A Collection of Paul LoDuca Autographed Cards

Over the past year or so I've been posting up pics of my entire collection of autographed certified Dodgers Baseball cards.  As you can imagine, I have plenty of duplicate players, so instead of featuring each one individually I thought I should just group some of them together in one post.  Featured here are 7 different Paul LoDuca cards.

As a Dodger fan it is only natural that I have an affinity for catchers in Dodger Blue.  They are the quarterbacks of the team, and often hold a special place within Dodgers lore.  The string of great Dodger catchers goes as far back as Bill Bergen in the early 1900's to Chief Meyers, to Al Lopez, to Roy Campanella, to Johnny Roseboro.  Modern catching heroes include Joe Ferguson, Steve Yeager, Mike Scioscia and Mike Piazza.  For six years, Paul LoDuca manned that position at the turn of the new century, and would eventually cement himself as a member of that vaunted class of great Dodger backstops. 

Shown above and directly below is a 2003 Topps Tribute Modern Marks autographed card - along with a gold parallel card numbered to 25.

2002 Bowman Heritage autographed card

2003 Topps autographed card

1999 Bowman autographed card

2003 Topps T205 autographed card

2004 Topps Series 1 autographed card

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Dodgers Blog Kiosk: 12/26/2012

Dodgers photographer Jon SooHoo shared a late 80's pic of Dodger Stadium organist Nancy Bea Keulen Hefley.  (photo credit: Jon SooHoo LA Dodgers)

• Marc Hulet at FanGraphs shares his list of top 15 Dodgers prospects.
• Old Time Family Baseball shares a recording of the Dodgers 1959 as told by Vin Scully.  Listen to it here. You can even download both the A and B sides of the record to enjoy later on.
• It's been "15,000 Days Since Two Big Dodger Trades," via Chris Jaffe at Hardball Times.
• How the mighty have fallen.  Andruw Jones was arrested on Christmas Morning for domestic battery, via a AP report on Yahoo.
• David Schoenfield at ESPN writes a great piece about recently visiting the Philadelphia Sports Card and Memorabilia Show in Prussia, PA earlier this month.
• TPM shares a bunch of great photos that celebrate the year in space.  Check them out here.
• Are you ready for the coming deluge of end-of-the-year best-of lists?  Check out the below video featuring 50 of the best viral videos of 2012. 

Video Link:

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Rize Draft Baseball - Dodgers Cards - Yasiel Puig

There's a brand new card set in the hobby.  While doing some searching on eBay I ran across a card company I had never heard of.  They were a non-licenced kind of concoction with no team logos and a poorly crafted design.  Still, it focused on many up-'n-coming prospects; including Yasiel Puig, so I had to pay attention.

The card company is called Rize, and the set has been dubbed Rize Draft.  On the reverse it indicates Leaf Trading Cards as the manufacturer, so I naturally assumed it was one of their products.  As I read more about the cards on a forum thread on FCB, I realized my assumption was wrong.  Rize is a separate company who purchased a licence from Leaf and had them produce the cards on their behalf.  This actually caused a bit of confussion and controversy on the FCB thread, so Leaf President Brian Gray responded to collectors on the thread.  

The cards appear to only be available online, via eBay, from a handful of dealers.  It's likely that cards were sold directly to those sellers.  For the time being, there are no packs available, and no autographed cards - although, an advertising sheet I saw indicates that some autographs will be made.  Of note, these cards provide the only base cards available for many newly drafted prospects.  For instance, the only Yasiel Puig non-autographed base cards in the hobby are these cards.

See the Rize Draft Dodgers cards below (front and reverse).  Click on any pic to embiggen.

#67 Yasiel Puig

#79 Corey Seager

#90 Jesmuel Valentin

This is a part of a insert set called World Class.  Yasiel Puig is the only Dodger in the set.

Here is another insert card of Puig called Rize of the Prodigy.

This insert set is called Emergence and includes both Puig and Seager.

The card below clearly looks like it should be an autographed multi-card.

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