Let the glad tidings roll on!

 

Let's just stay with the out-of-season Christmas posts here. Why not? Nobody's celebrating late January.

As many of you know, Rod of Padrographs is a great guy who opens up a bunch of current product around the holidays and then distributes a lot of it to his favorite bloggers. I'm one of those!

Most of the cards he sent this time were Dodgers or Orioles. The Baltimores are for my nephew, but he's in college now, when card interest is way low, so they'll stay with me or maybe be sent to another Orioles collector.

He also sent three unopened packs:

All of these have since been opened. I'll show off the contents at the end of the post.

But I need to get on with the Dodgers because, brother, did Rod boost my 2024 content in that area.

 

Here is where most of the Holiday team set came from -- before I opened that Holiday dome in the previous post. One of the cards is a silver glitter parallel for Yamamoto.

Rod took care of just about all of my Stadium Club team needs as well. All that's left is Sandy Koufax ... and a bunch of variations that I wish I could filter out of the TCDB team set checklist. P.S.: Yes I know the Jackie Robinson is a Chrome parallel. I may have let out a squeal!

Here are some 2024 Topps Chrome needs from both the regular set and the Update set. I have done nothing with Chrome in like five years so this is very helpful. Also, the Chrome cards don't seem to lie flat like before -- I thought Topps had straightened this problem out. Thanks, Fanatics.

Oh, and Rod TOOK CARE OF A VERY BIG PROBLEM, TOO:

It's the Shohei Ohtani chrome card, the same card that people have been turning into hobby shops for store credit (it only works for the year's MVP's chrome cards). That's all fine and dandy but of course the hobby is full of people abusing the system and I haven't been able to buy an Ohtani Chrome card for anything reasonable the last couple of months. Now it's not an issue anymore!

 

Rod also threw a bunch of 2024 Bowman needs at me. The clock is officially ticking on these guys to see if they stay in my team binders forever or get booted into box purgatory.

 

And look, here is a bunch of 2023 and 2024 Bowman Chrome, featuring guys I've actually heard of! I spent less energy than ever tracking Bowman Dodgers the last two years, so this is most welcome.

Staying with Bowman with last year's Bowman's Best product -- wow Rod opens a lot. The Bobby Miller is the base card and the refractor.

Some inserts and parallels that all knocked out needs. Really happy about getting another 1989 insert out of the way. I guess we're stuck with 1990 this year.

A couple of shiny needs. The Bobby Miller is numbered. It's also how I found out that Optic is not a separate product for Panini anymore -- at least for baseball.

 

Rod is always good for sending me some legends. They all came from current product this time (except for the 1983 Donruss Hall of Famers pack). This is all I want from Allen & Ginter these days -- Dodgers and legends.

Legends in other 2024 product. Still not making me like Stadium Club any more, but it's nice to get one of those Autumn Tales finally -- that insert set is surprisingly large.

 

Rod even sent me his take on an Allen & Ginter diecut card featuring World Series hero Walker Buehler!

That's a lot of great stuff and I am very happy that I don't have to hunt for a lot of those Dodger cards anymore. Every year at this time I try to turn my attention to 2025 but feel that I still haven't done much with the previous year.

All right, you've been waiting to see the pack contents from the start of the post.

 

The Barry Larkin was a need and I'm sure all of the OPC Premier is new to my collection, too. For the Donruss Hall of Fame set, I was nine card short of completion before I opened the pack. The only card I needed was the Monte Irvin (and I guess the Mickey Mantle puzzle card).

All right, that's it. I think I'm done with the Christmas-themed posts, too. I'm done with the snow, too. Somebody please take it away.