what can nick do for you?

obviously, the title up there is a play on the slogan for ups - what can brown do for you.  nick, in this case, is everyone's favorite dime box digger, and proprietor of the blog that got my vote for blog of the year last year.  and what he can do for you is send you some great cards that you didn't even know that you needed.  including some cards of, you guessed it, kevin brown.  so my play on words doesn't really work, but it's late at night and i need to get this trade post cranked out and scheduled.

this here is a 1999 fleer mystique card

that nick found for me in what i assume to be a dime box.  or maybe it's a flea market find.  or a yard sale pickup.  who knows.  this next one looks like he had to go into the matrix to set it free. it's a 2000 topps own the game insert of kevin brown

this same insert appeared in topps chrome and topps limited releases that year.  yes, topps gave us a crossover parallel insert set.  very strange.  the precursor to upper deck's starquest and that yankee history megaset from a few years back.

nick also found a couple of upper deck cards of gary sheffield that used the same photo.  compare this 2000 upper deck ovation superstar theater insert

with this 2000 upper deck ultimate victory card

kind of the 'topps stars' effect, if you know what i mean.

nick located some cards of a great dodger from yesteryear who doesn't get a lot of play from the card companies - tommy davis.  this is a 2001 upper deck sp legendary cuts card

and this one is a 2013 panini golden age card

these go well with the golden age auto i received from too many verlanders recently.

another dodger from the early los angeles days that we don't see too often is john roseboro.  nick found a 2004 upper deck sp legendary cuts card of him, too.

the dodgers had a nice group of players in that set, with the likes of bill russell, dusty baker, tommy lasaorda, reggie smith, and steve garvey joining the usual reese-campy-robinson-drysdale types.

here's a very shiny 2004 bowman's best chin-lung hu card that i had not seen before opening the envelope from nick

at first i thought is was a chin-feng chen card because it seemed more like a late 1990's bowman's best  card.  of course, chen was still with the dodgers in 2004, while hu was just in his first year of a ball.

up next is a 2003 upper deck play ball dolph camilli reprint

this is a reprint of the 1941 play ball issue, and i believe the photo is the same one used for camilli's 1961 fleer card.  it is interesting to me that the world's fair patch was 'removed' in both the original and this reprint play ball release.  of course, it may not be the same photo, and this could just be camilli's signature pose.  kind of like how don sutton 'suttons'.

last, but not least, nick found me a card from the 1977-80 tcma the war years set.  it's the first one of these in my collection, too.  this is lewis riggs

riggs was a third baseman who joined the dodgers in 1941 after a few successful seasons in cincinnati (he was part of their 1940 world championship club), and he helped the dodgers reach the fall classic that year.  in 1942, riggs joined the armed forces and served for three years during world war ii.  he returned to the dodgers in 1946, appearing in just one game before the team released him.   i knew none of this before i saw this card and looked riggs up.

so, that's what nick can do for you - find a bunch of cool cards that inspire you to learn about history.  i can't wait for my next lesson.  thanks for the cards nick!

too few dodgers

i ordered some cards from comc in november, but wound up cutting a few from my shopping cart for one reason or another.  not too long after i received my cards, dennis at too many verlanders announced that he was making a purchase of his own, and asked if anyone wanted anything.  i took him up on the offer and sent some cards to him in exchange for three of the cards i didn't pick up myself.  make sense?  

one of the cards that i dropped from my purchase was a 2013 panini golden age tommy davis auto

now tommy was a well traveled ballplayer, and there is no mention of any team or city affiliation on the front of the card.  i believe that the photo comes from his tenure with the dodgers, but so do the photos on some of his topps cards which feature him as a member of a different team.  the back of the card, however, tells me that davis is a dodger here for sure

this is my first certified tommy davis autograph.  i did pick up a couple of other autos through the mail a  couple of years ago - 1962 topps

 and 1965 topps

thanks to a private signing at hall of fame sports.

one of the cards that i did purchase from comc was this 1997 score wilton guerrero 'heart of the order' insert

it features a nice dodger stadium backdrop, with more dodger stadium scenery screened on the back

you don't see the top of the park on too many cards.  you might notice that the guerrero is numbered as 'dodgers 2 of 3'.  i failed to buy the other 2 dodger cards in an extreme lapse of judgement.  enter dennis.  he picked up the mike piazza

and raul mondesi

cards for me.  looking closely at the piazza and guerrero cards, score took the time to cover up the unocal and coca-cola logos that sat in the circles above the diamondvision and scoreboard, respectively.

looking more closely, i see that it's ismael valdes on diamondvision, meaning that i can determine the day the photo was taken.  based on the information that the cards and scoreboard gives me, this was a day game at dodger stadium against the cubs. ismael valdes came to bat in the bottom of the 6th inning.  the cubs scored one run in the top of the first. sammy sosa was batting third for the cubs.  raul mondesi was playing center.  piazza was not playing because the catcher is batting 7th in the dodger lineup.  when i put it all together, baseball reference tells me that the nice dodger stadium photo comes from may 21, 1995!  

as i am sure you can tell, when you put the cards side by side, we get a foul pole to foul pole view of the dodger stadium outfield and pavilion

and a harder to see panoramic view of the stands in place roughly between the bases

a big thank you to dennis for correcting my mistake of not buying the davis auto and the piazza and mondesi dodger cards myself.  thanks for the trade!

keep it up panini!

last year we had steve garvey in panini's golden age release.  this year, ron cey hit the checklist, although he only has an autographed card in the set.  i picked one up on the cheap

with the photo selection, and the perhaps accentuated glare on the helmet, one could hardly tell that panini holds no license. here's the back, with obligatory penguin references.

i like that the card number is simply 'cey'.

at this rate, i should see bill russell in the 2014 release, followed by davey lopes in 2015.  i can't wait!