It's the summer traveling season. We're visiting or greeting visitors, yet the cards keep coming. It's sometimes difficult to focus. What do I write about -- this or this?
But I've finally settled on a couple of player collections, a rare off-shoot of my main collecting goals. I think they're impressive in their own way.
I just added the Topps Now card for Clayton Kershaw's 3,000th strikeout. I just had to get the card and didn't pay all that much for it. These cards are almost nothing to look at, I don't like them any more than I did when Topps Now first became a thing. Just think if Topps created an interesting design for these, it might have all my money.
But that's just the lead-in card for this post. One of my player collecting projects is to get all of Kershaw's flagship gold cards. I wrote about finishing the run through 2022 a couple of years ago. And I finally decided to get back on that project. So recently, three more cards have come to my home.
2023 gold.
2024 gold.
And 2025 gold.
The 2025 card arrived first. Didn't spend much for it -- Kershaw just isn't the man in the card world like he once was, thank goodness. The 2023 card was last, I found a much cheaper card several days after putting another one in my cart -- always a reminder that collecting has no time limit.
So now here is the golden update:
Very nice if I do say so.
Time is short for Clayton's career. He could retire at the end of the year. He could go another year or two. I probably don't have many more golds to purchase for him. (There's always the 2008 Update rookie gold, but I've conveniently avoided that -- and the insane cost -- because "it's not a flagship card").
So now moving on to the other obsessive pursuit:
Back on these things.
When I last wrote about these, I had 12 of the MSA discs from 1976-77. That's not counting the smaller wiffle ball, etc., discs. After snaring the Saga disc for the 12th in my collection, I continued to scope out sites for the final rarer five.
I finally sprung for one of them:
Really the least exciting of the remaining ones. It's the Carousel Snack Bars variation. The stamp is faded and really didn't show up on the ebay listing, so I was taking a chance. But when it arrived, I knew I had what I wanted. This one is based out of Sioux Falls, S.D. There are lots of other Carousel sites stamped on other discs.
So now I'm at 13.
And those are all the backs!
This brings me to the final four:
Customized Sports Discs
Red Barn Family Restaurants
Super Star Lunch Bags
Wendy's Hamburgers
Searches are in place for all of them. Not long ago I landed an Andy Messersmith Super Star Lunch bags disc, just to prove to myself they existed.
Ron Cey and Clayton Kershaw are the very select few that are worthy of this kind of collecting behavior from me. I won't do this for just any player. Because most of my collection focuses on sets -- all the players who played in a given year -- or my team -- all the guys who wore Dodger blue.
And just in case you think I've left my senses with the above pursuits, here's a card to put your concerns to rest:
This Steve Carlton card arrived this week. It whittled my 1969 Topps wants down to a mere three cards.
Nolan Ryan and Mickey Mantle are among those three. But most of what you saw on this post was purchased with some of the magazine money that I received with my most recent article (should be arriving on newsstands in a matter of weeks). So I should have enough saved up to chase at least one of those guys.
That is if I don't spend it all on gas and hotels during summer traveling season.
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