topps japan collection that consists of clayton kershaw's 2021 card

at the moment.

this sort of thing is not new, as you all know. topps has printed and distributed cards in countries other than the us dating back at least to the 1960's. i recently decided to add another topps venezuelan card to my collection, and chose the 1966 jim lefebvre card

for sentimental reasons. the back is pretty typical of venezuelan cards

as they were mostly put in albums by collectors.

i also added another foreign 1960's card to my collection recently - this one being don sutton's 1968 o-pee-chee card

the 1968 o-pee-chee backs are easily discerned from their topps counterparts because of the color

as well as the print tagline. 

finally, i also picked up a psa 9 specimen of steve garvey's 1979 o-pee-chee card

i didn't know that there were any '79 opc cards that centered and clean. they sure didn't look like that in the packs that i opened in southern saskatchewan back in the summer of '79.

i wonder if there were cards to be found in south korea a couple of weeks ago?

joy of a complete roy set

today is the 103rd anniversary of jackie robinson's birth, so i figured i would show some cards that are associated with the annual award named in his honor - the rookie of the year award.

the cards make up a 14-card set from 1995 given to season ticket holders that celebrates the dodgers (through 1994) to be voted as the rookie of the year in the national league (or in jackie robinson's case, the rookie of the year in major league baseball). using relatively new chrome technology, the set included jackie robinson (1947), don newcombe (1949), joe black (1952), jim gilliam (1953), frank howard (1960), jim lefebvre (1965), ted sizemore (1969), rick sutcliffe (1979), steve howe (1980), fernando valenzuela (1981), steve sax (1982), eric karros (1992), mike piazza (1993), and raul mondesi (1994).

let's see the cards!

that last one there is just a blank back header. 

thanks to the uncertainty surrounding rookies regarding the remainder of their careers, there are some guys included here that don't have many cards. in fact, these may be the only post-career cards of jim lefebvre (as a player) and ted sizemore outside of the 1990 target dodgers set. plus, any newer rick sutcliffe cards most likely don't show him as a dodger.

it took me about 20 years to pick up this set although i think i only knew about its existence for a couple of years before i found one on ebay for a very nice price. i think the purchase came when i was between blogs, so i never featured it in a post, and i don't think i've ever seen it featured on any other blog.

i would imagine the set was issued at least in part as an effort to reward season ticket holders while the players' strike was still going on. whether it was issued prior to the start of the 1995 season or not, it certainly was issued too soon to include 1995 rookie of the year hideo nomo, and i don't believe there was any sort of update made. of course, since then, the dodgers have also produced rookies of the year in 1996 (todd hollandsworth), 2016 (corey seager), and 2017 (cody bellinger).

i am not sure what the deal is, but you can see some blotchy spots on some of the cards. there is no surface damage to the cards, so i guess it is just reflective of the chromium holochrome technology of the times.  here's a glimpse at the back of jackie's card:

the card backs are different colors, but have the same information.

it was a source of pride to me as a young dodger fan to have four consecutive rookies of the year from 1979 to 1982, and i was secretly disappointed in greg brock that he couldn't bring the award home in 1983. of course, a decade later the dodgers were on their way to five straight rookies of the year which was fun to witness.

this has to be my favorite dodger produced set (even when considering the massive aformentioned target set), and it would be great to see an update someday with those four (or hopefully more) subsequent rookie of the year award winners.

introducing my favorite cards of the year mini collection, starting with my first year as a collector

one of the things i've been doing with my collection during the work from home months has been to attempt to fully separate keeper cards from non-keepers. i had things pretty well organized in that regard, but there were a few monster boxes that were in purgatory. i've been going through them and identifying cards to trade, sell, or keep.

as a result, i've been working to formalize my mini collections to fully encompass the cards that i want to keep. i already have a "just because" mini collection, but i decided to formalize what was a subset of that collection in to a "favorite cards of the year" mini collection.  p-town tom used to host a favorite card of the year contest each year, and so i already had a few cards identified and included in this collection. however, i've expanded on this concept and have gone back to add my favorite* cards from each year since i began collecting.

the asterisk is there because, in order to avoid this collection just being a repeat of cards that are already in my player collections (mainly steve garvey) or other mini collections (dodger stadium, double plays, etc), i've disqualified some cards from being eligible. i will have two cards for each year - one non-dodger and one dodger.  i want to stress that this is not a revisionist history collection - these were the cards that i truly appreciated the year that they were released. as a result, they are mostly base cards and not inserts or other cards that were chased down later.

i will start things off with 1978, which was the first year that i collected cards.

favorite non-dodger card: topps doug ault

i, along with many others, have extolled the beauty of ault's card in the past. when i was 7 and first saw this card, i recognized that it was different from the other cards in the set. it was a rare in-game photo that was used, but there was no active action, unlike the nlcs and alcs cards, felix millan's card, roy white's card, and others.  the rookie cup and the green grass and the brown dirt really spoke to me. the angle of the photo was also different, as if it were taken from the stands - a photo that i (or more realistically at the time, my dad) would have taken.

it is likely that, had there not been an american league team in southern california at the time, doug ault would have been my first favorite non-dodger player largely due to this card. of course, the angels did exist, and we were in their broadcast area, so i followed the exploits of don baylor much more closely.

now when i look at this card, i also feel a sense of time. the card showcases a moment in between action that is a big part of baseball. ault with one foot out of the batter's box, and thurman munson adjusting his mask gives a portrait of activity that occurs in every game but is not often memorialized.  i love the entire 1978 topps set, and there are lots of great cards in there that i was happy to have, but the ault card stands out, and it is a perfect card to kick off this collection.

favorite dodger card: tcma the 1960's jim lefebvre

clearly, my favorite dodger card of 1978 was and is steve garvey's topps (or o-pee-chee) card. i already have a large number of those cards in various collections, and so, as mentioned up top, it was disqualified from consideration here. another card considered was ron cey's 1978 o-pee-chee card - a card which i used to have pinned up on my wall and later sent to him to be signed. that card means a lot to me, but it was already in my permanent collection.  the dodger team card and nlcs card were also front runners, but i decided to go with a different card that i was happy to have back then.  as a result, jim lefebvre gets the nod.

i purchased this card at my local lcs in 1978, and it was the first non-topps card that i owned. i was so happy to have this card, as i had learned that lefebvre was my dad's favorite player. he had a rawlings lefebvre model glove that he would use when we played catch (mine was a mike schmidt model). i also chose number 5 that year for my first little league jersey because of lefebvre (johnny oates was wearing that number for the dodgers at that time, but that was inconsequential). later on that season, lefebvre was back in a dodger uniform, as he replaced the late jim gilliam as the dodgers' first base coach for the world series that year. these days, my dad has more recollections of sandy koufax or don drysdale as his favorites, but that doesn't change my love of this card. in fact, i've still got my dad's old mitt, and i still have this card.

so there you have the first two cards inducted in to my "favorite* cards of the year" mini collection. i'll keep a running entry over at my want list site where i link to my other mini collections. i don't plan to go in chronological order with this series; in fact, the next year up will be the year 2000. 

stay tuned.

say it is so, (bazooka) joe!

p-town tom and i exchanged cards recently with great success.  i sent him a 'playing days' 1955 bowman bob lemon card for his hall of fame collection along with a 2020 topps vogelmonster, and he returned fire with some similar strength.

this 1965 bazooka tommy davis

is half of the team set, with the other being sandy koufax. this is my first 1960's bazooka card!

and now here's my second! a  1968 bazooka jim lefebvre

i am always happy to add another lefebvre card to the collection. he holds a special place in my fandom, so i was really excited to see that card in the package.

tom also came through with kiké!

this particular card will go in my dodger stadium collection.

thank you tom!

giving up 5

i'm a numbers guy. math has always been my thing, and numbers speak to me. i like numbers and the absolute certainty of things associated with numbers.  i'm also a baseball guy, which makes sense given all of the numbers associated with the sport through statistics and uniforms.  

i used to remember my high school locker combination by using dodger players (dusty baker - fernando valenzuela - pedro guerrero). that's 12 - 34 - 28.  i would remember license plates using dodger players. the number portion of my first car's license was pee wee reese - davey lopes - steve sax.  most of the dodger players i referenced for these tasks were players from the team of my youth (the 1977 and 1978 dodgers), although some like pee wee and duke snider and jackie robinson came from before my time, and some others, like fernando and petey and saxy came after that and earned their place in my numerical lexicon.

one number, however, that never belonged to johnny oates (who was on those dodger pennant winning teams) was 5.  that belonged to my dad's favorite player (and the 1965 national league rookie of the year), jim lefebvre.

i recently picked up his 1971 ticketron dodgers card, which displays the red numeral nicely.  

for almost 40 years, number 5 has been, to me, lefebvre.  never mike marshall or dave hansen or even nomar garciaparra, who was for a while my favorite dodger.  today, however, i think i am making a change.

meet the new number 5, who is coincidentally the 2016 national league rookie of the year.  that would be corey seager.

long may he reign.