Over the last year or so -- probably even the last 3 or 4 years -- I've been refining my collecting focus, becoming a bit less of a team collector and concentrating on what really sets off the bells and whistles, which is set-collecting and a few other special interests.
That doesn't mean I have stopped collecting Dodgers cards. No, in fact, I still do really dumb things related to team collecting that I've told myself to quit doing. It's a difficult habit to break. I'm still hooked. I'm still addicted. I still have the disease.
For example, Marc of Remember the Astrodome recently offered up the 2019 All-Star Game team sets for a nominal fee, including the Dodgers.
Now, by "All-Star Game team set," I mean with the most tenuous link possible to the All-Star Game. In fact, how could Topps get away with as little work as possible and still call it an "All-Star Game set"?
The answer to that, of course, is take every flagship card in the 2019 Topps set and machine-stamp each one in foil with the logo from this past year's All-Star Game in Cleveland. Voila! Instant effortless parallel set!
This is such a lame '90s act, going on 25 years after the fact. It's not a different card at all. Even the card number on the back is the same! Yet collectors keep buying it because of the foil stamp, from buybacks to first-day issues to whatever.
And that includes me.
Yeah, it's dumb. Yeah, it's collecting the same card. Yeah, there's not even a pretty extra color on the border or anything.
Gimme.
One thing the set has going for it is, technically, I did complete the Dodgers team set from the All-Star Game set before I did the regular flagship set. The flagship Cody Bellinger card, the last one I needed, is actually in my collection (and there's another one arriving in the mail, just Nick from Dime Boxes beat COMC by a few days), but the All-Star Game set arrived first.
So, for the first time, here are all the Topps Series 1 and Series 2 Dodgers from 2019, except with a foil stamp on them!:
Those are all the cards in both flagship and the All-Star Game sets, there are no differences at all.
So, you literal thinkers are probably saying: "This is so dumb! Most of these guys aren't All-Stars! Caleb Ferguson wasn't in the All-Star Game!"
Yes, I know. All the logo means is you probably could buy this "special" set at the All-Star Game in Cleveland with the "special" foil stamp.
There is no connection at all between the stamp and the photo on the card. Topps has been doing this for a few years.
And this has been going on for a long, long time. Remember those early '90s Topps cards foil stamping every player with a Florida Marlins or Colorado Rockies logo? What does a Dodger or Met or Padre player have to do with the expansion Marlins or Rockies? Zip.
Still, they're sitting in my collection.
And I won't be getting rid of them.
I can't explain it.
I have a disease.
And apparently I'm never getting well.
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