a team set 30 years in the waiting

about three years ago, i came across this 1996 topps mike piazza card

here's the back:

if you are familiar with the 1996 topps set, you know that the card front and back are a mismatch. the "star power" subsets had a monthly breakdown of stats. here are the two piazza card backs from the 1996 topps set for your reference:

however, i didn't buy the card because of the back situation - i bought it because it has this addition under the topps logo

that graphic (which matches a jersey patch the dodgers wore) denotes the 35th season of dodger stadium which occurred in 1996 (note to topps - this is how heritage buybacks should be named, as this wasn't the 35th anniversary but rather the 35th year that the dodgers played in the stadium. saying a 1977 card has a 50th anniversary in 2026 is just wrong).

sorry for the rant. 

a little bit of research told me that this was a 1996 topps team topps dodgers card, from a factory sealed set! now, this predates the team sets that are sequentially numbered with a team related prefix by ten years, and i was very unaware that this set even existed.

since finding the piazza card, i've had a couple of ebay searches running with no luck until late last year when someone in alaska of all places listed this 

for sale. still sealed! i placed a bid and wound up being the only bidder, winning the set for less than the current blister team sets sell for.

i did consider keeping it sealed, but ultimately opened it to reveal the full set within:

the backs are identical to the flagship backs - here's nomo's card back

with just those two piazza backs being swapped. 

i took a photo of the back of the packaging, because it held more information

the package contained a 16 card team set, plus a bonus 15 card pack and a bonus "big" topps card. here are the team set and the bonus card pack - front:

and back:

even though there are rockies on both sides of the bonus pack, it's not a rockies team set. there are just 13 random cards from 1996 topps in between with no additional logos. in fact, only a few teams were given these team sets - braves, orioles, cubs, white sox, indians, dodgers, yankees, mariners, and rangers - according to tcdb. each set had a special logo (some have a team specific logo like the dodgers and some have a "team topps" logo). to make things stranger, these were sold only at walmart (again, according to tcdb).

here's a scan of the cardboard insert

with a checklist of sorts on the back

so where is this big topps card? i was thinking it would be nestled in there somewhere, but no - it was the back of the package

so it's just a normal nomo card printed on a bigger piece of cardboard. weird. here's the back:

what an oddball thing.

assuming there is a 2026 topps factory dodger team set, i think i will add this to the running list of team set posts i've made. now if only i could find a complete set of the 2004 fleer dodger team set - the one with the blue design....

thankful for penny sleeves

it was great to hear from jon and then receive some cards from him shortly before thanksgiving. he's always been a supporter of my collection and blogs and he provided me with some great content for both!

first up is a 2011 topps lineage diamond anniversary parallel of an out of place vladimir guerrero

i think we are in for a host of parallels - even more than last year - with topps celebrating its diamond anniversary (again?) this year. 75 years since the 1951 set was released. in 2011 they were celebrating their 60th and i guess both 60 and 75 are diamond anniversaries. go figure.

here are some reprint cards of some dodger greats

to be exact, these are reprints of 1948 swell sport thrills cards of pete reiser, jackie robinson, pee wee reese, and carl furillo. the set was at one time included in tcdb, but it has since been removed for some reason.

at first i thought maybe jon had sent doubles - a mini-bipping! - of this zack wheat 2013 panini cooperstown lumberjacks insert

but those are two different cards with different numbers on the back. a closer look reveals plenty of difference between the two cards. and, there is a third one to be tracked down, which is very similar to the second and has "consistently great" text in place of the "1959" text

on to los angeles now, with a couple of mike piazza cards

that's his sparkly 1995 score summit nth degree parallel and this is a 1997 fleer ultra season crowns insert

that i would have sworn to be a pacific card.

thank you jon and wishing you all the best in 2026!

a bird in the air (and more) from a birds on the bat collector that blends with other recent pickups

so i have run out of different ways to title a post featuring (mostly) cards that were sent by madding of cards on cards. "cards from cards on cards" is stale and not all of the cards are "dodgers on cards from cards on cards", so why not mix it up.

as the title of the post implies (very strongly), here is a card of a bird (a blue jay, to be exact) in the air that was sent to me by kerry.

it's a 2000 fleer ultra tony batista gold medallion edition card, and fits oh so nicely into my double play collection.

seeing it arrive reminded me that i had picked up some other new-to-me double play cards, such as this 1993 fleer casey candaele card

and these two 1992 leaf black gold parallels featuring carlos baerga and tim naehring

one more double play card i finally added to my collection is pat kelly'2 1994 fleer flair card. it features at least two double play images - one on the front

and one on the back

and the larger image on the front could be a dp pivot as well. only the inset photo on the front officially counts for my collection, however.

back to cards from cards on cards (had to work that in somewhere), here are a couple of 2025 panini donruss cards i received

kellon lindsey was the dodgers' first round pick in 2024, and he spent most of this season in a-ball. mike piazza was famously a 63rd round pick of the dodgers. up until now, the only 2025 donruss card i had was pee wee reese's. however, a couple of months ago i added a 2025 panini donruss optic card to my collection

that's piazza's green scope prizm parallel. it is numbered to 65 on the back

and was a cheap add to an ebay purchase i made. i don't think it was more than a buck.

kerry also sent some 2025 panini crusade cards to me - here are kendall george and bobby miller

george was the dodgers' first round pick in 2023 and spent this past year playing pretty well at the high-a level. miller, on the other hand, hasn't been able to replicate his 2023 success and spent most of last year at triple-a.  here's lindsey again

with a blue cracked ice parallel.

these aren't the first crusade cards i've seen from 2025, as steve garvey is on the checklist and i quickly snapped up a couple of his base cards

one for the pc and one for the dodger collection. here's the back

some pretty complimentary text there. garvey hit .417 (10 for 24) in the 1981 world series (and even walked twice!) but he had no extra base hits or rbi so i am not sure he was "especially" clutch in that series. he was, for a brief moment, announced as one of the three mvp winners (his name was mixed up with steve yeager's) but i don't think that series was his best in terms of "clutch".

of course, you know there are parallels, and i have picked up four of them

those are silver, red, and blue. this one is purple

and it is refreshing to not see them named "velocity" or whatever. the last three are numbered, by the way.

back to licensed cards now, with a 2025 topps shohei ohtani 1990 insert

and a freddie freeman holofoil parallel

courtesy of kerry. their swings, or follow-throughs, are pretty similar.

those two cards match up with a couple of 2025 bowman cards i added to a sportlots order recently

freeman's card is interesting because of the clock. this is one of the few cards i've seen with the clock so pronounced, and i am not sure why it is at over a minute. it's not a time clock (it's not 1:05 in the afternoon) it's the pitch clock, and i don't think freddie is in the on deck circle. not sure why he'd be in the box ready to go so early on. any thoughts?

here are a few more from kerry - a 1996 pacific ismael valdes prisms card

and a 2021 panini mosaic duke snider vintage insert

i didn't have anything in my scanned folder to match up with the valdes card, but i did have some vintage in there. i am saving that for a different post, however.

similarly, here's a 2024 topps heritage chrome silver border refractor of kyle hurt

that kerry sent. i have a post partially drafted to revisit my heritage chrome pursuits, so stay tuned for more of these sorts of cards. 

and then there is this 2025 topps hunter feduccia team color border card

kerry is the second person to send me one of these semi-rare parallels and i will show the other one in a separate post.

finally, kerry included this 2021 topps finest walker buehler card

which pairs up super nicely with buehler's autograph card from the same set

that i added a week or so before kerry's envelope arrived. i guess when you get released and are on your third team in two years, some folks start to shed your cards and so i got a really great deal (at least as far as i am concerned) on this card - $4.99! i will spend that for buehler autos all day long.

thanks kerry! as you can see, the cards you sent fit nicely in my collection alongside some other newly acquired cards. i would say "good luck ducks" but they are playing the gophers this weekend so i will say "ski u mah" instead.

defense

prior to this past weekend, only twice in my lifetime the dodgers had won back-to-back national league pennants - 1977-78 and 2017-18. neither of those instances presented an opportunity for the franchise to repeat as world series champions - in fact, the dodgers lost all four of those world series matchups. the franchise has only had two opportunities previously to repeat as world series champions - 1955-56 and 1965-66 - but fell short each time. this year, the dodgers will once again truly be able to defend their title and perhaps join a short list of franchises who have successfully done so.

the yankees, of course, but also the blue jays, reds, a's, and red sox have repeated as world series champions, and in the divisional era, you can remove boston from that list. 

anyway, on saturday morning i looked through my scanned folder to see how many dodger cards i had showing people playing defense. non-pitcher dodgers, as subject of the card, wearing a fielding glove, basically. out of 199 scanned cards, these are the ones that fit the criteria (save 1 or 2 that will show up in future posts with specific topics)

2013 topps chrome yasiel puig refractor

sure, the game's over, but puig has his glove

2021 topps cody bellinger 1986 all-star

2020 world series excitement from cody!

2021 topps mookie betts 1952 redux chrome

mookie is actually making a defensive play!

2022 topps tribute justin turner

third base defense in action!

2023 topps big league mookie betts wrapper redemption

one of the five tools on display from mookie!

2023 topps flagship collection max muncy

another actual defensive play on cardboard

2023 topps x j-rod mike piazza

definitely playing defense here

2024 leaf press pass premium retro base reflector prismatic blue

could be a shot from between innings warmups, but still. this one is numbered to 20

which is a high print run for leaf releases these days.

2024 topps chrome mookie betts all-etch

another mookie card brings us to the grand total of ten cards. that is fewer than i expected, but hey, chicks dig the long ball and card companies prefer swings.

the world series starts on friday, and i am sure i will have another post or two before then. but just in case, here's a 2003 topps tribute world series edition steve garvey gold parallel

i picked up recently. it's one for the dodger collection, meaning i now own 2% of the print run

63 is not meaningful in terms of garvey, but it is a year that the dodgers won the world series (by sweeping the yankees). a couple of weeks from now we will know if the dodgers were able to defend their title successfully or not!