Figured I'd put a post together about how I make de-yellowed 1991 Fleer mods. I meant to get to it earlier in the summer, but hey, there are still plenty of sunny days left.
Tuesday, August 12, 2025
1991 Fleer "white border" mod tutorial
Tuesday, July 29, 2025
Ryno refractors
Sorry it's been a while since I posted. Forgot to tell anyone I've been on strike from blogging to protest COMC jacking up their bulk shipping rate.
No, I'm only (half) joking. Just kinda fell into a "summer break" from blogging to deal with other stuff. But rather than vent about my frustrating life, I wanted to pop in with a little tribute to the recently departed Ryne Sandberg and pull out my best cards of him.
Ok, breaking theme here at the end as this isn't a refractor, but still a shiny card. It's a cardart remix of his 1993 Topps Black Gold insert I made last year that I think turned out pretty good. I've been intending to do more stuff like this once I get back into the card-cutting groove.
Wrapping up, it's tough to lose a great, especially such a solid dude like Ryne Sandberg. RIP
Tuesday, May 20, 2025
2001 Topps Chrome "Before There was Topps" refractors
Y'all know I like refractors. Well, one niche that especially interests me are guys' 1st Refractor, specifically talking about old-timers who played before such parallels were a thing. And in poking around, I found this 10-card "Before There was Topps" insert set from 2001 Chrome that features the first refractor produced of several inner-circle HOFers, and so I went about completing it. Took me a couple years, but I tracked them all down, paying about $10-20 per card. The base versions typically run a buck or two, but the refractors were tougher pulls-- 1:200 odds compared to 1:20 for base (per baseballcardpedia).
They didn't go too nuts in imagining what a Topps design from way back then would look like, going with a simplified 1959 Topps design with the photo circle in the middle. If this "what if" set came out today, chances are the pictures would be artificially colorized, but back in 2001, at least, Topps went old-school and kept the photos black and white.
With all these household names, you'd never guess what ended up being the final card I needed to track down. If you can believe it, it was Grover, who one might argue is the least-remembered of these 10 men today if you were forced to rank them. Hey, that gives me an idea, let's use TCDb to see which of these legends has the most cards out there as of May 2025.
#1 with 16,275 cards - Babe Ruth
Might as well do the list in descending order, since Babe Ruth having the most cards surely isn't a surprise. He's the original GOAT and still well-known today despite his heyday being a century ago.
#2 with 5,518 cards - Lou Gehrig
Great career ended by a tragic disease.
#3 Joe DiMaggio, Total Cards: 4,822
I always thought it was a bummer that Joltin' Joe narrowly missed getting a playing-days Topps card.
#4 Ty Cobb, Total Cards: 4,729
Ty Cobb still gets talked about a lot today, though it's often in conversations regarding Pete Rose. While he might not have the "Hit King" crown these days, check out that insane lifetime average.
#5 Honus Wagner, Total Cards: 3,189
Honus Wagner is best known in the hobby for his T206 SSP that's considered the all-time "best baseball card" to many. But yeah, he was a pretty good player, too! Not a lot of pop, but hey, that's pre-Ripken shortstops for you, right?
#6 Rogers Hornsby, Total Cards: 2,361
More teams on the back than we've seen in the post so far. Hornsby was player/manager for most of the latter half of his career, which helps explain sticking around with limited action as his career wound down.
#7 Christy Mathewson, Total Cards: 1,423
Imagine guys today pitching that many innings!
#8 Walter Johnson, Total Cards: 1,190
#9 Cy Young, Total Cards: 1,021
Tons of wins and losses. Cool seeing forgotten teams Spiders and Naps on the back.
Last at #10 Grover Alexander, Total Cards: 480
30+ wins.. 3 years in a row.. Can you imagine?!
And that wraps it up. Nice group of shiny cards featuring all-time greats.
Friday, May 9, 2025
Rod roundup
Rod at Padrographs has been distributing cards around again and I was fortunate enough to have him swing by the other weekend with a stack for me. I've pulled out a few highlights for blog post.
This book about baseball movies looks interesting, and it pulled double duty by keeping the oversized cards safe during transit.
Lastly, a fresh pair of Sheets. Gavin's 2025 cards have to this point still featured him in his Chicago duds, making me wait for the personal double-bullseye of a Padres-Gavin card. But Rod whipped up a terrific custom to tide me over until an official version hits the market.
Thank you muchly, Rod!
Thursday, May 1, 2025
Stacking Plates
I've scored myself 3 printing plates in the past few months and I figured I'd round them up into a post.
Back in June 2014, I traded with former blogger ARPSmith for the magenta plate that he pulled. A few months later in November 2014, I scored the yellow plate on eBay. Then a decade went by with no progress until the cyan plate popped up just last November. Now there's just the black plate left to try tracking down.
Turns out there also a 1/1 red parallel (non-plate) that I also need to complete the rainbow. And dang it, I haven't been keeping an eye out for that, so it's probably too late by this point. But whatever, I'm more interested in the printing plate quadfecta.
The following year, 2015, Topps put Bip into Stadium Club (with the sombrero, but no autos). Those are the only two instances to date of Topps showing the Bipper any post-career love. But I guess I shouldn't complain, because if they put out more Bip autos I'd probably have to buy them all. lol
Anybody know what Bip is up to these days, by the way? Last I heard he was a part of the extended broadcast team in Oakland, but that was a while ago, and now Oakland doesn't even have a team anymore.
Speaking of Bip, I skimmed a recent Pitchfork article about how "Bip" is a hip slang word on the rise. The writer failed to mention Mr. Roberts nor bipping as "surprising someone with several copies of the same trading card", as we on the cardsphere know it, but rather among several possibilities, could mean "conducting illicit transactions, driving around smoothly while conducting those illicit transactions, or just masterfully driving in general. [...] In its other, more benign definitions, getting “bipped up” means you’ve gotten a fresh haircut or hairstyle."
Safe bippin' out there, y'all!
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
more silhouette custom/cardart
My latest cardart projects still involve finding silhouette ideas to put together. Lately I've done a few more glow-in-the-dark 4-card displays.
Here's one for Derek Jeter:
And I thought it'd be fun to do a series of Carlton Fisk hopping around:
More Rickey Henderson, too:
Finally, here's another Rickey.. getting a little weird with my first attempt at spin art splattering:
And there's what I've been working on lately. If anything caught your eye, I'm always down to talk trade or check out my eBay listings.
Oh, thanks for the well-wishes in the comments of my previous post, by the way! I'm doing much better now, with my smell/taste thankfully returned.