It was a very uneventful and quiet Christmas this year. Not a lot to boast about as far as gifts go.
Unlike last year and the last few years, my sister-in-law did not get me any cards. I'm assuming she couldn't find any under the current Fanatics landscape because she always tries her best to get some for me. She did get me a Target gift card but there's nothing online to buy right now as far as 2025 product unless I want to pony up for a hobby box. (I won't bother checking the store in town).
I've yet to receive all my gifts so perhaps there's something card-like in the near future. But I won't pout about it because right before the holiday hit, I received a couple Christmas wishes that came with cards from both The Best Bubble and Too Many Verlanders.
They get it and it sure is appreciated. I'll show off the cards from The Best Bubble first.
Right before snapping pictures of these cards for this post, the Best Bubble cards slipped out of my hand and landed hard on the hardwood floor near my laptop. Not good. A few of the cards now have damaged corners or rough edges. There goes their resell value!
Anyway, here a couple of the 2008 Documentary cards from the extended part of the set that covered the playoffs. I'll never try to complete all of the Documentary extra bits but Bob guessed right, this is stuff I need.
Nonsensical parallels, yes! The best way to assure I'll always need Dodgers is to keep chasing stuff like this. Part of me considers just disposing of all the parallels in my collection. I'll never do it, but I can see cards like these ones disappearing.
I had to do a lot of researching with this package. These are part of the 1995 Signature Rookies Old Judge set but they look nothing like the baseball cards, which have an old-timey tobacco vibe. These are Star Squad inserts, just one of 10,000 issued! So super exclusive!
All over the map with this package. The bottom two cards are TCMA issues. The one on the right is from the 1977 The War Years set, it's infielder Luis Olmo, who had a pretty good year for the Dodgers in 1945. The bottom left card is from the 1974 set of the '52 Brooklyn Dodgers. I was surprised to find that the back print is blue. I own the complete set of the red-print backs but had never seen a blue print one. Also, it looks like the card had the edges trimmed off it.
The top card is from the early '80s reprint set of the 1953 Bowman color issue. A nice Billy Loes to add to my collection.
One of the package highlights. This is just my second 1963 Peel-Off after the Sandy Koufax.
Some appreciated super-modern cards, although I've already forgotten what the Mookie Betts is. The Freddie Freeman is my very first 2025 Topps Archives card. I don't think I'll bother buying anything from that set whenever it winds up in a store near me. Looks like just another team-set acquisition. The Kershaw is one of those parallels of an insert that shouldn't appear in Heritage but we're long past traditional card sets with standards.
A couple of Bills make an appearance. Surprisingly, I owned the 1969 Bill already but the '78 was new to me.
A couple of autographs, I didn't even have the non-autographed Braydon Fisher card. Also I wonder why Paul no longer has that Len Gabrielson card.
Just a few more that I needed. Great stuff from Bob and a welcome surprise.
So were the cards from Dennis from TMV. The first items that I saw were some 1982 Fleer Stickers and I knew instantly that Dennis had probably shopped at the same table that Angus did when they went to a show together. The stamps Angus gave me are still waiting for the right-sized pages.
Here are the Dodgers Dennis sent. The Rick Monday and Dusty Baker both fill holes as I didn't get those ones from Angus.
Freddie Freeman mark just my second 2025 Bowman Chrome card, and both are "mojo refractor" parallels.
Many more parallels. I'm going to have to update my Dodgers binders sooner than I thought.
I don't hear much talk about Panini Donruss anymore -- I've certainly stopped paying attention. Mike Piazza is one of only a couple veteran Dodgers in the set. The rest of the team set is basically prospects.
Two more Buffalo cards -- this time Sabres. I always welcome Dominik Hasek cards. The Sabres actually got themselves out of last place recently and are knocking on the door of fifth place in the division. I don't expect it to happen though.
There's the holiday spirit! A couple of Christmas cards of the since-departed James Outman. Festivity reigns!
Let's finish with a Gavin Lux golden stars card from the 2022 parallel set just because it's such a ludicrous card/set. Also I can't believe Johnny didn't send me this card already.
So there. See? I did get cards for Christmas.
I should mention that I did receive a whole bunch of binder pages from my sister-in-law, too. I went to put them in the drawer where I store pages and had more than the drawer could fit. "Where can I put these others?" I thought to myself. I looked around and then noted I could put them in a cubby hole shelf that houses magazines and a box of Kellogg's cards among other things.
I went to stuff them in there and realized I had already stuffed a bunch of pages there. So I don't need any more pages for a good while!!
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