Cardartin' check-in, Spring 2024

I've still been spending a lot of my time on cardart pursuits.. Thinking up things to do to cheap old cards that might be cool/fun/interesting/ridiculous, then getting around to actually working on some of those ideas. 

Here's a big project that was an endurance test for my short attention span, but I'm really happy with how it turned out:

Randy Johnson rookie super rainbow display consisting of 9 mods of his Topps rookie card

I'm currently able to make 9 different color "supers"-- silver, gold, yellow, pink, red, purple, light green, dark green, and blue-- so that works out perfect for filling up a binder page or one of these 9-card screwdown frames. And the frame is hangable, making it a nice wall display piece.

The backs are.. kinda interesting? I think using color-matching pens is a nice touch. 

I definitely want to make more displays along these lines "rainbowing" cheap iconic cards from before the parallel saturation of today. Got a few 9-deep stacks of certain cards set aside already, just gotta get around to devoting the energy to do it.

I'll hang the display at home for a while, but as it was created for the side-hustle, it ultimately seeks a Big Unit supercollector to give it a forever-home. As for pricing, I'm thinking I'll set this at $99 shipped w/case OBO for now, though honestly I probably won't consider lower offers for a while until I'm ready to rotate something new onto the wall. LOL

Not to throw a sales pitch at you, but if you've got a certain favorite junk-era, dimebox-type card that isn't worth much but you love it and would like 9 different colored artsy variations of it to display on your wall or in a binder page, and you didn't scoff too hard at the price mentioned in the previous paragraph, feel free to drop me an email to potentially discuss commissioning something.

My wife is thankfully pretty cool (desensitized?) about the fact that we've got baseball cards displayed in every room of the house except the main bathroom, so putting up a display like this in the living room doesn't faze her. But even if you had a partner or boss who might raise an eyebrow at cards being put on display outside the designated "man cave" type area, well, one could invoke "Warhol inspired pop art" to quiet them down in their quest to stifle your creative expression.

And yeah, it's true that this proto-parallel style of cardart that I often work in was inspired by Andy Warhol. In fact, Pete Rose was my first subject for a display along these lines:

These 4 cards have already been sold to a friendly Pete Rose collector I know named Tom. He helped inspire this type of project when he put together a display from the page of Warhol customs I printed out a while back:

I can't take much credit for this-- not my artwork; I just found Warhol Rose prints online and printed them out card-sized to make a fun binder page for myself-- but I love how Tom's display turned out. It's neat that a little idea of mine grew into this and got signed off on by Charlie Hustle himself.

But back to the cardart, the "purple super" I made for the Randy Johnson was actually the 2nd such card I've ever made using that color. The first one was a show of respect to the purple one himself:

Prince! I have so many duplicate MusiCards-- I've almost completed a 3rd master set-- that it was inevitable that I'd eventually start using those extras as cardart.

It was trying to build a return card package for noted headbanger GCA that I finally inspired some MusiCardart, with the above Ozzy being among the cards I made for him. (Don't worry, I asked first if it'd be the type of thing he would want). But yeah, he seemed pretty happy with the package and indicated a post on his blog about the cards was imminent.

Other non-sports cards I've been working into the side-hustle lately are my many duplicate Mystery Science Theater 3000 cards. I've found that the glossy cards work great modified as fridge magnets:

Been able to move a few such magnets at $5 a pop. Took me a while to figure out the eBay seller settings, but I think I've finally figured out how to make combined shipping show up easier. (I felt bad the couple times buyers paid 2 identical postage costs for buying 2 items.. one of those I did a partial refund for the extra amount, the other one I just threw in a cool Dale Murphy bonus card that was better than the two he bought. But that should all be worked out now and automatically discount combined shipping.)

Plenty of old stuff still on eBay but I make a sale now and then. Here's the link to my eBay listings.

If you'd like to read more of me rambling about my cardart, I put up a side page on the blog to recap and function as my cardart homepage.

Another avenue of cardart I'm really excited about making these days are interactive cards. 

I love finding new ways to engage with (play with) my cards and get more fun out of the hobby. (Not sure if Blogger will post the 3 videos above, but) So far I've made the Ozzie Smith spinner and some "bobblecards" that are a lot of fun to boop. 

Thanks for stopping by.

Christmas Cards 2023

I still buy new cards for my "12/25" collection every once in a while. Here's the big one I picked up this year..

Flipping through a childhood binder of mine recently reminded me that the Big Unit is a guy I've PC'd since my first days in the hobby, proudly paging a bunch of early Randy Johnson cards together. I'll loosely count that as a prospecting success contrasted against cards of Kevin Maas and Pat Listach in the binder. And I've enjoyed casually adding to the PC after returning to the hobby as an adult, but I had never gotten around to landing an autograph. So I had been keeping an eye out for one-- specifically a Christmas Card, since a lot of times I figure if I've decided to shell out a few bucks for an auto, might as well go all-in for one that's a double-bullseye for my collection, right? I eventually ended up with this cool metallic sig from 2023 Topps Tier One. Looks great and caps off the PC nicely.

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Sportscards From The Dollar Store showed off his Robert Smith auto the other day, so hey, I'll go ahead and show mine! Again, I found a 12/25 issue to snag, settling for a stickergraph. I was planning to make a custom overlay for it anyways; See...

I made a custom in the style of the officially-released MST3K autographs to show Robert's brief guest-spot on the show. So that's laid on top of the real card, and since it's me, I had to extend the window for the signature to include my favorite serial number.

My wife isn't the fan of the show that I am, but she allows me to force a little on her on my birthday, so we've got a double-feature of the classic MST3K Christmas episodes playing today.

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I don't really "keep up with modern cards" as far as my player collections of past greats, because unless maybe you just focus on one lower-tier guy, there's just too much being churned out these days. But sure, every once in a while it's fun to buy a shiny new Hoyt Wilhelm card. And of course it's easier to sucker me in when it's a Christmas Card.

Ho Ho Hoyt!

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I'm my house, the Ryan Express is representing on the tree this year.

I didn't really get the idea till it was too late in the season, but assuming I'm still side-hustling late next year, I should do something with tree ornament cardart along these lines. Right? Mixing lots of red and green, maybe even ham it up adding Santa hats and such.

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Last for today, here's a Christmas nice gift I got from my buddy Doug that I figured I'd throw into the post. He got me a nice personalized capo and pick. I've told the story before, but it was back around the heyday of MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice when Doug and I would b.s. about our forthcoming career in hip-hop. He was MC Doolay and I was DJ Defgav, and that's how I got the "defgav" handle that I use online sometimes. Funny how life works out. Years ago he got married to an awful woman back home in East County San Diego, then moved up here after he got divorced, and has since married a lovely woman. While I didn't introduce them or anything, hey, I was motivation for him to start fresh in Portland, so it makes me happy to at least play a part in a couple finding each other. He's a good dude.

That'll wrap up the post. Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!

I got my own card!

Indie card publisher RRParks put out 3 series of Mystery Science Theater 3000 card sets via Kickstarter in recent years, then a "Series Four" earlier this year. The window for his licensing agreement had expired by that point, so the last series isn't technically a MST3K release, though it focuses on the old short films riffed on the show-- typically cheesy semi-educational shorts that are in the public domain so you don't have to worry about licensing.

The real allure of the 4th series for me was the special Fan Subset, where all us collectors of MST cards could get their own card created and included in the set by emailing in a picture and some text for the back. So that pushed me over the top to back the Kickstarter, and then what made it really cool is an "autograph exchange" was organized.. which I'll get to in a second.

Here's my card. You might've gotten a sneak peek on Fuji's non-comeback post. I was originally leaning towards using the photo of me and Annie at the Goonies house sign, but feared the Goonies logo could make for a legal sticking point, as we were advised to steer clear of copyrighted crap.. but I probably could have gotten away with it. Oh well. I overthunk which photo to choose for a few days, and ultimately ended up with this selfie from a Portland Pickles game a few years back. Just a generic pic of me where I don't look too ugly, if maybe a little smug. I'm wearing a shirt with the old-school Topps logo, but you only see a bit of it. (My first "Topps card"?? lol)

I'm card #37 in the set. The moon background makes it kinda tricky to read the text, but overall the backs are solid. Included with everything was a "glossy back / matte front" error card where the back text is easier to read. Funny how that works. I suppose being glossy keeps it sharp, whereas a matte finish might blur slightly.

See, here's the glossy back on the left plus a couple other printing errors Richard was cool enough to throw in.

The fan subset contains 115 cards. Of those, 85 signed up to do the autograph exchange, including myself. So that means I had to sign 85 of my own cards like a bigshot. lol.

It took me about 2 weeks to sign them all, but that's because I doodled on each one, and occasionally made little alterations to mix things up. Some have rounded corners. Some have a red ink auto, some black. The sketch is MST3K's Tom Servo, and I tried to come up with something different for him to be saying on each card. This was back in February when I was "going through some shit" and this process of writing on the cards was sort of therapeutic. I tried to keep it light, though there may be some dark ones like Servo saying rude things to me, lol. Oh, and one card I'm "in drag", adding makeup to my photo... and one card I've been beat up, adding bloody scratches and a black eye. But other than those two, I don't think I messed with the photo much. But as I went along, I started incorporating the white parts from the Topps logo in my shirt to become part of the sketch (turning the white parts into Servo's shoulders). It kinda worked sometimes. And on some cards I noted the preferred pronunciation of my last name. Sometimes I traced my name because it made it look kinda cool. Stuff like that. I kept the stack of cards by my work(from home)station, and when I needed a break / procrastination activity, I'd write on a card or two.

After I signed and doodled on all 85 fronts, I turned the stack over and then tackled the backs, doing a quick sketch of Crow in the available space. Yeah, it was a time-consuming choice, but it was fun and I bet a couple of the recipients probably got a kick out of the extra effort. Sometimes Crow is making a MST reference, or just a random quip that popped to mind. I also shared a link to my main hub defgav.com because it's quicker to write than "baseballcardbreakdown.blogspot.com" but the blog is linked on there, so who knows, maybe I'll pick up a new reader or two. Hey, IT COULD HAPPEN! :P

I believe all 115 fan subset subjects received something like 125 copies of their own card (in addition to the full 115-card fan subset). So after the 85 for the autograph exchange, I've got about 30 cards of mine left. So if you're one of my usual trade partners, don't be surprised to maybe find one thrown in among a future package of cards from me. If you actively want one-- like you've got a "blogger cards" minicollection or you're just a huge Baseball Card Breakdown fanboy-- feel free to let me know and I'll set one aside for you.

So anyways, yeah, very cool to have a real card of myself out there! I've made myself a custom or two over the years, but nothing as legit as this.

I should show off some of the other fan cards while I'm at it.

I wasn't the only one who did a little extra when signing the cards. Neat! The metallic ink looks good. I don't currently have any of those pens or I would have used one probably.

Several of the cards have multiple autographs.. love it! I had a couple dual autos in my collection before this.. but a 4x signed card is new for me!

Some cute pets made it into the set.

Some got artistic with their pictures.

A lot of MST3K-themed photos, no surprise.

So that should give you a good overview of this fun Fan Subset. Got back one of my own from the autograph exchange. Rock on, indeed.

There's 72 signed fan cards here, with the remainder apparently being the non-US fans who are having their cards dealt with separately due to the slowness of international mail. Hopefully everything goes according to plan there and the import autographs are soon added to the gang here.

I still need to post about all the other MST cards I've gotten in the past several months-- the rest of Series Four's highlights, plus a very large amount of Series Three from early last year, and the MST-adjacent set for Manos: The Hands of Fate. Lots of great sketchcards and autographs among the cards there I need to get around to posting about one day.

Thanks for reading!

Seeking sketch card artists!

I haven't been a big sketch card collector up to this point. I have a few in my collection, but I think they were all either pulled from a pack by myself, or sent to me by trader buddies, or drawn myself. I can't recall ever just buying a sketchcard for myself.

But last year I joined the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Trading Cards group on Facebook, and there is a focus on sketch cards there, with members of the group frequently showing off their 1/1 MST3K sketches. There are also a good number of working sketch card artists in the group, so it's not uncommon to see commissions being offered and sought out.

That got me thinking... What would it take for me to pony up and commission a sketchcard for my collection?

Welp, I've come up with a list of ideas that would get me excited to see in sketch card form. Consider this post a solicitation of sketchcards based on any of the below ideas. If you are an artist and would be interested working something out, please drop me a line with your price, an idea of what you've got in mind for my sketch, and perhaps some examples of your past work. I can be as hands-on as you want.. either let you do your thing and more-or-less surprise me (based on suggestions in this post), or if you prefer I can provide source images and work with you on a specific idea for you to draw.

I'm looking for 2.5" x 3.5" (standard baseball card dimensions), preferably on a solid hunk of cardboard, like the thick blank/dummy cards that are often put into packs to trick pack-searchers. I realize the smaller dimensions might be a limitation to artists who want a big canvas on which to create, but for purposes of this request, I'm looking for a standard size card. That said, I'm very open to creative "interactive" type stuff happening on the card.. windows you can open.. 3D effects.. whatever, as long as I can store it with my other cards. Oh, and I'm fine with either vertical or horizontal cards.

I've got a stockpile of dummy cards should the urge to sketch arise. I should mention I don't really care if the sketch is on an officially branded sketch card template or an aforementioned blank card. I understand that sketch cards on "artist proof"-type blanks typically cost more for commissions-- For example, a baseball player sketch on an official Topps-branded sketch blank is seen as more desirable than a blank dummy card. But for me, I really don't care about that. I'd rather pay less for a "blank" card than pay a premium for an "official" blank to be used.

Ok, so here are some of my ideas...

 Glow-in-the-dark. Do you have any glow-in-the-dark paint/ink? If so, I'd love to have it liberally applied to my sketchcard. Man, I love glowing stuff in all its forms, artwork most definitely included. It's not a requirement to get me excited about a sketch, but it sure helps!

"Mashup" sketches. I'm not really interested in standard drawing of the subject (see below for subject ideas). For example, Crow from MST3K.. I don't have much interest in commissioning a boring drawing of Crow that's essentially similar to many others already out there. I want there to be something cool/funny/interesting going on.

One idea that really perked me up is having my favorite characters (again, see below for subjects) inserted into my favorite album covers. For example, instead of the Fab Four, have Crow, Tom Servo, Joel, and Gypsy crossing Abbey Road. Stuff like that! Below are some examples of favorite albums of mine that I think would be fun with such treatment.

Tom Servo as the focal point of In The Aeroplane Over The Sea's cover would be likely to cause me to pass out from joy overload!

(Pardon the NSFW papier-mâché.)

...Just a few possibilities, but feel free to run any other ideas by me or ask me for a bigger list and I'm sure I can come up with lots more. Alternative rock, indie rock, classic rock.. Plenty of stuff I'm into and I could likely find common ground with any prospective artist.

I also love the idea of my favorite characters put into baseball cards. Like put Crow in a 1965 Topps design or maybe Tom Servo could be in the 1989 Upper Deck design calling to mind the iconic Ken Griffey Jr rookie card. Stuff like that.


SUGGESTED SUBJECT IDEAS

* MST3K - As mentioned, I'm a huge Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan. Crow and Tom Servo are probably the 2 subjects I'm most interested in getting on a sketch card. And to a lesser extent, Joel, Mike, Gypsy, The Mads, and really any character from the show's long run (though the Comedy Central era will always be my favorite).

* Pee-Wee Herman. I love Pee-Wee and would be very interested in sketches of him and/or his Playhouse friends. Again, not looking for just a boring sketch of Pee-Wee standing there smiling.. I want to see him doing cool stuff, like again, thrust into my favorite album covers or something else unexpected.

* The Simpsons. Yep, big Simpsons fan. Would love to get a sketch of any of those characters. Again, stuff like put into album covers.. or another cool idea would be mashing up these subject ideas. For example, you could put Homer between Crow and Tom Servo riffing a bad movie! You could have Pee-Wee doing his Tequila dance at Moe's Tavern. Stuff like that!

* Other stuff I'm into and would likely dig characters/scenes in a sketch card:
- Classic Nintendo games (Mario, Metroid, Zelda, etc.. and especially less-popular personal favorites of mine Maniac Mansion and Bionic Commando)
- Star Wars (Baby Yoda?)
- The Goonies
- The Mighty Boosh
- Flight of the Conchords
- Aqua Teen Hunger Force
- G.I. Joe
- Ghostbusters / Real Ghostbusters
- He-Man
- South Park
- Rick & Morty
- AVGN
- Mr. T
- Steven Universe
- Ducktales

Here's a sketch I made for myself a while back that conveys the basic spirit of what I'm looking for (but hopefully executed with better artistic skill than I've got). It's Egon from The Real Ghostbusters bustin' an 8-bit Boo ghost from the Super Mario Brothers universe. And it has glitter on it and glows in the dark!


* My favorite baseball players would be neat as drawn by artists skilled at human likenesses. Again, I'm not looking for a standard sketch of the guy, but rather something creative, such as Tony Gwynn fighting Bowser or crazy crap like that! See also Pro-Vision Fleer cards. I'd be most interested in relatively obscure (non "superstar") players I collect such as Nate Colbert, Dick Allen, Bill Madlock, Bip Roberts, Hoyt Wilhelm, Mike Reinbach, Dave Henderson, Rod Beck, Julio Franco, Ken Caminiti, and Fred McGriff. For better known options, I could also be down with Roberto Clemente, Mickey Mantle, Vin Scully, Satchel Paige, Reggie Jackson, and Rickey Henderson. Active favorites include Juan Soto, Fernando Tatis Jr, or Mike Trout. I'd especially love to see guys in "unfamiliar, yet really happened" uniforms.. I'm talking like Clemente as a Dodgers farmhand.. Dick Allen on the Oakland A's at the end of his career.. Reggie Jackson as a Baltimore Oriole.. Bill Madlock as a rookie on the Rangers.. niche stuff like that.


So there you go! A pretty open-ended prompt for artists to run with and create something I'll love and will be happy to pay for.

Which begs the question, does the artist get paid before making the card or after it's done? I haven't really commissioned anything like this before, so I don't know exactly how it works. But we should be able to hammer it out. I should clarify that I'm looking for professional sketch artists who have had cards packed out in real products from the likes of Topps, RRParks, Rittenhouse, Cryptozoic, etc. If you're an amateur artist, I might still be interested, but I'd probably rather trade you for it than buy. Like, any of my trading partners are welcomed to try to surprise me with a sketch they made based off any suggestions in this post.. that'd be awesome!

So again, please get in touch if you'd be interested whipping up a sketchcard along these lines for me. Thanks!

Like Spinning Plates? LOVE Spinning Plates!

Woo.. my first completed rainbow of printing plates!

I've got a Gavin LaValley Bowman plate rainbow (or two?) going where I'm only missing 1 plate, but this is my first time having all 4 plates for a card.

This was kind of cheating, though, as I got these together in one shot direct from indie card manufacturer Richard Parks. I know him best from these Mystery Science Theater 3000 cards RRParks Cards put out (3 separate series), but he's done a bunch of other licensed card sets, from classic oldies like The Three Stooges and Zoro to more modern properties like Sharknado.

Long story short here, I ended up with an extra MST3K autograph and then a guy named Stephen on the Facebook group for these cards needed that one to complete the auto set he was building. Richard is sold-out of that particular autograph card, but he facilitated the trade by offering up a printing plate suite. I requested my set of plates be for one of the Steve Vance art cards, as I think they're awesome, in the spirit of classic lobby posters of the 50s and 60s.

Devil Doll is a cool one to get, playing off the whole puppet thing of the Bots. It's a 1964 British horror film about an evil ventriloquist and his dummy, directed by Lindsay Shonteff. It stars William Sylvester (best known for 2001: A Space Odyssey) and Yvonne Romain. It was featured in an October 1997 episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (episode #818), and was later released on DVD by Shout! Factory in 2010. I believe this artwork was originally created for the DVD release, and was then later shrunk down to card-size for the RRParks product.

Looks like you can rent-stream it on Amazon for a couple bucks. Seems to be free on YouTube too.

And that's not all! Richard also surprised me by including a bonus sketch card in the package...

Wow! Is that Crow channeling his inner Dee Snider? Rock! I'm somewhat of a closet headbanger, cranking up hair metal hits from time to time, and a big GNR fan (if you count them in that world). Jamie Hitchcock is the artist on this 1/1 sketchcard. Matt Prigge reminds me that this moment is from the Space Mutiny MST3K episode.

Very cool. Big thanks again, Stephen and Richard!

Richard Parks has proven himself to be cool as heck time and time again. In fact, he's been so cool with me that I signed up to back his latest Kickstarter project which is a card set for the cult classic Manos: The Hands of Fate. This all-time-worst movie is best known for being featured in a MST3K episode. While I like it fine, I wouldn't necessarily include it in a list of my personal favorite Top 10 MST3K episodes. But again, Richard has been such a good dude to me that I backed the project in part just to do him a solid and say thanks. And I encourage anybody else to check it out too. The deadline to back it is right around the corner (Ends at Sat, April 25 8:59 PM PDT). So you need to hurry! But if you're reading this in time and are interested, here's the Kickstarter link.. check it out! He puts out really fun card sets and if you're into old b-movie stuff I think you'll be glad to get in on this. And again, he'll treat you right. I only wish the likes of Topps and Panini could be so involved with their customers and make sure everyone is happy. Great guy!

Thanks for reading and see you next time.

ignorable filler post: 1991 Cardboard Dreams #5: Madonna and Jose Canseco

This is a real card that was on the market in 1991. Crazy! Not a mainstream release, but still!

Those sketches are pretty terrible/awesome!

I already kinda talked about this card last year. But..

Speaking of sketches, I found out there's a FB group specifically for MST3K trading cards and I'm pretty excited about it. Maybe I'll be able to trade for the remaining glow-in-the-dark inserts I need.

Check out this dual auto I got! This is the MST3K equivalent of a dual auto of Joe DiMaggio and Lou Gehrig.

And this is the Babe Ruth!

  (Mike Nelson is Hank Aaron in this scenario, but he didn't sign for this product because he's kinda uncool when it comes to stuff like that, sadly.)

I made an attempt at improving on the 2020 Topps design (right). Not perfect (hint of '94 Topps?) but I prefer it my way.

Check out under Trout in the original (left) version.. is that..? could it be..?

 Amy Poehler!

Ha, maybe?

I got that (not trimmed) Mike Schmidt auto back thanks to the seller being cool!

Wii Sports Resort - Island Flyover is one of my favorite video games. Especially when you're eating frozen grapes, if you know what I mean! Anybody else like it?

I only have one spot left to find after stumbling upon one the other day, but honestly I kinda hope I never find the last one because then the mystery will be gone and playing the game might lose some of the magic.

Some of my toys.

I hear ya, bud! #thankstopps

Bunny alert! Also, we've had a squirrel trying to get into our attic. I tried dousing the area in a jalapeno-vinegar soup which will hopefully get him to scram.

I got a Tom(my) Lasorda autograph! Not a refractor, but still cool.

Madonna and Jose? No! It's us from the big work party last month. It was a masquerade theme. I got a lot of different fake mustaches and swapped them out thru the night.

I'm "going thru some shit" and probably won't be posting much for the next few weeks. But don't worry, it's not relationship shit or health shit or money shit (a.k.a. the heavy shit), but shit none the less.

Have a great holiday weekend, everybody!