The road to 30,000

 

 

When I wrote that article for Beckett Baseball magazine about my Dodgers collection -- wow, it's been three years already -- I ended it by saying I would continue to collect cards of my favorite team "on the way to 25,000" total Dodgers.

Well, I'm moving in on 30,000 now.

The counter on the sidebar says 29,469 so I think after a few more months I'll hit 30K. No plans for it to be anything special. In fact I like the idea of it being some insanely random card.

I have a lot of people to thank for accumulating such a total and three of the biggest contributors to my team collection all recently sent me cards! It's not really such a coincidence, they're three of the few bloggers sending cards in the mail to other bloggers. I don't know what happened to everyone else, wasn't fun enough I guess? But thank goodness they're still doing it.

 

First up is a blogger who is probably an even bigger Dodger fan than me -- he still has more Dodgers than me, according to TCDB.  

Yes, cards as I see them knows that an easy way to find Dodgers cards that I need is looking through fancy-pants sets like Tribute and Triple Threads, and, yeah, I confuse the two all the time.

A couple of Kershaw needs. The 2022 Chrome card is prizmy. The 2024 card goes toward the main set build, actually.

Two more parallels. Is there a better set for telling you what was going on in the world than 2021 Topps?

My favorite of the cards sent by Jim is this gold parallel from 1995 Studio. Another elusive '90s Piazza card down! I'm pretty sure this card could win you airline points in '95.

 

 

 Next up is another Dodger-heavy envelope from Johnny's Trading Spot. I can tell it's from Johnny because there's another Andre Jackson card in it! Thanks to parallels -- of which all six of these cards are -- I could be getting 2022 Andre Jackson cards for the rest of time.

 

Not done with the parallels, here are some more. It only took me almost 10 years to get the Bowman Chrome Joc Pederson rookie card. All it took was him touring a series of Dodgers rival teams for the excitement to wear off -- for me and others.

Here's a nice, timely Shohei Ohtani insert from this year. The spray charts for each of these cards are different from each other (at least the few I've seen). I'm assuming that these are the actual spray charts for the featured player and not dots thrown on there randomly?

 

 

A trio of Dodgers legends from the "2023" Topps Chrome Platinum Anniversary set that came out a month or two ago. These look so much better than last year's set, although I'm not over the moon for these like some collectors are.

Several more Dodgers needs with an odious Diamondback mixed in. But there's a good reason for that! It was one of the few non-SP 2024 Heritage mini cards that I needed. Down to the final 18 non-SPs for that set and am not in any rush to get them.

 

 

 

These aren't my first 2024 Donruss Dodgers -- I got a bunch lined up in a Nachos Grande group break -- but they are among the first I've seen in hand.

The switch away from full-body shots makes this year's Donruss immediately interesting. Of course that interest goes away once you realize they're still incredibly plain, but I appreciate the switch-up. I will never buy a pack of these though. I've seen lots of tales about cards showing up in the exact same order pack after pack after pack. Panini is just a delight.

 

 

But this is a pretty cool Donruss insert in this year's set (of course, this is a parallel). I love comic-book themed cards if they're done right (plenty are pretty lazy). Dalton Rushing has been coming on fast in the minor leagues, which means Will Smith better start hitting like he was earlier in the year.

 

This was a nice surprise, an acetate-themed insert from 2003 Playoff Prestige that I had never seen before even with all the Shawn Green cards I own.

Final card from Johnny is a cabinet Turkey Red card of the underwhelming Jason Schmidt. Throwing weird Corbin next to it to give you an idea of the size of the cabinet cards. This is from 2007, the year Topps was saluting Schmidt on the Dodgers before everyone knew that probably isn't a good idea.

 

Finally, a nice envelope of cards from Cards On Cards, who I've traded with longer and more often than with anyone else.

Kerry did very well in targeting my wants with this one. The Big League J.D. Martinez was the last of the non-impossible rare Dodgers to land for me.

How about this? Another Covering the Field insert and the last of the three that I needed to finish it off! It seems like I complete fewer team insert sets these days so it's an accomplishment when I stumble into one.

 

More team set completion. The Bowman card was the last of the Dodgers from Bowman I needed and the James Outman was the last of the 2023 moments-or-whatever-this-insert is I needed. Also, that's like my fourth Kody Hoese autograph. He's hitting pretty well in Triple A but I hear nothing about him being called up ever so who knows if he ever will.

 

Slight poor timing by a matter of a couple of days with these two cards as Johnny sent both of them. I bet I can redirect each of these.

And lastly just the second card on this post that is not a Dodgers card. I think this is a parallel? Or maybe one of those retail/nonretail versions that Absolute likes to do (Panini, just go away).

Anyway, as you can imagine you can get great deals on all Stefon Diggs memorabilia and clothing at the Buffalo Store at Highmark Stadium. Everything is waaaaay marked down.

 

So I probably couldn't have guessed when I was finishing off this article with the lofty total of 25,000 that I would have put that number in the dust soon after. You'll hear about it when I reach 30,000. And for all the other milestone numbers, too. 

But you can probably forget about 100,000 (unless I count my dupes). I don't move that fast and I ain't living that long.