orel fixation

it's now been over 25 years since orel hershiser dominated the national league over the last few weeks of the 1988 season.  this is the newest hershiser card to join my collection, and it's one that i have coveted for quite a while.

more on that later.  i have a bunch of bulldog's cards that i've had scanned for quite some time that need to be shown.  like this 1984 dodgers police card

i think for a while, that card was marketed as a pre-rookie.  i know i was happy to have the card and the rest of the sga set in my collection.

here's a 1992 panini sticker

and a 2000 upper deck card

that upper deck card is one of my favorites of hershiser.  it marked his return to dodger blue after stops in cleveland, san francisco, and new york.

i have a few cards from his time away from los angeles, like this 1996 fleer postseason glory card

a trio of orel photos!  here's the back

which explains his postseason prowess.  he won championship series mvp awards in both the nl and al, but his luck started to run out in the 1995 world series when he suffered his first postseason loss in game 1.  he did return to win game 5, however.

i have a few hershiser relic cards, including this 2004 leaf limited card with his jersey shown in a '55' cutout

what i had wanted for a while was an oncard hershiser auto, however.  my dad had given me a signed copy of hershiser's book 'out of the blue' many years ago, but i didn't have a card.  the closest i had come for a long time was the facsimile auto on this 1995 upper deck collector's choice gold signature parallel

real hershiser autos seem to hold a premium in the secondary market.  i did find a card with a low ($10 or so) bin on ebay about a year ago, and jumped on it even though it was a sticker auto.  it's from 2001 donruss signature series.

then i finally found that 2004 topps all-time fan favorites auto with a low opening bid, and i was eventually able to get it for less than the bin prices i had seen before.

it's fantastic.  just like his 1988 season was.