Beautiful (National Baseball Card) Day

Where has the time gone? (Raises hand) I know this one! My hobby time has mostly gone to acquiring cards (via TCDb, eBay and COMC), sorting cards, inventorying cards, scanning cards, placing cards in binders, reading the hobby blogs, commenting in some of the hobby blogs, keeping up with the TCDb forums, competing in three fantasy baseball leagues, and of course, cherishing my cards. That leaves me with just about no time to create new blog posts (or even update my blog’s background card images). And I actually have enough material on the back burner to create about 100 new posts. This is why I wish there were actually more hours in the day.

So I’ve finally got my incomplete collection of 1970 Topps baseball cards inventoried on TCDb (and in an Excel spreadsheet) and in a binder. I need around 159 more cards (NM or better) to complete that 720-card set–that and some of the error/variation cards of this set. I may show these off in a future post. My duplicates from this set are listed in my TCDb For Sale/Trade list.

I’ve also inventoried and bindered my 1993 Topps Gold parallel cards. I had a bunch of these already from when I bought tons of packs in 1993. I had also recently bought a couple of bulk lots of 1993 Topps Gold from eBay. And I’ve since traded for more of this parallel set on TCDb. And yet I’m still 338 cards shy of completing this 825-card set. At least I completed the basic 1993 Topps Black Gold insert set and put it in the binder. I also have some of the Winner cards, too. So that’s some of what I’ve been doing these last few months.

Now August is here and with it comes Topps’ National Baseball Card Day. promotion:

I was so looking forward to this day because not only could collectors get free baseball cards at their local card shops, but fans who attended various MLB games got a stadium-giveaway version of Topps National Baseball Card Day (NBCD) cards. Of course I had to get tickets for this stadium giveaway at Dodger Stadium (Saturday August 7th). But first I stopped at my closest local card shop and got two 5-card packs of NBCD cards and a purchase-exclusive NBCD card (Fernando Tatis):

Just for the heck of it, I’ve pictured the cards in the order they were packaged. And yes, the second pack had three duplicates of the first pack–D’OH! So I made my way over to another LCS and got two more NBCD packs:

This was great except that I forgot to ask for the Tatis card at the 2nd shop even though I made a purchase. So after stopping by the two card shops, it was time to head over to Blue Heaven on Earth to see the Dodgers vs. Angels game and pick up those stadium giveaway NBCD cards.

And here are the cards (most of them anyway). Unlike the LCS-distributed NBCD cards, these stadium giveaway cards have a pleasing foil finish. Here’s the card backs:

Notice that I’m missing card #LAD-2? I had arrived at Dodger Stadium almost two hours before the 6:10 pm gametime and visited seven different card distribution points within Dodger Stadium and still couldn’t come up with #LAD-2. I did get some duplicates of each of the other four cards. And then it occurred to me that maybe #LAD-2 was not meant to be distributed because it pictured a certain Dodger player who is currently in legal hot water. So okay then, I guess I’ll just have to settle for just getting cards of the other four Dodgers.

So walking around the stadium before gametime was pretty cool with some new interesting sights to see that were not there before 2020.

The image above shows the view from beyond the Dodger Stadium centerfield wall (which happened to be open during Angels batting practice). This area had never been accessible to fans before this season. This area is now covered by a net to protect fans from home run balls. A few home run balls did land very close to this area while we watched batting practice for a bit.

We also noticed that all of the employees wore face masks.

It was a beautiful day for baseball although some haze obscures the mountains in the distance.

Although Mike Trout was still on the injured list and Shohei Ohtani was not in the Angels starting lineup, this turned out to be a pretty good game. Both Trea Turner and Max Muncy scored in the 1st inning to give the Dodgers a 2-0 lead. The Angels came back in the 3rd inning scoring three runs. The score remained 3-2 until the bottom of the 7th with Cody Bellinger sending one over the right field wall to tie up the game.

In the 8th inning, Shohei Ohtani was called up to pinch-hit with two men on and two outs. He struck out swinging.

In the bottom of the 8th, the Dodgers took the lead when Chris Taylor doubled, scoring Corey Seager and Will Smith. Kenley Jansen came on in the 9th inning to notch his 23rd save and give the Dodgers the 5-3 victory.

So I was pretty happy with the Dodgers getting the win (the first of a nine-game winning streak) and me getting a handful of free baseball cards.

So anyways, about 10 days later I was checking out eBay to see how much these NBCD SGA cards were going for. There were plenty of eBay listings for other teams’ NBCD SGA cards but very little for the Dodgers. Anyways, guess what I found?

An eBay seller in North Carolina had somehow obtained #LAD-2! How did this person acquire #LAD-2? I think we may have a mystery on our hands. Will other 2021 NBCD #LAD-2 cards surface somewhere down the line? We shall see…

So at the time of this post, I’m still short nine cards from the LCS-distributed NBCD cards. I’m pretty sure I can complete the set fairly soon with the help of the TCDb community. As far as the Dodger SGA NBCD cards, I have plenty of duplicates of the Betts and Kershaw cards

Have a Beautiful Day and stay tuned…

3 thoughts on “Beautiful (National Baseball Card) Day”

So jealous you can stop by Dodger Stadium on the regular … and pick up cards, too!

I’m not too impressed with the NBCD designs but I suppose I’ll try to land the cards at some point. Hopefully No. 2 doesn’t end up being some super-rare/expensive card. I’m not spending extra money on that dude.

Those stadium versions are cool. I was wondering about #LAD-2 and whether or not some would get leaked onto eBay. Then by the end of this post my question was answered.