A long lost Whitey and more from a couple of familiar Dodger-loving faces.
There have been a couple of old-school '80s variations on my want list for quite some time. It took me a long time to get the "Terry" version of the 1985 Donruss Terry Pendleton card (as opposed to his evil twin "Jeff") and now with a PWE that arrived from gcrl around the beginning of the year, I have an elusive Whitey Herzog variation from 1983.
The more common version of this card has Whitey's "Record as Manager" with a yellow background to match his bio info at the top of the card. I can't say I spent a ton of time searching for this card exactly, but I'm very happy to cross it off my list.
The Hamm King also increased his lead in the race while adding two more Hamms to the Hamm box.
Next up in the not-very-timely review of small envelopes from the first several months of the year is a pouch from, you guessed it: Night Owl Cards! There was a really nice variety in this generous package sent to the west coast in late March, including a numbered card of former prospect (and former Colorado Rockie) Elehuris Montero.
The older they get, the more fun these types of duo insert cards featuring players from opposing teams get. It's fun to look back on a time where we were on the edges of our seats to see what Albert Pujols might do to Mark Prior (or vice versa.)
I wish these '76 Revisited inserts from last year's Topps Heritage set were a lot easier to pull, or that the design was somehow part of its own set. I'd rather collect something that looks like this than, say, Topps Archives in its current state.
Night Owl tossed a few more Ginter minis my way, including a rookie year one of a guy who really borked up his career.
Just when it seemed like people were giving up on the stashes of Jordan Walker cards they were holding on to, the guy has started playing like an All-Star. Is it sustainable? Is the Cardinals relative success in 2026 sustainable? It's tough to say. I still expect the Cardinals to lose a lot of games.
Is there anything more fun than a food issue card? What about a vintage food issue card? This one looks like it was cut from the box by a very intoxicated person (or perhaps, more likely, a young person), but that just makes it all the more special. I need way more of this stuff in my life.
The last set of cards came over in another envelope in April from gcrl, who once again sent a fun Whitey Herzog card. This one is an embossed buyback card that was apparently inserted into the 2003 Topps All-Time Fan Favorites product. If you're having trouble spotting it, the embossment is in the lower right corner on the back of Whitey's red jersey. There's a bit less of a permanence to how they mark these buybacks compared to the foil stamps that are common in more recent sets. Does anyone prefer these?
Also included in the envelope was a four-pack of Cardinals minis from the most recent Allen & Ginter set. It's a nice looking group.
The flagship Topps set has been inundated with parallels, the number of which seems to be growing at an alarming rate since the Fanatics takeover. I have more I could say on this topic, but will anyone seriously be able to identify what most of these parallels are supposed to be in just a few years?
Here's another one of those tougher-than-they-should-be-to-pull Heritage inserts.
Postage stamps have not actually been stamps in quite a long time, and now you can even have cards featuring stamps that are actually stickers. This is from the 2023 Topps Heritage set before they really started messing with all of the inserts and parallels.
When I originally started the collect these Propaganda inserts from the 2009 Topps Update set, the idea of having propaganda style posters of current MLB players seemed like a fun nod to the past. Now these are just kind of unsettling, but I still feel the need to finish these off.
Thanks to the often generous Dodgers bloggers for sending this stuff my way. I always appreciate a nice surprise PWE.
