card show piazzapalooza

the 1990's were heady days for card collectors.  there were new manufacturers, legion sets, innumerable inserts and parallels.  i stayed pretty close to the topps flagship and traded sets throughout the decade, with a fair amount of upper deck in 1992-95 and again in 1998-99.  other than that, i kind of stayed out of the loop.

that means that i missed out on a ridiculous amount of mike piazza inserts.  a dime box at the card show last week made up for a lot of that.  first, i should clarify.  the box of cards i looked through wasn't necessarily a dime box.  i asked the dealer before looking through the cards what the deal was. he said that the price varied.  after i had found about 100 piazza inserts, he said 10 bucks.  i wound up with about 160 cards (about 120 of piazza), and he charged me 15 bucks.  so, just about a dime box.

on to the piazzapalooza! 

1993 fleer ultra all rookie insert

the colors pop on the black background. 

1993 fleer major league prospects insert

piazza wearing number 60.  the same number he wore at some point in the minors, as evidenced by these 1992 classic best blue bonus

and red bonus parallels

note the carl sawatski memorial patch, too.

here are a couple of inserts from 1994 fleer ultra - homerun king

and rbi king

there's the number 31 that we know.  i think piazza also wore 25 at some point, but 31 is the number he wore for the majority of his career.

1995 fleer update soaring star insert

those rods of green kryptonite are actually bats.  i didn't realize this until i looked at the back of the card just a few minutes ago.

1995 score hall of gold

hall of fame class of 2015? i hope so.

1995 upper deck sp silver parallel

i liked the gray gear that piazza wore.  i also liked the way he flipped his helmet after every game on his way out to the mound.

1994 king-b disc

seventh annual?  where are the previous 6 years of discs?

1997 bowman chrome international parallel

as jimmy kimmel used to say, that's 'italian-american superstar slugger mike piazza'.

1998 upper deck 10th anniversary preview insert

i have a few of these preview cards, but i don't think i have any of the actual 1999 10th anniversary team cards.  no dodgers in that insert set, i don't think, so maybe that's why.

piazza appeared on his share of combo inserts.  two of the most common players he was paired with were tim salmon (the al roy in 1993) and ivan rodriguez.  this is a 1996 upper deck sp marquee matchups insert 

where salmon got the 'marquee' part.

this is a 1996 topps stadium club midsummer matchup insert

which features rodriguez on the other side

rodriguez gets some time on the same side as piazza (and darren daulton) on this 1996 donruss dominators insert

so far, i have resisted the directive to remove protective film.

last card of this post, a 1998 fleer sports illustrated cover card featuring ken griffey jr

so good, so young, and so many inserts.  i'll show some more later today.  stay tuned...

dime box card show haul

i didn't only buy dodgers at the card show last weekend.  there were lots of nice cards to be had in the few dime boxes (and one 5 for $1 box) that i looked through a week ago.  here are some of them.

1996 upper deck ken griffey jr vj lovero showcase insert

this card fits in my collection a couple of ways.  even though i have discontinued almost all of my player collections (including griffey), this card shows him taking a hack on tatooine.  it also fits into my heretofore unmentioned 'number on back' collection, which isn't really a thing.  yet.

double plays abound in the dime box.  here's a 1996 pinnacle summit alex rodriguez card

arod's 1997 upper deck rock solid foundation insert may or may not show a dp turn on the front

but it does on the back

how about a lurker or two?

that's gil hodges and jerry grote on this 1992 donruss coca-cola nolan ryan card.  i'll guess that the other guy is bud harrelson.

we weren't done with double plays, though.  here's a 1992 leaf cal ripken black gold parallel

and a 1993 upper deck sp ripken

and a 1994 upper deck ripken electric diamond parallel

and a 1995 score ripken hall of gold insert

plus a 1997 pacific prism ripken gem of the diamond card

just for fun, i picked out this 1997 fleer sports illustrated ripken card as well

not too many double play turns as a third baseman, unfortunately.

now, i am not a pete rose apologist, but i am a fan of the player.  i have a hard time resisting his cards, especially in dime boxes.  this is a box card from 1986.

it's not from a topps box (those were in the style of the 1986 set, but with red tops instead of black).  instead, this one comes from the 1986 topps stickers box.  it's too bad that someone went back and figured out that ty cobb only had 4189 hits, and not 4191, meaning that rose actually broke the record a few days earlier at wrigley field.

here's a final dime box card - one that also fits into a as of yet unannounced mini collection - it's a 1996 upper deck cal ripken card

maybe someday i'll fully commit to my 'tip of the cap' collection.

tomorrow, i'll show off a few of the 110 mike piazza cards that i rescued from the dime box.  stay tuned.

card show dime box dodger haul

at the card show last weekend, i picked up a couple of nice vintage dodgers from the bargain bin (plus a couple of 1973 topps cards for nick), but most of my time was spent looking through a couple of random dime boxes.  i wound up with some stuff for other bloggers, too, but these are some of the dodgers that i found for me.

1992 score eric karros

i can't believe that i need any 1992 score, but this card didn't look familiar to me.  even though i haven't looked at my 1992 score dodgers for years, i threw a dime down for karros.  this card reminds me of his rookie year when he did some commercials for your friendly southern california nissan dealers.  he feigned trouble fielding a ball in the showroom and tommy lasorda walked by shaking his head.  i did not buy a nissan.

1993 fleer ultra pedro martinez

hall of fame class of 2015?  i think so.

1995 best paul konerko

in 1995, the dodger affiliate in san berdoo was the spirit.  by 1997, it was the stampede

1997 best adrian beltre

see?

1999 fleer metal universe adrian beltre neophytes

i am getting very sleepy looking at this card.

2005 fleer adrian beltre league leader

i am thankful for fleer going three-deep on the leader cards so that beltre gets an appearance.  however, beltre was actually fourth in the league in batting average in 2004. helton was second and loretta was third behind barry bonds who didn't bother to license himself with the card companies.  

2010 topps duke snider/andre ethier legendary lineage

i have about 37 of the matt kemp/jerry sands ll card, but this one didn't look familiar to me.

2013 bowman paco rodriguez international/state parallel

paco hails from florida.

2013 topps aj ellis emerald parallel

i can't wait to see who else is on ellis's card in 2014.

i've got more of my card show haul coming up this weekend, including some double plays and a whole mess of mike piazza inserts.  stay tuned.

whoopsie dempseys

i really like rick dempsey's 1991 score card

the black borders with the gray uniform and the blue chest protector and the little bit of red jersey number poking through make for a visually appealing card, even if the photo is kind of odd.  there are bodiless feet and part of dempsey's face is obscured.  still, i appreciate him rocking the jerry grote look with his cap instead of a helmet.

i like the card so much, i sent a copy of it (along with a 1978 topps card) to dempsey about 3 years ago through the mail hoping that he would sign it.  he had signed a couple of cards for me with a quick 10-day turnaround in 2009, and i was hoping for another success.  a year or so later, i sent another couple of cards - another '78 and a 1989 topps card.

well, two weeks ago, i got a return from the former dodger catcher and 1983 world series mvp, except it was a 1986 topps

and not the '78 or '89 or '91 card i had sent.  i'm thankful for the return though i am curious how this happens.  does he have a card desk where cards pile up and get knocked over and mixed up like so many of us do? or does he have a stack of pre-signed cards ready to go?  i'd like to think it was the former.

thanks for sending me a card rick - i am always appreciative of players taking some time to respond to mail.

my pared down 1953 topps sampler

i've removed all the non-dodgers from my 1953 topps sampler set.  here is what i am left with.

that's 12 of the 21 dodgers in the set.  i just need some guys named robinson, reese, campanella, etc.

for those of you with eagle eyes, you've noticed that there are 12 dodgers instead of 11 that were included in the sampler set post earlier today.  that's because in between the time i scanned the cards and got around to posting, i picked up a charlie dressen card.

sorry, that's chuck dressen.  i also mentioned earlier today that my approach to the sampler sets was to not worry about position differentiation, just team, color combos, and subsets.  that meant that i didn't have a manager card in the 1952 set (dressen is a high number), and until i picked up this card, i didn't have one in the 1953 set either.

my 1953 topps set sampler

about 10 years ago, i went about the task of completing a sampler set for every topps flagship set from 1952 through 1977, excluding the 1970 set which i was working on fully completing. since then, i have completed the 1973, 1974, 1976, and 1977 sets, and i am currently working on 1971 and will soon have want lists up for 1972 and 1975.  i will also put a want list up for 1957 and 1965.  the other samplers are being recorded here for posterity before i strip them for dodger parts.

this is the second installment in this 'sampler' series - 1953 topps.   a fully painted set, there are some nice looking cards in this set.  the sampler consists of (at least) one card from each team - the a's, braves, browns, cardinals, cubs, dodgers, giants, indians, phillies, pirates, red sox, reds, senators, tigers, white sox, and yankees.  there were no subsets, and the only coloring variation was black box for national leaguers, and red box for american leaguers.  i didn't bother to pay attention to positions, so i don't have a manager card here.  there is a coach, though (john riddle).  i only specifically worried about those cards when there was a specific subset that was different from the rest of the set, except for 1976 when the positions dictated the small player graphic on the front of the card.

enough of that - here are the cards.

my approach to filling these samplers was to obtain cards of former/future dodgers and players that i had actually heard of.  valo and lund were dodgers, and i knew who joe nuxhall and hal newhouser and, of course, ralph kiner were.

here's a sampling of the backs. 

thankfully all oriented in the same direction.  there is one other variation there - some cards have the personal data text in black, some in white.  i couldn't care less about that sort of variation here.

in the end, my sampler set contained 31 cards - that's 11% of the 274 card set.  former dodger don lund's card is number 277 in the set, but there were a few numbers that were never released.

bob welch final tributes

bob welch began his big league career by striking out two of the first three batters he faced.  he ended it by striking out edgar martinez, but then allowing a walk and two singles around three groundouts.  in between, he won 211 games (115 as a dodger) and provided one of the first big baseball memories of my fandom - his game 2 strikeout of reggie jackson in the 1978 world series.

the following year i was able to wrest away his 1979 topps rookie card from a yankee fan neighbor in a lopsided (for me) trade by reminding him that welch has struck reggie out on the biggest stage possible.

welch's career came to an end when the players went on strike in august of 1994.  he had been used primarily as a reliever by the a's that season, and was featured in only a few card sets the following year.  

1995 pacific

1995 fleer ultra

1995 score

and 1995 topps

here are the backs.  topps, of course, gives us the complete career stats and two more photos

pacific gives us one year of stats and a bigger photo

fleer ultra provides two photos, one year of stats and the career stat line

last but not least, score comes through with a photo of welch in the oakland oaks throwback unis and the full career stats.

i was a big fan of welch and wasn't too pleased when he was traded to the a's.  i remember feeling happy for him during the pregame introductions prior to game 1 of the '88 world series - at least he made it back to the fall classic.  i was also happy when he won the cy young award and another ring with the a's.  still, i prefer to think of him as a dodger.

here's a signed 1981 topps card of welch that i picked up somewhere along my collecting way.

then, a couple of years ago, i sent one of his 1979 topps rookie cards through the mail to a private signing

as well as one of my 1978 topps burger king dodgers/update cards that should have been.

i was pretty happy when these came back.  it's too bad that welch didn't get a return trip to the dodgers in 1995 like don sutton in 1988 or orel hershiser in 2000.  it would have been nice to see him in dodger blue one last time.