Mad Magazine cards from 1988

Here's a follow-up post to one I made back in those carefree days of early February when I posted about Mad Magazine cut-out cards from 1990. Since those were billed as the "All New 2nd Series" I was curious about the inaugural series and hunted them down, too.

Here you go! As you can see, these borrow heavily from the 1988 Topps Baseball design, which makes sense as this issue came out in '88.

Here's the front cover. It's issue No. 282 (Oct 1988). "Designated Hittee" Alfred E. Neuman. Cool.

And yep, I bought an extra copy so that I could keep one intact and cut the other into "cards". Like with the 1990 counterpart, these don't have corresponding backs, with the inside cover being another of those "fold-in" gags.

The references are no doubt very dated today, but still interesting items for a card collector with a quirky, wide collecting breadth, such as myself.

Now let's see if there's any baseball stuff inside the magazine....

Welp, no inside feature on baseball cards (unlike the 1990 issue), but a couple things worth sharing.

Bob Uecker takes some ribbing among other celebrities of the time.

A baseball comic in a "how to stay cool in the summer" feature.

 Not baseball related, but I'm sure someone will get a kick out of this Alf gag.

In tracking down the back-issues with cards, I ended up with a couple eBay lots that included additional issues. Maybe someday I'll flip through them, but I don't really need them so if anyone wants to trade for these two, let me know. I'm a big GNR fan, so perhaps I should hang onto the Slash one. Whatever.

Anyways, I haven't been able to find any evidence of a 3rd series of "Mad's All-Star Flopps" so I suppose my collection of these pseudo cards is now complete!

Thanks for stopping by and take care out there (or "in there" as the case may be).

A pair of big Bobs

My 1964 Topps setbuild is clawing toward 3/4 complete, and I recently picked up a pair of key cards. I had been after a '64 Bob Roberto Clemente for a while now. I thought it'd be fitting to use my Q1 eBay Bucks on a vintage Clemente (since the majority of those eBay Bucks came from buying his autograph), but truth be told, my Bucks had already been depleted by the time I ended up snagging this PSA 4 specimen in late April. (--though I did use an 8% eBay Bucks promo on it, so the cycle continues.)

A little off-center on the front, and the corners aren't perfect, but I'm very happy with it.


And the other '64 Bob I added last month is another baseball legend in his own right...

Roberto Bob Uecker! Another personal favorite I was happy to reel into my collection. And this one was fully funded by eBay Bucks.

Uecker is a high-number, too. Similar to the Clemente, it leans to the left, but seems the relatively sharp corners and unrubbed trivia answer helped it secure a PSA grade of 6, among the highest examples of the very few slabbed cards in my modest setbuild.

You may be wondering if I plan to free these two beautiful Bobs so I can caress them in my hands and get a good feel-- but no, I intend to keep them safe in their plastic prisons for now.

Thanks for poppin' by!

Bob Uecker autograph

Congrats to the Red Sox on bringing home the 2018 World Series championship trophy. I was rooting for them to beat LA, though out of the final four, I had been hoping for the Brewers to win it all.

Milwaukee's terrific 2018 season just drove home how much of a national treasure Bob Uecker is. I wanted to pick up a certified auto card of his, but dang gumit, there are none! It's a tragedy he doesn't have any pack-certified auto cards out there. Not sure if the card companies haven't bothered asking, or if he just turns down all inquiries. Seems like a great way to make a chunk of change signing your name over and over for a few hours, but if he's not interested, fair enough.

Apart from his playing-days cards, he's only got a handful of oddballs out there and a pair of reprints in 2001 Topps Archives. Not many cards and no certified autos.

So anyways, that means it's time for me to take matters into my own hands. I kept an eye on eBay and ended up winning a beautiful slabbed Beckett-certified signed index card. But since index cards are boring, it was up to me to spice it up with a custom overlay. My time to shine!

Since it was a 3x5" index card and came in a big slab, I had more room to work with compared to a standard baseball card. And so I wanted to take advantage of that and hit a few major aspects of his career. At the upper corners you've got a couple photos from his days as a cut-up backup catcher, borrowed from baseball cards. Anchoring the bottom is a recent shot of him as broadcaster for the Brewers, flanked by his best-known acting roles, Indians broadcaster Harry Doyle in Major League on the left and George Owens in Mr. Belvedere on the right. Gotta admit I watched a lot of that sitcom as a kid in the mid 80s before I cared about baseball, so I had to even squeeze Mr. Belvedere himself (Christopher Hewett) into the mix. If I really wanted to go nuts, I could have included photos from his time messing around with WWF wrestlers, or one of his many times chatting with Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show, or even his memorable beer ads.

Here's a clearer shot of it outside of the sleeve.

For scale, here's the undressed index card along with the rest of my collection of "Mr. Baseball" which is really just the two aforementioned '01 Archives reprints plus the only vintage card I've got from him, plucked from my 1965 Topps complete set. One of these days, I'll focus on picking up more of his cards, most importantly his '64 Topps, which I need for my in-progress setbuild.

I'm very happy with how this turned out. He's one of baseball's all-time classic characters. Just a very funny and interesting guy. Here's an informative little article I found called 17 things you might not know about Bob Uecker.

Definitely gonna have to display this badboy for a while! Gives me a big smile everytime see it.

Thanks for swinging by.