dodgers, ensemble!

back in 2006, i heard about a high end product from upper deck. ultimate collection, they called it. there were two cards that featured steve garvey, and they were both multi-auto cards. i don't think i saw any surface for quite some time. fifteen years later, i have had the quad auto (numbered to 25) in my collection for quite some time, but i don't think i had even seen the version with five signatures (appropriately named "signatures 5") until just a few months ago.

now, it's mine.

yay. it's numbered to 15, and my version happens to match up with steve garvey's jersey number. that's just by coincidence. upper deck took the quad version, which featured garvey, ron cey, don sutton, and dusty baker, and added maury wills to make this card. while i am always happy to have another maury wills signed card, having him and baker on the same card is a bit off as they were never teammates.

speaking of baker and teammates, i also added the black parallel version of what was my favorite card from 2020

that's the decades' best card from 2020 topps update that celebrates the team of my youth with a very small part of baker, along with cey, lee lacy, tom lasorda, and bill north on the front. the back of the card has the serial number

which matches baker's jersey number. again, a coincidence.

my favorite cards of the year - 2020 edition

even though there is a month and a half to go in the year, i'm calling it. i know what my favorite cards of the year are.  i couldn't wait to show off this card

but more on that in a moment.

i recently introduced my mini collection focusing on my favorite cards from each year that i've been a collector. the basic gist is that i wanted to create a space for the cards that i most appreciated having in my collection in the year that they were released. these were cards that i acquired in the year that they were issued, and that i considered to be my favorites at the time. i have disallowed (most) cards that are already in other mini collections in order to avoid having a mini collection consisting of more steve garvey, double plays, and dodger stadium cards.

favorite non-dodger card: big league javier baez

sometime before the end of the year, i should have a topps now card featuring the president-elect and vice president-elect, but as happy as i am to have that card featuring joe biden and kamala harris, i still like the javy baez card from big league more.

i had a lot of fun opening my box of big league, and this card made me do a double take. i didn't see much of baez this year, but guys like him (and mookie betts and fernando tatis jr and many more) are just plain fun to watch. this card captures some of the joy he brings to the game, and with the cardinals' retired number murals in the background, it made for a great card.

favorite dodger card: topps update decades' best 1970s dodgers

oh man. when i first saw this card about a week ago, i nearly swooned. i knew from the update checklist that the dodgers had a team card in the decades' best insert set, and that they had already had ones featuring the teams from the 1950s, 1960s, 1980s, and 2010s, so i figured this one would feature the 1970s. i wondered what photo might be used, and hoped for one featuring the four dodgers to hit 30 homeruns in 1977 (steve garvey, dusty baker, ron cey, and reggie smith). this photo is almost as good!

it is a photo from game 3 of the 1978 world series, taken during player introductions.  tom lasorda is shaking hands with dusty baker (you can just see the tip of his nose and cap) as ron cey looks on. lasorda also gives us a glimpse of the jim gilliam memorial patch which is the reason i started looking for those patches and eventually put together a mini collection of cards featuring them.

the real highlight for me, however, are the other two players featured - lee lacy (!) and bill north (!!!!!!). this is the first card featuring bill north as a dodger that i have seen in 30 years or so. just awesome.  he's not in the original photo, but garvey would have been somewhere to the left behind where cey and baker are standing.

this card beats out the flagship kiké hernandez and stadium club sandy koufax cards, both of which at one time i considered to be locks for my favorite dodger card of the year. just goes to show you how powerful cards featuring players from the team of my youth can be.