ignorable filler post: 1991 Cardboard Dreams #7 Bo Jackson

Dang it, guys.. I did it again! I accidentally went out of order with this set. I jumped to #8 Michael Jordan in the previous installment, skipping over #7 Bo Jackson. Wasn't on purpose, but I guess I was swept up in The Last Dance hype, lol. I suppose card number doesn't really matter much unless you're working on the set, or maybe a frankenset, or maybe you're one of the very few collectors who collect certain numbers, like the No. 5 Collector guy and how Tom at Angels In Order likes cards that are #444. But for most of us, card number is rarely something we worry much about. But I still feel like a bad set-blogger for the taboo faux pas of going out of order. I have not yet made such a mistake on my 1991 MusiCards blog, thankfully.

Not the best likeness of Bo, but overall a neat two-sport card. Funny how I was just talking in my latest post (editor's note: the first part of this post was drafted a while back; I've posted a few times since) about the White Sox rehauling their uniforms several times over the years until finally finding a fit with colors most equated in sports to the NFL Raiders. This card shows both for ya. I never thought about it, but it sure is funny that 1991, the year they switched to those uniforms, was the year they signed Bo after he had recently retired from football. Having a former Raiders hero on the squad really must've helped embolden and validate their gutsy uniform decision. I don't know about you guys, but at my middle school around '91-92, the new black White Sox stuff was considered the coolest. Probably also because popular rappers wore it sometimes. I never had a Sox hat (which still fills me with a gentle wave of regret to this day), though I did have a black White Sox shirt back then which I wore when I needed to impress the ladies. Worked every time. Nah, I'm just kidding. But I thought I looked cool, at least. I think I've even posted an awkward-age photo of me wearing it in an older post but I don't think I'll dig it out this time.

Some nightmare fuel on the back with a demonic clown playing guitar. Yikes! But seriously, I wonder if Bo kept up practicing guitar? Talented guy like that could do damn near anything he set his mind to, so I bet he could learn to really shred if he worked at it.

Anyways, now time for the randomness.

Isn't this a cool painting? Looks like a fun night at the Sugar Shack.

Speaking of sugar, I'm a dessert guy. I've got a sweet tooth and the curiosity to hunt for new dessert ideas to blow my mind. One I found that I will highly recommend is eating chocolate pudding not with a spoon but with nutty buddies. Oh man, that's heaven!

Another good one: sandwich of butterscotch pudding between a couple snickerdoodles, with fresh strawberries on the side. Very nice!

What the hell is this? I think it's a Twinkie dipped in the last of the butterscotch pudding with some strawberries thrown in for good measure. Yeah, this was fine. But let's be honest, these 3 desserts I've shown here are in descending order and this was the least best.

Shadow box tribute to my amazing pup Annie Lou who left us last year. Features a dual auto and some game-used memorabilia (collar and her favorite toy). Turned out pretty well.

The wild bunnies who've been enjoying free reign of our backyard in the months since Annie's passing have been a godsend to us, providing the cuteness needed to help keep our hearts from turning to dust given the events of 2020. But the backyard has a new ruler on the horizon, with Dog #3 less than a week away from joining our household. Pretty excited about it. Stay tuned.

Ladybugs are cool too. Snapped this nice close-up a week or so back.

This baby ladybug was found inside on the wall of my wife's home office, but I successfully rehomed it to the overgrown garden. Seemed to be pretty happy to have leaves to crawl around on instead of a boring wall.

No luck on the TTM request I sent to Mark McGwire a couple springs ago, but here's a version of it with a facsimile auto. Maybe someday!

Here's a McGwire mashup ("bash up") I made in photoshop (this is not a real photo). 1987 Topps meets 1991 Fleer Pro Visions for a Project 2020-style "art card".

I thought this was a fun one! Would love to see Topps and Panini (or Upper Deck) come together to offer a special card or set of cards along these lines with proceeds going to charity... covid, BLM, or something. But that's just me pie-in-the-skying over here on my computer relaxing at the end of a stressful Q2 at work.

And here's a dumb gif I made of Bert Blyleven's 1975 Topps card. LOL

Can't remember if I shared this here yet or not, but here's another dumb thing I made for Twitter recently.. brings us back to Bo, tying up the post nicely. It's a 3-way mashup of cards: 1971 Topps Nolan Ryan, 1986 Topps Traded Bo Jackson, and 1990 Classic "Nolan Knows Bo".. all in one crazy image.

That's it for this ignorable shitpost. See ya next time!

McCutchen McCustoms

There's a high-swagger Andrew McCutchen photo variation short-print in the recently released 2020 Topps Series 2 that's been creating a buzz in the hobby.

I thought I'd spend some of my Sunday having fun creating a few customs from that same moment.

1980 Topps seemed like an obvious choice, being a special year for Phillies phans.

How about an '81 Fleer card.

Funky! All these background photos are the skyline of Philadelphia, by the way.

The grand finale is this 1972 Topps gif. That's what I'm talkin' about! Makes you wanna strut around listening to some James Brown or something.

Thanks for stopping by!

untitled post for November 18, 2019

I was watching the classic North By Northwest last weekend and browsed over to the film's Wikipedia page while I was at it. Turns out John Berardino, who has a small role as a cop, had been a baseball player. I looked up his cards and ended up pulling the trigger on this well-loved 1951 Bowman card. Apparently he went on to play Dr. Steven Hardy on General Hospital for over 30 years. Wow!

Beradino is the only person to have won a World Series (1948) and get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (1993).

Being a card collector means never getting rid of a box before first asking yourself, "Could I store cards in this?" pic.twitter.com/7g93oOB6dX

— Baseball Card Breakdown (@breakdowncards) November 14, 2019

I "salvaged" this box from work. With a length of 30", it might be a bit too long, but I'll probably find a way to make it work for cards.

Here's a Tom Seaver gif I made a few months back that I recently realized I hadn't posted to the blog yet. It was his 75th birthday yesterday.

Here's a gif I made for a Jimi Hendrix post over at my other blog, the 1991 MusiCards Blog. We're still working through the classic rock of the Legends subset. Gonna be at least a couple more months till we break into the 90s pop stuff.



Finally, I'll leave you with a little Calvin and Hobbes gif I whipped up today. The classic comic strip debuted on this date back in 1985.

Ready for the World Series

I had to splurge on a Juan Soto autograph. I'm pretty happy with this one. Big, on-card signature. Still had a few eBay Bucks left to help take the sting out of the price. He's a terrific young player who's a lot of fun to watch.

It's from 2019 Bowman Sterling. Numbered out of 25.

While I'm at it, I figured I'd show off a few of my best cards of other players I collect who are competing in the Fall Classic this year.

Stephen Strasburg is a guy I collect thanks to his status as a fellow SDSU alum. This is a custom overlay I made a couple years back.

Some of my other decent Stras cards. I hope he does well in the series.

I collect some dudes in the other dugout, too. This Carlos Correa atomic auto is a favorite of mine.

Other highlights in that PC include a prospect auto, a slabbed Pro Debut, and a Members Only parallel from Stadium Club.

A year or two back I kinda-sorta started collecting Max Scherzer. No auto yet, but I've accumulated a few solid cards of his.

I started collecting George Springer after his impressive performance in the 2017 postseason.

Dig these thicc Crystal Ball inserts from 2015 Stadium Club.

Some other Springer highlights.

Trea Turner is another Nat I collect. His success is bittersweet for me, since the Padres gave him up in an ill-advised trade.

Gotta love Jose Altuve (..unless you're a Yankees fan, I suppose). My PC of him is highlighted by an Archives auto, a Heritage action variation, and 3 rookies. Still need a parallel of his Topps rookie for my 2011 frankenset. If anybody has one, I'd love a chance to tempt you into a trade.

Shortly after his ALCS-winning jack, I whipped up this Altuve gif (at the brilliant suggestion of Dennis). The "hand cut" effect is kinda neat. I already had much of this card whipped up thanks to a custom I made a couple years ago...

Nice looking custom.

I think that's it as far as guys I collect who are in the WS. All the early Gerrit Cole cards that came my way ended up going to Matthew Scott. Pretty much any Verlander cards I've had over the years have gone to Dennis. I also collect Alex Bregman, but don't have anything really notable yet. I have an auto each from Adam Eaton and Ryan Zimmerman, though I don't really collect either player.

I think it's gonna be a fun series. Too bad the Astros had to poop in the pool with their continued poor handling of domestic violence issues. I was already lightly rooting for Washington, and now after recent stuff in the news, I'm really hoping they can pull off the upset. Though if I was a betting man, my money would be on Houston. But yeah, regardless, hope we get some exciting biggest-stage baseball.

customs overload

FINALLY today I finished designing the long list of customs that John Miller sent me last year. I've still got a lot of printing to do now, so the project isn't completely finished yet, but at least it feels good to have the heavy lifting out of the way. I've moaned about it before, but it was tough going. While I normally enjoy making custom cards, to have a big list hanging over my head made it feel like a job and I quickly grew to resent it and avoided working on them. Nothing against John, who was quick to tell me no rush and hooked me up with plenty of cards to return the favor, but I wouldn't agree to another large custom commission order like this again. I'd rather do several small commissions, just a few cards at a time, than to get bogged down with one big list of requests.

Anyways, thought I'd get a post out of showing off some more of the highlights, following earlier posts here and here. Most of these customs are for his "same name" binder.

Jackie Brown pays homage to blaxploitation films of the early/mid 70s, so I figured 1973 Topps would be a good design to use.

Gotta admit I didn't really know about the Chuck Taylor behind popularizing Converse shoes, so it was interesting to learn about him as I was working on the card (These all include backs with little write-ups).

Yeah, it probably would have made more sense to use a football design for this Craig T. Nelson card, but whatever.

A couple very different guys both named Michael McDonald.

John doesn't mind multi-player cards, though he prefers them to be vertically oriented, which limits the options. But this league leaders design from 1970-71 Topps basketball worked for squeezing 3 guys onto 1 vertical card.

Gotta love Tom Jones.

Steve Martin's The Jerk was released in 1979.

Towards the end of the list, to hurry things along, I started mainly sticking with the 1989 Pacific Baseball Legends design because it's quick and easy. I sometimes changed the border color to spice it up. Looks pretty good in blue here (the real cards have a grey border).


Thanks again, John. I should be able to have these printed and in the mail soon.

Customs next on my "to do" list include a few for Jaybarkerfan and Dimebox Dad.

Let's close things out with a new gif...

Made this yesterday to celebrate Mike Schmidt turning 70. I believe that's a clip of him hitting his 500th homer. Pretty neat.

taking it back to 1987 with a few customs

Most of the customs I've made lately are for others, but I took some time today to make one for me I had been wanting to make for a long time.

Ha no, it wasn't Kathy Ireland, but the card I wanted to make was in the design of 1987 Donruss. Once I spent some quality time making a template, I had some fun with it.

Kathy Ireland is looking great for the Mets here in a meaningless late September game. Sadly, she would be DFA'd at the end of the season after only batting .198 in 74 at-bats.
Nah, I'm just being silly; I don't know the actual origin of the photo.

Bruce Springsteen gets a mocked-up card too. Kinda fun. Glory days, well, they'll pass you by.. am I right?

I wasn't planning on printing these above two out, but maybe someday.

Ok, here's the card I set out to create. Chris D. Jones is a guy who went to my high school and had brief stints in The Show with the Astros (1985) and Giants (1986), but unfortunately never got a real MLB card. In fact, I've only ever seen one photo of him in a major league uniform, this one that Rod shared with me. It's originally in black and white, though I've made an attempt at colorization here. Eh, good enough! I still need to make the back, but I hope to print out a few of these soon and make a TTM autograph request.

This one was a request on Twitter. Mickey Mantle taking Paul Simon deep in the video for "Me and Julio Down By The Schoolyard". Neat!

It was Hoyt Wilhelm's birthday the other day and I wanted to Tweet about it, but couldn't find this gif I made last year. (I usually search my blog to find my old gifs if I don't have them otherwise handy.) Maybe I forgot to post about it here? Well, there it is for next time!

Another one by request a few days ago. Here's a gif card of 75-year-old Luke Appling hitting a homer at an Old Timers game in '82 off Warren Spahn. Gotta love it!

That's all for today. Thanks for reading!