Passing thru customs

Sad to hear Norm Macdonald passed away. Made a custom card as a little tribute. Background photo is his hometown of Quebec City. 

This is just digital, but maybe I'll print up a copy for myself once I get back into the swing of things. (The desktop computer I do most of my custom card stuff on is in the shop. Didn't have many templates available to choose from, but 1990 Swell worked fine.)

Physical customs have been popping up from bloggers more frequently these days, and I've got some to show off here today.

The Cards That Never Were blog has been around for over a decade now, cranking out tons of cool customs over the years. He recently started making some hard copies available via his blog and eBay store, and ran a little giveaway to help spread the news, which is how I ended up with this addition for my Buck O'Neil collection.

Thank you, sir!

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Gregory at Nine Pockets has also gotten in on the fantasy card creation, and he too was gracious enough to do a giveaway sharing copies with his readers. The hard part for me was picking just 3 cards out of the several fun options available. I'm a big Seinfeld guy, so the George Costanza was my first pick. Love me some Jimi Hendrix too, and really the 1982 In Action design in general.

The Future Stars design is another good one from '82, and looks great with the Beastie Boys here. The "1989 Highlight" card was my backup selection in case one of my 3 picks was already sold out, so that was a nice surprise to see it thrown in as a bonus. I might not be as devoted a Beastie Boys fan as our own Fuji, but they've been a staple of my music collection for a long time.

(On the topic of music cards, been a minute since I've plugged the 1991 MusiCards Blog where I ramble about music and my younger days. We're coming up on the 2nd anniversary there. I only post like once or twice a month, so don't be afraid to throw me a follow there and it shouldn't clog up your feed.)

The highlight card even has a "real" back to it. Great work on these, Gregory! Thanks again for the hookup.

Check out his store.

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Last for today are a few more highlights from WTHB (continuing from part 1 and part 2).

While 1974 Topps #1 is a great card, a standard base card for Hank Aaron in that set would have been nice, too. And I'm always happy to add to my Nate Colbert semi-supercollection. The "miscutsom" is a quirky idea recognizing Nolan Ryan switching teams in December of 1971.

Combing with earlier customs I've gotten from Gio, here's a pair of "1977" Birds and "1973" Schmidts. Nice to be an official club member. (He also made a special card for his collector buddies on Twitter who've completed 1972 Topps that I'll have to bug him about if/when I track down the 217 more cards I'm needing.)

But speaking of bugging Gio.. after the earlier post where I lamented not pulling the trigger on a complete set of the awesome velvety rookie inserts he put out a while back.. well, I took a shot in the dark asking if he had any sets remaining. The cardboard gods were smiling upon me that day, as he had just that morning placed a small order for 3 additional sets because of another guy who had been begging him for a set, and Gio was kind enough to let me reserve one of the other two, generously adding it to my next mailing when they were ready.

I love these cards! I believe this design was inspired by the 1959 Bazooka design (revisited in Archives a few years back, but you don't come across the originals too often). Kinda like "mini tall boys", same height as a standard card, but narrower width. Very colorful, with great photo selections. But the real magic with these is the soft card stock that you don't see with trading cards very often. They've got a nice velvety feel to them in-hand and you almost hate to put them in a sleeve/page.

Fun stuff. Thanks again, Gio!

Buck O'Neil PC

I saw Twitter's been celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Negro Leagues today. #NegroLeagues100

Figured I'd get on board in my own small way by showing off my Buck O'Neil PC. Any baseball fan who's watched Ken Burns' Baseball no doubt holds Buck close to their heart. One of my all-time favorite guys to collect, though sadly not a ton of cardboard out there for him. But I've dug up a decent little collection, heavy on autographs.

2004 Topps All-Time Fan Favorites - Autographs #FFA-BON Buck O'Neil

This might be my favorite. The colorized photo looks great on the 1962 Topps design. I still need the unsigned base version, but love this certified autograph.

2001 Fleer Tradition - Stitches in Time Autographs #NNO Buck O'Neil

This is my most-recent pickup of his. Pretty cool.

1999 Sports Illustrated Greats of the Game - Autographs #NNO Buck O'Neil

I believe this one-- featuring a photo from his time on the Cubs coaching staff, not to mention the infectious smile he was known for-- was his first certified auto card on the market.

2001 Fleer Greats of the Game represented here by both plain and signed variety. I mistakenly thought the signed one was the certified autograph when I bought it on eBay years back, but the logo at the bottom should have tipped me off that this is simply a base card that had been signed at some point after coming out of the pack. Oh well, still cool. Someday I'd like to track down the packed-out autograph version.

Picked up this signed index card earlier in the year with the intention of making it into a custom card one of these days. Another project on my long to-do list.

The card from the 1994 Ted Williams set is probably his most plentiful card out there. That's a fun set.

The Swell card is a custom I made last year that I'm really happy with.


And that's gonna do it! As far as I'm concerned, Buck O'Neil is unquestionably a Hall of Famer for his contributions to the game both on and off the field, regardless what a certain museum in Cooperstown may lead you to believe. If you have any Buck O'Neil cards not pictured here available for trade, I'd love to work out a deal.
Thanks for reading!

some Swell customs

Back in 1990 when I first got into the hobby, I somehow ended up with a handful of 1990 Swell "Baseball Greats" and they were among my first cards of retired legends. And they weren't all Ruthian stars, but also many lesser-known "hall of very good" players of yesteryear. Young Gavin learned a lot about the game's history from those oddballs, and I still have a sentimental soft spot for the design.

So this past weekend while I was working on some customs I owe John Miller, I got distracted and made a few for myself.

I need more Buck O'Neil cards in my collection, and if real card companies won't come through for me, I'll take matters into my own hands. I posted this on Twitter and it got a great response, even retweeted by the official Negro Leagues Museum account, so that was awesome.

I wanted to give the design a whirl with a current player, and Mike Trout was the first guy to pop in my head. Not that there's a shortage of Mike Trout cards out there, but I think this looks pretty good.

And one of my favorite PCs to add to, the late Rod Beck. While I'm partial to his Padres days, I had to go with this Red Sox photo because I love the prominent "Shooter" glove he's rockin'. I added the cloudy sky to spice up a plain, indoors backdrop.

Full backs, reasonably faithful to the originals.

Swell was a chewing gum brand produced by Philadelphia Gum, the latter best known to card collectors for producing NFL cards in the mid 60s. Years later, Swell ventured into the cardboard realm, putting out separate sets of retired baseball and football players in 1988 through 1991. Founded in 1947, Philadelphia Gum went out of business in 2003, with the rights now owned by Tootsie Roll Industries.

I also made a gif card of Sandy Koufax with the design. Not one of my best, but it's something.

Not Swell related, but this Mickey Mantle gif I made a week or two earlier turned out pretty decent.

Another Netflix-inspired pickup (or two)

We watch a lot of Netflix at my house. My wife doesn't care much for documentaries, especially sports documentaries, so those are usually left for solo watching. I guess I'm suggestible in this solitary state, and often hit eBay while I'm watching and see if I can find a reasonably priced certified auto of the featured athlete(s).

Let's see, there was the two kids from Hoop Dreams a few months ago.

And after watching the Battered Bastards of Baseball, I picked up a Jim Bouton auto.

And most recently, I checked out No No: A Dockumentary about Dock Ellis. Very entertaining, highly recommended.

And yep, I set out searching for an auto. I was hoping for a nice shot of him in a Pirates uniform, since the best part of his career was with Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, it seems he's only got two readily available certified autos on the market, and both are from Yankee-centric sets put out by Upper Deck in 2003 and 2004. (Deja vu, as Jerry Coleman's two main certified autos are from the same sets. And like Dock, use the same photo both years. I got the Jerry from the same set (2004); I think it's a nicer design than the 2003 set.)

2004 Upper Deck NY Yankees Classics Dock Ellis Autograph #AU-14

Photo selection complaints aside, it's a pretty cool card, and a nice "memento" from that enjoyable film. I gotta admit I wasn't all that familiar with Dock, but now I might need to start a little PC.

Another Netflix-inspired mini-PC of mine is Buck O'Neil. I already had his 1962-style Fan Favorites auto among that tiny collection of cards, and I recently added another Buck auto...

It's impossible to watch any of Ken Burns' Baseball and not fall in love (manly speaking) with Buck O'Neil. It's streaming on Netflix, and while I've already watched through the whole thing a year or two ago, I'll still sometimes re-watch a bit of it if nothing else in my queue grabs me.

Buck O'Neil only has maybe a dozen different cards out there, so it's not a tough PC to "finish" assuming you don't worry about obscure oddballs and various modern cut-autos and the like. And this auto, featuring a happy photo from his days as a coach with the Cubs, is a great addition to my budding Buck PC.

Thanks for stopping by.