an invitation from steve garvey and more via jaybarkerfan's junk

i don't know how he does it, but wes from jaybarkerfan's junk continues to find some great stuff to send my way.  he recently sent me an oversized package that contained this gem

i had never heard of sports america club, but i figure i would have signed up if i had been aware.  of course, that's when i thought it was a 1981 or 1982 endeavor, due to garvey showing up with a dodger hat on the front of the letter and the choice between donruss, topps, fleer, or 'other' as my favorite card manufacturer on the back.  however, it turns out that this was a thing in 1988 - the year after garvey retired.  here's an image of an actual sports america club kit that i found on ebay

note the presence of 1988 cards around the inset photo of garvey in a dodger helmet.  knowing it was from '88, i can say that i would not have joined, even though i was promised a personalized, signed photo of the garv himself.

wes also included a (sort of) bipping of kevin gross cards - four 1991 fleer cards

and a singular 1992 upper deck card

there was also a legitimate bipping of 2007 tristar prospects plus chris withrow cards

that's one - here are the other four

my collection went from zero of these cards to five in the matter of one package.

rounding out some of the more notable cards wes sent, we have the fantastically sunglassed steve yeager on his 1981 fleer card

pedro guerrero's last dodger card from 1988 topps

which may have been included in a sports america club kit, now that i think about it

a 1992 topps stadium club mitch webster

because nobody else is showing you mitch webster cards

a target red parallel of hanley ramirez's 2013 topps card

and a 2013 topps museum collection hyun-jin ryu

which actually did the traditional korean last name first thing. a tip of the cap to topps and to wes for another great package of dodger goodness!