Vintage Frankenset Page 5

Back in 2020, I got the idea for a frankenset to give purpose to many of the random old cards that didn't really have a solid "home" in my collection. Plus it's a good excuse for me to check out neat old card designs that I otherwise might miss. The priority of the project eventually slid to the backburner, but I still occasionally fill empty slots and try to keep my streak alive of featuring one completed page on the blog each year. I showed off page 1 in 2020, page 2 in 2021, page 3 in 2022, and page 4 in 2023. So here's page 5 for 2024.

My Vintage Frankenset has 3 rules for entry:
- Cards must have been released prior to 1981.
- Must fit in a standard top-loader. (I group them into "pages" but the project consists of toploaders in a box, not actual binder pages, in part to deal with varying sizes.)**
- No flagship Topps baseball allowed. (I have a different project for that.)

**Update! These "pages" are no longer just 9-deep groupings of cards in a box; I found a lightly-used top-loader binder for a decent price and have now paged up the first 60 cards in their top-loaders. Feels like that improves the project while still allowing for different sized cards.

Here's your Page 5 overview. No surprise that the top-loader binder is larger than a standard 3-ring binder, looking more like a portfolio case, with its outer padding and zipper. The black backing of each page means the backs are not visible unless you slip out the cards manually, which is a minor bummer for me as I'm a "card backs" guy, generally speaking, and it might be tricky to keep track of card numbers if I can't see them as easily. But as long as I don't get sloppy about the order, should be fine. Also, while I originally envisioned the frankenset topping out at card #333, the binder holds 360 cards, so I suppose I should expand the project all the way up to a card #360.

Now for a closer look at the cards of page 5.

37 1977-78 Topps #37 Dan Bouchard

Things kick off with a hockey common. This is a recent addition; I was ordering some cards from a Canadian seller on Sportlots, and threw in 3 or 4 cheap vintage OPC cards to fill early holes in the frankenset. That always feels less "organic" than just stumbling upon old cards for this project, or receiving them in trade or whatever, but we only get so much time on this earth! lol (My collecting philosophy feels like it has changed since when I first started this blog in my 30s. Now that I've got more years behind me than ahead of me, I'm making an effort to be less "open-ended"/"long-term" than I used to be with my hobby projects.)

Dan Bouchard here has taught me that there are Louisville Slugger hockey sticks.. I hadn't realized that! I've got a few decent hockey cards in my collection, but I admit I'm a poser and am not a very knowledgeable hockey fan. Like, I thought the Flames were from Calgary, but that logo seems to feature an "A" not a "C", so what do I know?

The pizza cartoon is fun, but I feel like that could go on pretty much anybody's card. With a name like "Guy Bouchard", I was sure Dan's little brother went onto NHL stardom, but he doesn't show up in a hockey-reference.com search, so I guess not. As for Dan, he had a long career in front of the net, currently 41st all-time in career NHL games played at goalie. 

38 1976 HRT/RES Phila. Card Show - 1947 Series #38 Luke Appling

It must've been an epic card show in Philadelphia back in 1976, getting some retro oddballs printed up for the occasion. Fittingly, this was a card show pickup of mine a few years ago. Loved finding vintage oddballs in the sub-dollar bins back then.

These are supposed to be like "1947 Bowman that-never-was" cards meant to complement the real 1948 Bowman set that looks similar to this. Some big names in the 113-card set, like Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio, not that Luke Appling's a slouch.

39 1953 Bowman Color #39 Paul Richards

Here's a real Bowman card after that homage to the brand. A couple posts back I was talking about completing 1957 Topps and how I really like Topps not trampling much on the photo with that design-- Well, no set does that better than 1953 Bowman Color. Beautiful cards, even stained with a little water damage like this one. It's almost tempting to try going after that set, but nah, I'll be content just having at least this single example in my Vintage Frankenset and admiring the rest when I see them from afar.

Paul Richards would later manage the Orioles for a few years, and had a final hurrah in 1976 as skipper for the White Sox. His best season as far as the standings was guiding Baltimore to a second-place finish in 1960.

40 1977-78 Topps #40 Elvin Hayes

Happy to have basketball represented on this page by Hall of Famer Elvin Hayes. Cool card. Another cheap card show pickup from the past, I believe.

White paper stock! Nice bright, readable back. As a vintage baseball collector, I'm a little jealous that Topps basketball cards (at least for that year) have such better looking backs than the drab, grey stock that Topps used for most of their baseball products at the time.

41 1971 Topps #41 Alex Karras

I have a sentimental soft spot for Alex Karras thanks to watching Webster a fair amount as a young'un. Then I got older and learned he plays Mongo in Blazing Saddles, which blew my mind, and so I had to score a couple cards of his for my collection. This powder-blue beauty makes for a great center square of the page.

Karras played his last down in 1970, so this is his "sunset card" (a.k.a. "final tribute", "career capper", etc) with full career stats.. not that "interception record" is all that interesting. The "did not play" in 1963 turns out to be more interesting than injury; Karras was suspended that year for betting on NFL games. Crazy! He's been posthumously enshrined in Canton.

42 1977 Saturday Night Fever #42

I've never seen Saturday Night Fever, but in my head I think I tend to conflate it with Grease, which I've seen once or twice, both featuring peak John Travolta.. only with disco instead of '50s rock n' roll as the soundtrack. I think Bo sent me this card specifically for the frankenset. It was misplaced for a while, but glad I could find it to secure slot #42, incidentally a rare instance in the frankenset where the card number is displayed on the front.

Features a puzzle back with no context. Looks like a close-up of somebody's lips or something.

43 1924 Cavanders The Homeland Series #43 Looking Across Ullswater

I scored this for a buck in a 2016 COMC order. It's in great shape for a card that's celebrating its 100th birthday this year. I think I was just looking around for cheap tobacco cards that caught my eye. Love the subtle pink and blues. You can almost hear the symphony of frogs and other critters that likely filled the air when the original photo was taken.

Poet William Wordsworth is quoted on the back. Ullswater is a big lake in England.

44 1951 Bowman #44 Roy Smalley

Another off-condition old Bowman card that I must have picked up cheap either at a card show or on COMC. Love the puffy white clouds.

When I think of Roy Smalley, I just remember that his son Roy Jr had a solid MLB career, and the two appear on a Father & Son card in 1985 Topps.

45 1978-79 O-Pee-Chee #45 Steve Jensen

Page 5 ends as it began, with a hockey common. Without peeking on the back, I think that's a North Stars uniform, right? Pretty sure that's Minnesota. But the card tells me now he's with the Kings... though I'm not sure if they were in Los Angeles yet by then.

Steve Jensen's facsimile autograph on the bottom apparently inspired a previous owner of this card to practice some cursive squiggles of their own. The pen marks don't bother me too much, but this slot is definitely upgradable should a slightly more appealing vintage card #45 make its way across my desk. Plus, the card #46 that leads off the next page also happens to be a 1978-79 O-Pee-Chee hockey card... and consecutive cards from the same set in a Frankenset would surely be frowned upon by other Dr. Frankensetters out there, so a shake-up likely awaits.

Here's another look at the completed page 5 to wrap things up. Nice variety, with all four major North American sports represented, plus two very different non-sport cards further spicing it up.

See you back here in 2025 for page 6. That one's already completed, so no problem there. But then we start getting into swiss cheese territory by page 7, with slots #61 through 64 currently vacant.

Anyways.. Thanks for reading!

Getting a jump on the Holidays

Christmas decorations typically don't go up at my house till mid December, but this year I'm getting an early infusion of holiday spirit thanks to focusing my cardart activities for the past few weeks on creating "tree ornaments" from cards. Now that we're into November, they're ready to roll out.

There's 30-something of these in this initial batch. I basically look for cards that would lend themselves to modifying for the holidays, such as red '90 Donruss and green '91 Donruss, and then I add some shiny to help them pop on the tree. Each card has a customized semi-rigid hanger. Figured I'd throw on a Santa cap to really drive the point ho-ho-home. The santa hats are on the case, not the card, for an added 3D effect (or they can be removed if you think it's too cheesy). The backs are marked 1/1, as I don't intend to make the same thing twice.

Pardon the plug, but I've now got these up for sale at the yuletide price of $12.25 plus cheap eBay standard letter shipping (which often takes around 10 days, another reason I'm not waiting till Thanksgiving). Here's the eBay link to 'em. I still have lots of cards set aside to make additional ornaments, perhaps a whole second batch if there's interest. Normally these might be the type of thing I use as a "holiday surprise" for my hobby pals, but seeing as I'm still unemployed and trying to make a midlife pivot to creative/artist endeavors as a day job, these were specifically made for advancing the ol' side-hustle. But that said, I'm happy to make more of these for trades or whatever, so yeah, if you want me to make a similar one of these of your favorite player, either in exchange for $12.25 (USA PWE) or the rough equivalent in cards that fall under the wide umbrella of my wantlist, just let me know and we'll work something out.

Scroll through the alphabetized gallery below to check out this first batch of tree ornament cardart.

I like to round the corners when it fits with the design. These green '87 Hygrade cards work well.

No cap. This Rickey has been sold already.

Got cute with a bonus snowman in this one.

Yeah, a whopping four Rickeys, the king of Baseball Christmas.

Sneaking in a football card.

A guy was asking me about Dave Justice cardart, so I made a couple.

I made a typo in the listing that this Mattingly is '91 Post (and eBay won't let me edit it), but of course it's '94 Post with the Christmas colors.

The "crystal window" cards look pretty cool with a light behind them shining through.

The only active player in this group. Ohtani "mini" made from 1/3 of a League Leaders card. The frame is upcycled from an old greeting card I received.

Kirby is the only one here who gets a funky frame.

Fun fact: these ornaments were all made by someone who was literally born on Christmas Eve, so they naturally have more "Christmas Spirit" seeped into them than you'll find elsewhere! :)

This Nolan is leftover from last year when I first thought to make card-ornaments but it was too late to really run with the idea by then.

There you have it, my latest cardart offering. (I've got another new cardart avenue I'm even more excited about these days, but that's for another post.) Thanks for reading and I wish you all Happy Holidays this year!