Catching Up on Some 2020 Things

It's been nearly six months since my last post, and quite a lot has happened since then. COVID continued to rage on (and still does), Alex Trebek passed away, and Blogger pushed a terrible new interface onto us. What a sad, strange, weird year. Emphasis on the sad. 

Of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the Los Angeles Dodgers won the 2020 World Series, their first in 32 years and their first championship during my lifetime. Some good things did happen in 2020. 

I don't have much of an excuse for my absence over the last several months. Work got super busy when August rolled around, cards were hard to find, and I simply didn't feel up to scanning, updating my checklists, and blogging. I suppose I can blame it on 2020 or just on a bunch of little things. As Hank Scorpio says, "Can't argue with the little things, it's the little things that make up life." 

With the exception of a small purchase at a card shop in Ohio and a fun Christmas gift from my dad, I haven't added any new cards since the summer. So I figured it's a good time to catch up on a few trades from 2020 I never got around to posting about. 

Before I do so, I'd encourage anyone I owe cards to to reach out either in the comments, email, or Twitter. I don't think I'm in debt to anyone, and I'll be going back through old emails etc. to double check, but I just want to be sure. Now back to our regularly scheduled program...

We'll start first with a pair of cards sent my way from Nate (The Bucs Stop Here). I believe Nate managed to get his hands on some Bowman last Summer and was kind enough to send some of the Dodgers my way, including a super shiny Dustin May rookie card. May didn't wind up winning Rookie of the Year in 2020, but he was a solid piece for the eventual champions. Plus he did this to Manny Machado. Nasty!

A shiny Tony Gonslin was also included in this package, and like Dustin May, Gonsolin played a pivotol role in the Dodgers rotation in 2020. He narrowly missed out on Rookie of the Year honors himself. 

Next up, some "old" cards from GCRL. A handful of Dodgers from 1990 Flagship has pushed me closer to completing the team set. Just five more cards will close the door on 1990, and I'm getting closer to completing the entire decade. 

I'm also inching closer to completing the team sets of the 1980s, and this deal officially completes the 1987 Flagship set--my first completed team set in the 1980s. All seven cards below hail from the Traded series, an area that has prevented me from finishing out many of my sets from the decade. In fact, I have 74% of all 1980s Flagship Dodgers, but these pesky Traded cards stand in my way of completing most of the sets. I suppose one of my goals for 2021 will be to finally finish these off. 

Thanks for the cards, guys!

I'm hoping to get back into the rhythm of things and post regularly in 2021, so stay tuned. I've still got a few trades to cover after all. 

More of the Same

Earlier this month I walked away from a Target grocery run with several boxes of cards. I wrote about the first two boxes here and here, and today I'll recap the final one. This time we're talking Series Two.

I'll give it to you right at the top--none of the Series Two I opened held any hits, variations, or Luis Robert cards. If you're looking for those, you'd best stop reading now.

No, these boxes were pretty par from the course and included a steady diet of base cards and the occasional insert.

I'm not typically a big fan of insert sets that focus on a single player (the Gleyber Torres set from a year or two ago was annoying), though I'm okay with this Players of the Decade set featuring Mike Trout. Trout will go down as one of the greatest players of all-time, so that's more excusable than a rookie from New York.

I attempted to purchase the Dodgers team set on eBay when the set was released, but didn't find any listings with a low enough price. So I'll be chasing these the old-fashioned way. These boxes held four of the twelve Dodgers from S2.

A Turkey Red Joc Pederson dropped out of a pack, and I'll happily take it. Joc was nearly traded to the Angels in the offseason, but he's still a Dodger for now. Not so sure that'll be the case after this season.

Rounding out these cards with another Turkey Red, this time of an absolutely jacked Rickey Henderson. I'm not sure which stint with Oakland this photo is from, though I wonder if it coincided with Canseco and McGwire's--looks like he could be a third Bash Brother.

Something Cool and Yellow

Night Owl said it best in his blog post yesterday: "Just about anything good that happens this month I consider a birthday gift."

Like Night Owl, my birthday was earlier this month, and I'm lumping together all of the good things that happen in July as a gift from the cosmos. I've received several card packages over the last few weeks from fellow bloggers and readers, and though I doubt many (if any) had my birthday in mind, I've decided to consider them all birthday gifts anyway.

Earlier this week a bubble mailer arrived, and I knew it to be an intentional birthday gift. After all, my dad is the one who sent it.

Whoooooooooooooo!

A 1959 Topps Sandy Koufax. It's the first Sandy Koufax card from his playing days in my collection (though he is featured on the 1966 NL K Leaders card #226 with Cloninger and Drysdale which I also have). Still, this is the first proper Koufax card I get to call my own. 

My dad and I had a conversation about possible birthday gifts a couple of weeks ago, and this card happened to make its way into our talk. Little did I know it'd be in my hands just a few days later.

The card is in pretty good shape, with the borders being the big knock against it. I'm not a condition snob, so it does not bug me at all. 

And the last thing I'll do is complain about owning a Sandy Koufax card. 

I'm not sure why the back scanned so dark, but here it is. 

It's strange to see Koufax's numbers so mediocre. This is still early in his career, but a 4.20 career ERA certainly doesn't seem right. Koufax was still a couple of years away from his first otherworldy season, and ended his career with a stellar 2.76 ERA. 

I absolutely love the cartoon here, though there are at least a few hitting coaches that might take exception with this guy's approach at the plate. Most glaring is his hand position--now I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure holding them together on the bat doesn't lead to much success. FWOOOSH. 

2020 has been a terrible year so far, though July has had it's moments. 

Baseball is back. I took some vacation. And now I added a Koufax to the collection. 

Not bad birthday gifts at all. 

Thanks, Dad!

Making Progress

It's goal-setting season at work. Time to sit down, evaluate my performace, and check off the boxes to say I'm on my way to accomplishing my goals for 2020.  

Except I'm not doing that.

When I say it's goal-setting season, I actually mean it's time to revisit the goals I was supposed to have made at the beginning of the year. 

I didn't do that either. 

Now before you assume I'm a bad employee, I should mention that I'm actually exempt from setting goals in my role. Most everyone in the company sets goals, but the sales team doesn't have to jump through these hoops. Our goals are numbers based and assigned to us late in Q1. I don't have a say in what my goals actually are. 

Things are a bit different over here in the collecting world. 

I set goals for myself. I have the freedom to adjust them throughout the year or completely drop them if I wish. If I don't meet my goals, I won't be fired or disciplined. Heck, I can have the same goal year after year. It doesn't matter. 

To put it succinctly, my collecting goals are arbitrary. 

And heading into this year, I really only had one goal: make progress on my Dodgers team sets for Topps Flagship. 

And thanks to many of you, I've accomplished that.

Greg over at The Collective Mind recently sent over a handful of Dodgers from various sets, including the 1983 and 1978 cards you see above. Don't be fooled by the scan on these '78s, Greg didn't cut off bottom part of these cards--that was the work of my auto-scanner. The full cards are resting nicely in their binder, and I didn't feel the need to scan them again. 

With these additions, my 1978 set is now 79% complete (23/29) and the 1983 set is now at 66% (21/32). Definitely making progress.

Perhaps the best cards in this package were actually a pair from 2014 Update: Clayton Kershaw and Chone Figgins. Both of these cards were on my Most Wanted list on the sidebar and now that they're in hand, I can officially say the 2014 set is complete.

It's just the sixth team set completed to date, but I'm making progress. 

Bo over at Baseball Cards Come to Life! also dropped some more Dodgers on me recently via PWE. He's made a dent in several of my checklists over the last several weeks, this time targeting 1981 and 1984. 

My progress on both of these sets trails the average for the decade (72% of the 80s completed), as 1981 sits at 56% (18/32) while 1984 checks in a bit higher at 68% (21/31). I've yet to complete my first set from the '80s, though I imagine that will happen at some point this year. 

I'm not exactly sure where I started the year, but I'm currently at 51% total for all Dodgers team sets. I was around 47% just a couple of months ago, so it is nice being over the halfway marker now. Still, with only six of the sets complete there is more work to be done. 

So don't mind me if I continue to have the same goal year in and year out. There's always progress to be made. 

There's a Haircut You Can Set Your Watch To

As my vintage collection has grown, so has my knowledge of the Dodgers from years past--or at least I thought. Sometimes I encounter a card that has me thinking, "Who the hell is this guy?"

Case in point. Who the hell is Stan Williams? This doesn't even look like a Dodgers baseball card. In fact, when I first saw this card fall out of an envelope from Gavin over at Baseball Card Breakdown, my first thought was of Johnny Unitas thanks to a clip from the Simpsons I've seen at least eleventy hundred times.

Turns out Mr. Williams here had a decent fourteen-year career as a pitcher for six different ball clubs, including the Dodgers. Good for him.

My recognition skills aren't any better if you put a team card in front of me, especially if it's vintage.  I recognize maybe two or three dudes from this photo: Don Sutton, Don Drysdale, and maybe Walt Alston? Manny Mota is probably somewhere in this mix, too?

Who knows.

And it doesn't matter if it's vintage! I have a terrible time identifying just about anyone from most team cards. 

Tommy Lasorda is named at the top right, taking away an easy target for me, but any one else I name from this card is strictly from my own knowledge of the early-80s Dodgers--the photo provides almost nothing other than a few jersey numbers. I can make out Baker, Garvey, Cey, and Lopes. I assume Russell has got to be in this mix, too, but I couldn't pick him out of a lineup no matter how clear the photo is. (I Googled him as I wrote this, and he's a handsome fellow, though Grampa Simpson might have something to say about those sideburns.) 

Gavin also sent me a great mix of cards from the 1972 set, pushing me to just about the halfway point of completion. And hey, I recognize some of these dudes! Willie Davis. Maury Wills. Claude Osteen. These are the names and faces I recognize. Heck, Maury Wills is one of the first Dodgers I put to memory, though I don't know why. I knew he stole a lot of bases, and I always wondered who would win in a foot race: Maury Wills or Dave Roberts.

Gavin sent these cards my way after he claimed the very first Trade Pile back in June--thanks for that! I'm always thrilled to add more Dodgers to my binders, especially so if it's vintage. 

Just don't expect me to know who the hell anyone is. 

Rarities

On May 23, 2002, Shawn Green had one of the greatest offensive days in baseball history. Green hammered four home runs (tying a major league record), going 6-for-6 with seven RBIs and setting the major league record for total bases in a single game (19). 

In 2015 Topps released "Rarities" and insert set in Update Series that chronicled Green's phenomenal perfomance.

But it's not the first card (and certainly not the last) to record Green's performance. Just take a look at the backs of these cards. 

These three Shawn Green cards came to me via Nick over at Dime Boxes, and they'll fit nicely into my Green binder. I haven't taken a look yet, but I'm sure I'd be able to find at least a few more cards capturing Green's four-dinger game.

Alongside the Green cards, Nick also sent along one of my Most Wanted cards: 2006 Topps Brad Penny. There's nothing special about this card, though it was one of the two cards remaining from the 2006 Topps set I was missing. With this added to the binder, I'm now just missing the Dodgers Team Card (#612)--it has been added to the Most Wanted list on my sidebar. 

Nick also kindly included a handful of Heritage Dodgers which I can now mark off my lists. The Connor Joe and Josh Sborz are new to my eyes (I've seen the Kelly and Barnes cards elsewhere on the blogosphere), and I had no idea these guys were even featured in the set. I find Joe the most interesting card here, as he's actually never suited up for the major league Dodgers. The Giants selected him in the Rule 5 draft last year, and he totaled 16 plate appearances up in the Bay Area, notching just one hit. The Giants cut bait and he returned him to the Dodgers where he played for Triple-A OKC for the remainder of the season. Anyone know if he ever received a card as a Giants player?

With the exception of the Lux, all of the above cards were sent via a very full PWE after Nick claimed Trade Pile #2. A couple of weeks earlier, Nick sent another PWE (equally packed with cards) which included one of the first Gavin Lux rookie cards in my collection (it joins his base card from S1). I dig the design on these "Spring Has Sprung" cards. 

Since we're on the topic of rookies, I had better mention this beautful Cody Bellinger from 2017 Heritage. I'm including this in my Topps Heritage binder, so I will definitely need to add another to my Bellinger binder. His rookie cards are priced fairly high, so I'm not thrilled that I'm still missing  three (!) of his four base cards from 2017 Update, too. I try not to spend too much money on modern cards, but I think I'll need to take the hit to pick up his rookies sooner rather than later. 

I'm much more willing to spend money on vintage cardboard, but with guys like Nick around I may be able to save a few bucks here and there. He sent me a few fantastic vintage pieces, including this 1968 Topps Game Claude Osteen. It's the first card from this set in my collection, and gosh does it look good. I've long been a sucker for floating head cards (I have no idea why), and the colors on this card are tremendous--not to mention they coincide with the Dodgers color palette perfectly. I had no plan to chase the Dodgers from this set, but that may change. 

A pair of 1981 Scratch-Offs also dropped out of the PWE, featuring Dusty Baker and Steve Garvey. I don't have too many Scratch-Offs, and the early-80s are still underrepresented in my Dodgers box, so these are a nice addition. 

My favorite card to come from these PWEs has got to be this 1959 Solly Drake card. Before opening up the envelope, I'd never even heard of Solly Drake. Though he didn't have a long MLB career, he and his brother Sammy were the first African-American siblings to play in the Majors. That's a pretty cool accomplishment. 

The reason this Drake card stood out to me, however, is becuase it is in absolutely phenomenal shape. The corners and sides are sharp, it's crease-free, and it doesn't have that sort of flimsy feel you get with well-loved vintage cards. I initially thought is was some sort of reprint, but as far as I can tell it's the real deal. 

I don't really care about condition on vintage cards all that much--send me all of your well-loved, creased, and ripped vintage!--but when a 61-year-old card feels as if it just came out of a pack, it feels like a bit of a rarity. 

The Anatomy of a Team Set

Sometime last summer I finally completed the task of putting together the checklists of my needs for all of the Topps Dodgers team sets. That was an accomplishment in and of itself, and I love working with spreadsheets. I had a difficult time tracking down team checklists, but I managed. Or so I thought.

Earlier this year, a fellow blogger commented on one of my posts and suggested I look at TCDB to confirm my checklists. I'm glad I did. Somewhere along the way, ninety-nine cards got lost in the shuffle and weren't on my checklists. Oops. 

Bo of the always great Baseball Cards Come to Life recently helped me on my never-ending quest to complete these Dodgers team sets and make up lost ground by sending me several needs from the '78, '79, and '80 sets. 

Steve Garvey and Manny Mota are names I know, but Bill North is a new one. He played just a single season in Dodger blue, batting .234/.371/.266 in 1978. These additions put me just eight cards away from completing the 1979 set. 

Flash forward a year to 1980, and we get another trio of new cards, inlcuding another appearance from Mr. Mota. Manny ended his career with 150 pinch hits, a record he held until 2001 when Lenny Harris of the Mets broke his record. Harris ended his career with 212 pinch hits (still the record) and only Mark Sweeney (with 175) has surpassed Mota's 150. I'm now halfway (14/28) to completing the 1980 set. 

Oh look, it's another Manny Mota sighting! And Tommy Lasorda! And Davy Lopes! And Rick Monday! A lot of Dodgers legends here, and they're all welcome in my binders. Bo added nine new cards to my 1978 set, leaving me just eight away from completing the set. 

I'm fairly confident I can complete the 1978 and 1979 sets this year, which world technically make them the earliest sets completed to date. "But what about the 1975 set you completed a few weeks ago?" you ask. Well, those darned incomplete checklists hit 1975 hard, and what I thought was a completed set was actually nine cards short. Bummer. 

The checklists have since been adjusted, though now I wonder what cards actually constitute the team set. League Leaders? World Series recaps? For now, my checklists have 'em all. But now I pose that question to you:

What cards should be (or should not be) part of a Topps team set? 

Aren't Baseball Cards for Old Men?

A coworked recently asked me via online chat, "Why do you blog about baseball cards? Isn't that an old man thing? Do they even still make baseball cards?" 

Sheesh. Cue the eye roll and massive sigh. 

That was a trio of absurd questions, questions I'm sure we've all been asked and are tired of answering--especially you old man bloggers (I'll let you determine what's considered old, but it's definitely a year older than you currently are). 

I started to respond but noticed a stack of cards sent to me from Spiegel of now defunct Nomo's Sushi Platter fame in the corner of my eye. I left my coworker's questions unanswered and decided to spend some time with the cards instead. Who really wants to answer those dumb questions anyway?

This was my second swap with Speigel (my first since 2014), and boy were there some fun cards in this package.

While I've never been a huge fan of the 1970 Topps, I've grown to appreciate it more and more over the last few months. It's a simple--though sometimes bordering on boring--but distinct design with some great photography. And if we're tracking the ease in which one can build a vintage Dodgers team set, it's probably one of the least difficult sets to complete. I still have quite a ways to go to complete it, however, with only four of the twenty-eight cards in my posession.

I'm doing a bit better tracking down 1981 Topps (10/32), despite the fact that I haven't actively chased any of the cards. 1981 is not a set I see appear on the blogs all that often, and I'm okay with that. It's one of my least favorites Topps releases of all-time, at least pre-90s. 

Am I the only one who constantly confuses the 1977 and 1980 sets? There are obvious differences, but that pennant element on the top of the cards always throws me off. It's great to add another Lee Lacy card to the binders. The former Dodger was incredibly friendly when I met him a few years ago. 

One of my favorite things about blind trades is not knowing might fall out of a bubble mailer. It's like ripping open a pack but knowing bloggers typically send far better cardboard than we might find in a pack. There's no better example than the fantastic 1977 Ron Cey card above. While I initialy thought this was Cey's card from the standard Topps set, I flipped it over to discover it's actually the O-Pee-Chee card. Mon Dieu! 

In addition to knocking off a ton of my flagship needs, Spiegel included a ton of other Dodgers, including a nice mix of new cards for some of my PCs. There were simply too many great cards to show off here, so I only scanned a handful, including a sweet framed Duke, a shiny Robinson, and an elusive Kershaw rookie card. 

After sorting through all of the sweet cardboard sent my way, and might I add, what a great way to spend a Friday afternoon, I remembered those pesky questions from my coworker. 

I began to type out a longwinded response about my motivations for blogging and how much I enjoy it. I wrote about how much I love showing off the cards in my collection, how I revel  in other bloggers' accomplishments, and how I appreciate the communtiy and friendships and trades, not to mention the joy that comes from Free Card Friday and BFG. I started to write about other collectors and bloggers in their 20s and 30s and the monolith that is Topps. 

And then I deleted the whole thing. I went to the fridge to grab a beer and headed back to my office. I sent her the URL to my blog and responded "You can answer your own questions here." 

Spending Time in the Virtual Card Aisle

Over the last couple of months, my trips out into the world have been limited for obvious reasons. I leave my apartment maybe once every two weeks or so to make a trip to the grocery store, but I spend the rest of my time locked away in my cozy apartment. My circumstances probably aren't all that different from what you're likely facing, so it's no surprise I haven't picked up any cards in the Target aisle recently. 

But with all this time indoors, I have more time than ever to focus on my collection and I've turned to Sportslots to scratch my itch for cards over the last several weeks. In fact, I made a pretty big order a few weeks ago, but mindlessly got the cards organized and in binders before I remembered to scan them or write any blog posts. Oh well. 

To make up for that, I made another Sportlots order a couple weeks ago and was able to pick up about 70 new cards, all needs for my Dodgers flagship team sets. 

I tried to minimize shipping costs, so I confined all of my selections to a single seller who listed most of his cards at 18 cents a pop. I selected an arbitrary cutoff--2005--and worked my way through 2019 to fill the some of the gaps in my flagship binders. 

Despite having a decently sized Shawn Green collection, I was somehow missing his final flagship card for the Dodgers. I added the Dodgers big free-agent signing from the 2004 offseason while I was at it. 

Nostalgia has been a topic brought up on several blogs over the last few weeks--and maybe a topic I'll touch on in a future post--and these 2005 cards certainly bring back some memories. My baseball fandom and card collecting began in the early-to-mid-2000s, so this set has always been one of my favorites. 

2007, on the other hand, has always been a set I've wanted to like more than I do. I dig the fact that the cards are primarily black--hello, 1971--but they've just never had much of a personality to me. There's just not a ton of color built into the set, and I've never really understood the "four-square corners." Still, I do enjoy the fascimile autographs, especially Kuo's. I'm still 10 cards away from completing the set, but I'm inching closer.

The 2008 set is another one that sits pretty close to my heart. While I started collecting several years before this release, my earliest memory of ripping open a pack was with this set. I don't recall what I found in that pack, but most of my cards from that era of collecting days are gone now.I do remember pulling a Magglio Ordóñez bat relic around this time, though I think it was out of a pack of Topps Bazooka. 

 Is it just me, or do catachers get the best cards? 

Seriously. 

This is just a tremendous shot. Catcher's gear is coming off. Barnes and McCutchen look toward the sky, but we don't get to see the ball or the play. The blue and orange jerseys contrast perfeectly. What's not to love about a photo like this?

Besides the Barnes, I was also able to knock off several more 2019 needs. I only bought S1 last year, and I have a TON of it (anybody trying to complete their set?), so I needed to catch up on S2 and US. I'm still six cards away from being able to say I've completed the set, but I'm getting there. 

I've made considerable progress over the last several weeks, and I now have 47% of all Dodgers flagship cards produced since 1951. Not bad. That said, I've been wondering about the accuracy of my checklists/want lists for sets pre-1990s. I've stitched the checklists together from a variety of sites, but most checklists I've been able to locate don't typically list the team. Anybody have suggestsions for confirming my set needs?