Sunday, January 1, 2023

Oh, the Places Gwynn'll Go!

I threw a few cards in the sun at the beginning of the year as part of my research on fading experiments. The best result was the '91 Fleer that's since made the rounds. But here's another mod that also turned out pretty cool:

The design opens up without the blast of yellow behind the diamond hole.

No surprise, but yellow turns out to be the easiest color to bleach away in the sun. So yellow-forward cards like '91 Fleer and the '88 Topps All-Star subset take to modifying the best.


Here's a side-by-side. This is the only one I've made so far, but would like to whip up some more this summer. (Anybody got dupes they could send me, especially Mattingly, Puckett, Ozzie?) Next time I'd probably mask the player name too so it remains a deep red rather than turn pink (though "National League" is awash in yellow, so can't do much with that).

Gwynn's 1988 Topps All-Star card has some extra significance for me, to boot. I picked it as my first wallet card, and it got its "moment in the sun", so to speak, when the whole wallet card idea then made the rounds online and was a brief sensation.

Now let's segue into a wallet card post...


My 2022 wallet card was a 1988 Score Gwynn. Here it is getting chummy with fancy plants at the Lincoln Park Conservatory in Chicago when I was there this past summer.


If my wallet card could talk, I think it would say the highlight of its year was taking in a Padres victory at Wrigley.


Another random wallet card photo I didn't include in my big post recapping the Chicago trip. This picture kinda makes me dizzy, lol. Paging M.C. Escher!



My only other time out of the greater Portland area in 2022 was a trip to Kentucky for a cousin's wedding in October. The only time I remembered to snap a wallet card photo was during a little family hike one afternoon.


Yep, there's Tony in the crisp Kentucky autumn air.

Will my 2023 wallet card see more action than a ballgame and some shrubbery? I'm not sure. No travel plans locked in, but we might do something in a few months.


One last out-and-about photo of '88 Score Tony communing with nature, taken 12/31/2022, to close out the year. Nothing really interesting going on here, just a wallet card photo for the sake of taking a wallet card photo.. snapped while walking the dog. Ruby stank of pee most of this week-- Lord, this pup!-- but got a bath the day before and is still pretty clean and pettable today.

Ooh, this part is fun...


With 2022 retired to the binder page, that wraps up 8 years of wallet cards. A year from now, the page will be complete. Then I'll have to decide whether I want to start a new page (if so, stick with Gwynn or pick another favorite player of mine?), or pick a "permanent" wallet card to leave in year after year, or heck even just stop putting a baseball card in my wallet in 2024. We'll see how it shakes out.


I picked 1987 Fleer for 2023. Technically '87 Fleer makes an unprecedented return to the wallet, seeing as 2017's card was from the 1987 Fleer Limited Edition Baseball Superstars box set. But yeah, as mentioned earlier this year when I pulled the trigger on a complete set, I remember 1987 Fleer being a big deal when I first went nuts for baseball in 1990, with the Bo Jackson and Will Clark being prestige pieces to show off to your buddies at school if you were blessed to own either. So part of me winces at putting an '87 Fleer card unprotected in my wallet. But thanks to Padrographs Rod bestowing his vast fields of Gwynn dupes on me over the years, I've got over a dozen copies of this card so it doesn't hurt too bad sacrificing one of them. It's a nice shot featuring Mr. Padre giving a subtle smile with his mind on pre-game BP. That sky blue should look nice closing out the binder page. 

Thanks for reading another year of Baseball Card Breakdown. I appreciate it. Happy New Year! Any of you swapping in a new wallet card this year?

13 comments:

  1. Love your dedication to #walletcard after all these years. One away from filling up the binder page!

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  2. Eight years of traveling with Tony. That's very impressive! I hope you and your wallet card (and Ruby) see some more unique sights in '23.

    If I did any decent traveling I might have considered doing a wallet card travel log, but I'm so reluctant to handle cards this much unless they're really low-value and overproduced. That UD masterpieces Gwynn would be a keeper for me. Even the '87 Fleer might be too good to 'wreck' lol.

    Happy New Year Gavin!

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    1. Yeah, the Masterpieces card being off-center helped me decide on it, otherwise probably would have stuck to junk.

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  3. I should get wallet card started again. I have so many dupes just waiting to be used.

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  4. Oh damn you did this before I had a chance to suggest it in my blog post. (seriously it's in my draft and now I'm going to have to edit that though my wondering about masking the head cutout remains relevant). I'm trying to figure out why magenta isn't as affected since, logically to me, it should be. That said, the fact that it isn't means you have a chance to turn red things pink and green things cyan with this method.

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    1. Of course the other possibility with something like the 88AS cards is being able to create a masked pattern of fading in the yellow.

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    2. I did have to sacrifice another 88AS Gwynn to cut up for the mask.. wasn't hard to find a dupe with a dinged corner to sacrifice. And yeah, a striped yellow result could be fun, something like that.

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  5. A. I probably don't have any Mattingly, Puckett, or Ozzies... but I'm guessing I have a few extra Gwynns. Let me know if you can use them and I'll PWE them to you.

    B. I keep telling myself I need to swap out my wallet card. Maybe next year.

    C. Happy New Year Gavin!

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  6. A. I will be sorting my big mass of '88 Topps cards soon, happy to save as many of each card as you like, I'm guessing I have dupes of some if not all.

    B. Eight years and counting (and lots of tape!) for my wallet card! Even though nobody comments on them, the Wallet Card posts are my favorite ones to produce.

    C. Happy new year!

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  7. It's so weird to see all of these yellow cards sans their yellow! I can't think of any more sets that had a lot of yellow in them, but if there are any more, it'll be fun to see what they look like after you've been able to do your thing.

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    1. 1988 Score has that golden yellow that might be good?

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  8. I still need to fire up the ole wallet card photos again

    SCC

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  9. I just can't bring myself to carry a wallet card, even if it is from the junk wax era, but your dedication is impressive.

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