Joy of a team set, gold parallel edition

 

The bit-by-bit, card-here, card-there strategy of adding to my collection the first couple of months of the year continues for just a couple more weeks.

 

But you can accomplish a lot even when cards are just trickling in. Just the other day I completed the gold parallel team set for the 2008 Topps Dodgers.

 

No, that doesn't include the Update set, the Kershaw is still out there (I landed more than a couple of the Kershaw rookie, along with the gold-letter version back in 08-09, but the goldie eluded me when his cards were cheap).

 

But this feels like an accomplishment to me. I honestly don't know if I've completed the gold parallels for any of the other Dodgers team sets since gold parallels became a thing. So I decided to try to finish a few of them, beginning with some of the easier ones. 2008 falls into that category.

 

I had a lot of them already -- wow was I accumulating Dodgers like mad in '08 and '09 -- so I needed just six more. In order, I added Derek Lowe and Juan Pierre first, followed by Andy LaRoche and Joe Torre and then finally Jeff Kent and Brad Penny.

 

The final two. 

 

Gold parallels still looked great then and they had to if I'm going to attempt to collect a parallel set. I do not see myself ever having enough inspiration to complete the 2016 Dodgers gold parallels.

So I'll finish up this completion post with a Joy of a Team Set rundown.

That's a small team set. A lot of these Joy of a Team Set posts have reached four pages and even gone into five.

OK --

Favorite cards, runners-up: James Loney, Russell Martin, Juan Pierre, Derek Lowe

Team's claim to fame: The 2008 team was the first team to win a playoff series since the 1988 team won the World Series. It's probably difficult for some detractors to believe but the Dodgers were pretty incompetent for 20 years there, only sometimes contending. The '08 team -- with the help of a few players not shown in this team set, like Manny Ramirez, Casey Blake and Kershaw -- was really the start of the team being relevant again.

Famous error card: None

Famous flops: Andruw Jones or Jason Schmidt, take your pick.

Notable absences: Not including players who would later appear in the Update set, the most notable absence is Nomar Garciaparra, who did not have an agreement with Topps at the time. Other notables missing are all relievers. Chan Ho Park appeared in more than 50 games in '08 and Hung-Chih Kuo more than 40 but neither are in Update. Park shows up in 2009 but Kuo does not (except for Upper Deck sets).

Players I've talked to: I wish.

Players who grew up near me: Nobody really. Russell Martin is from East York, Ontario, which is outside of Toronto (or maybe part of Toronto? I'm not Canadian). But that's not super close.

 

Card I'm glad I didn't have to pick up now: Hiroki Kuroda's rookie card is in this set. I haven't looked to see how much it's going for but I know he has fans on a couple of continents.

 

Favorite card in the team set:

 

Andre Ethier. Have always liked this card. No offense goldie, but I like the blue chrome refractor version better.

 

Now that the 2008 parallel set is done, I think I'll go for 2009 next. I thought about 2006 or 2007 but I need a lot for each set and much less for 2009.

 

Also we'll see how closely I stick to this mission when I'm able to buy cards "in bulk" again and when the card show season heats up more with the warmer weather.