Most of the time when I show new Dodger card arrivals it's related to cards a fellow collector/trader sent or it's a larger order from sportlots or COMC or another online site.
Rarely do I show single card purchases unless I can turn it into a post. I guess I'm doing that now, but this 2026 Sports Illustrated For Kids Yoshinobu Yamamoto card could be any Dodger card to get this quick post started. (Yes, another quick post, I swear someone made the days only 22 hours now).
This is the first 2026 Dodger in my collection that was not made by Topps. I received it in a unique TCDB trade in which I traded a couple 9-pocket mini pages for it (I hope JR3 has received the pages, I always get nervous when I see no update in the transactions for a few days -- especially since the USPS ate a few random Dodgers I ordered a month ago).
Obviously I don't have a lot of 2026 Dodgers yet but it's a good time to go through another update of how many Dodger cards I have for each year since I started writing this blog.
I've done this the last four years now, after starting it in 2020 (I skipped it in 2021 and 2022). It's interesting to me to see the progress each year and which years have the most cards and if I can spot any trends.
This year I actually made a little excel chart, all semi-professional. This is big news for a lifelong writer who hasn't needed a spreadsheet for his job never ever never (thank goodness).
I didn't get around to labeling the vertical and horizontal columns on the chart. The years down the side are each year's total cards. The years across the top are the years of each blog update. The 2026 one I just compiled yesterday.
The chart shows the slow steady progression that I like to see as a team collector. As I've mentioned in previous post updates, the previous year -- in this case, 2025 -- remains a work in progress. It's best to wait two years to see a more representative total. You can see 2024 jumped 261 cards from the previous update, which is by far the most for any other year -- and that's always the case, the year two years ago gets the biggest boost.
The other years from the 2020s did quite well, too, and notice 2021. That is the first year that has surpassed 900 cards.
That's a little disconcerting but it makes some sense as the Dodgers won the World Series the previous year. Also this is when Panini had a zillion dumb sets led by the Chronicles monster. Also, also Topps had several sets that year it doesn't put out now -- Fire, Gypsy Queen, Opening Day, etc. And, definitely worst of all, that was the year Topps generated far too many totally unnecessary Trevor Bauer cards, which were promptly unloaded on me.
Hopefully I'll be able to avoid 2021 getting to 1,000 first but that may be a lost cause.
As for other years, 2015 gained the most of any year that's at least a decade old. 2010 actually went down 16 cards, which I don't get -- I didn't get rid of any Dodgers, so there's an error somewhere (I rely completely on TCDB to do this update after previously just counting my binder cards when I first started).
Also I attempted a line graph but didn't have time to figure out how to make it more legible/format it correctly:
You get the idea.
Right now I have a whopping 43 Dodger cards from 2026 -- I'm still trying to finish off sets from 2025. By the end of the year it'll probably be around 300-400 cards. It'll be interesting to see if there's any dip as I went kind of crazy with Dodgers from Heritage in 2024 and 2025 but am definitely not doing that in 2026.
The SI Yamamoto came with an SI friend also from this year.
This doesn't help my Dodgers totals. But tennis is the only sport in which I show up as one of the leaders in TCDB. I'm currently 21st (woooo!). Maybe I should ditch the Dodger card rat race and go all in on the fuzzy ball sport.
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