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!

Checking where I rank with some lesser-collected PC guys

Got a few more cards from my big shipment to document on the blog today. These here are non-HOF "fan favorite" type guys from the past.. Generally players that aren't chased by many collectors out there. It's fun to go after oddballs and whatnot from them, and maybe even take a run at completing their full run of cards, or at least trying to build the #1 PC for a guy on TCDB.

Starting alphabetically with Dick Allen-- not exactly an obscure name, but still-- here are a couple smaller-than-standard cards. That side-eyein' 2009 Goodwin Champions is one of my all-time favorites.. I've got at least a couple other versions of it, including the auto which had been a white whale of mine for a few years, and am happy to snag the black bordered mini of it now. 1990 Target All-Time Dodgers is a familiar set to me after seeing gcrl cover the whole thing on his blog a few years back, plus occasional appearances on Night Owl Cards. Sucks they couldn't have found a picture of Dick from this Dodger days to use on the card. That out of place White Sox uniform is worthy of young Richie's side-eye.

At the time of this post, Crash's #1 collector on TCDB is user "theFalcon" with 84, with the 2nd most being 61 cards. I haven't added up all my DA's or entered them into the site, but I'm probably somewhere between those two. TCDB lists 325 total cards for him... many of which are just from this year, with Dick being included in '21 Heritage and getting multiple Project 70 cards, too (none of which I've pulled the trigger on, though nice to see him getting some hobby love).

UPDATE: I clawed my way into 2nd place with 62 cards, though I had to resort to counting a couple Kellogg's cards that are currently stored in setbuilds not the player collection, if you wanna get technical about it-- but whatever, I own the cards. I'd probably be around 70 cards if I counted more set stuff like that. 

BTW, I already owned the above two cards, dang it! Good thing I'm trying to keep better track of my collection now. Oh well, I'll add the dupes to the "for trade/sale" inventory I've been meaning to build up on TCDB to hopefully see more trade action.

Rod Beck has 414 total cards listed. These are 3 cheap parallels I probably needed.

1995 Upper Deck - Electric Diamond Silver

1995 Score - Hall of Gold

1997 Donruss Limited - Limited Exposure (with John Wetteland on the other side)

Shooter's top collector on TCDB is user "bronnerea" with 164 cards. I can't top that, but think I'd have a shot at being in the top 10 were I to check in mine to the site.

Ken Caminiti is a guy I have a lot of cards of, but still probably wouldn't crack the top 10 on TCDB ("Expos1990" rules comfortably with 597 cards.. probably over 3 times as many as me). Ken's represented in this order by a thick, leathery insert (1997 Topps Stadium Club Patent Leather --pretty sure I saw one of these get a thumbs-up on Fuji's blog and had to grab one for myself) plus a couple $1 buybacks. And if it's buybacks of notable Padres sluggers you're into, well have I got a group of cards to show you...

A half dozen boughten-back Nate Colbert cards. Not too far from a full career Topps run of buybacks, but his high-numbered '67 rookie stars card and high-numbered '72 (and corresponding In Action) make that an unlikely project to ever complete.

And some more Colberts for my semi-supercollection. Looks like I went on a little shopping spree with Nate in mind on 4/11/2020, as all 12 of these cards were bought on the same day. Some of these weren't good deals ($5+ each for the Ty Cobb back mini and the TCMA? Geez), but just wanted to basically snag anything on the site that I didn't already have.

I think I'd have a good chance of being #1 for Nate Colbert on TCDB. Oh yeah, I just looked it up and the top spot is only 31 cards. I think I could beat that, though then again a lot of my cards of him are proof cards that wouldn't be on the TCDB checklist. But yeah, I should enter in my PC one of these days.

UPDATE: Ok, I did. 

Woo! #1 by a wide margin. Most of the above buybacks plus the APBA "card" aren't listed, so my actual number would be even greater if those were added in.

Dave Henderson is a PC I really enjoy adding to, but he's a relatively recent addition to my crew, so doubt I'd rank too highly on TCDB ("DaClyde" is first with 248 cards, followed by "bronnerea" with 175).. I still need most of his junky base cards (attn: trader buds). A pair of tiffany cards are among the parallels I grabbed this time around. I don't regard 1989 Bowman very highly.. but 1989 Bowman Tiffany? For whatever reason, I love it! Being glossy and printed on high quality cardstock somehow excuses it for the audacity of being oversized and not printing the player's name on the front. The weird by-team stats breakdown thing is still on the back, but at least it's easier to read on bright stock. lol

COMC damaged the Bill Madlock foldy, so I went ahead and folded it as intended by the design. I got it specifically because it was the only card of Mad Dog pictured on the Texas Rangers I didn't have. I might have a shot at the top 10 on TCDB for Madlock, but doubt I'd be too near the top ("bronnerea" repeats as king here with 154).

The Maas and Scioscia cards are imported from the north.

Just wanted to find a couple PC guys cheap as an excuse to add Canadian 1990 Fleer cards to my collection. ("Ptd. in Canada" on the bottom.) Feels like that's some mythic set that I hear about a lot but had never actually seen in-hand before.

Also in the photo, a look at the damage on the Madlock. It was in a long top loader, but it had been cranked pretty hard somehow in packaging and managed to damage the card within it. At least it only cost me $1 so I didn't make a stink about it. But yeah, not cool, COMC.

Mike Sharperson might be a really random player for me to collect, but I decided to build up a collection of his cards after remembering liking him back in my early days as a baseball fan and card collector circa '90-92 which really happened to be his only good seasons. Besides those 3 years, he was mostly on the roster for depth, spending the majority of his time in AAA with occasional promotions to the big league club. He was on the verge of making his Padre debut in 1996 spelling a hurt Ken Caminiti, but was fatally injured in a car wreck on the way to the airport.

TCDB lists 104 total cards with the top collector being "bronnerea" again with 70. It'll be a while till I'm anywhere near that, but enjoy picking up some oddities like these. (The '89 Bowman and middle '91 Topps are tiffany.) Still need most of his junky cards, but I'd rather get those in trade then have to buy them.

I also scored a few needs for my Dan Walters PC, mostly minor league issues. The most expensive of these was the 1989/red one ($3.20), which sadly is another victim of COMC's employee damaging the card during packaging. You can see the top left corner got jacked up. And by context of the package contents, it was clearly damaged during packaging, not already damaged before the fact nor damaged in transit. Boo. I know those guys are rushing to catch up on their backlog, but wish they'd be more careful with the cards.

Dan Walters is yet another player featured in this post whose life was cut short. I don't consciously decide to collect guys who die before reaching old age, but perhaps on some level my heart goes out to them. Collecting their cards might be like my way of paying tribute.. and/or a reminder that life is precious and I should take the time to appreciate every day I wake up in good health.

Walters has just 42 cards listed on TCDB, with ol' "bronnerea" ranked the #1 collector with 26 of them. That guy must either have a huge collection, or we just happen to share a few favorite retired players. I might be able to challenge him on this one, as I think I've got around 20-30 Dan Walters cards.

UPDATE: I've got 24 cards. So close! Good for 2nd; in striking distance of 1st.

One thing that bugs me about TCDB is the arbitrary way cards are assigned to players.

Per TCDB's checklist, the card on the left is considered a Dick Allen card, yet the card on the right isn't considered a Dan Walters card. I suppose "My collection, my rules" doesn't apply when you're using somebody else's website (and the site's many users have plenty of room to edit as they see fit).

Last guy for today is Marcus Giles...

That's an impressive page-worth of refractor goodness, eh!

As I've mentioned plenty of times on the blog, I grew up with Marcus, in the same grade as him at the same school from elementary through community college. So it's cool to collect a former classmate of mine. Like, check it out, a guy in my high school P.E. class is sharing a card with Ken Griffey Jr!-- How cool is that? Plus it's a good excuse for me to add some fun parallels from years that I wasn't actively collecting. And despite three strong seasons in his career, he was never a huge star, so his cards usually don't run me too much cash.

TCDB user "bravefan1" has a commanding lead for the top spot with 143 Marcus Giles cards, but I could probably challenge that total if I added my PC to the site. Too lazy to do that right now-- beautiful Memorial Day weekend over here-- but remind me another day. lol

Nate Colbert Report - 2020 edition

I last showed off my Nate Colbert PC way back in 2014. It's the big guy's 74th birthday today, so figured I'd celebrate by checking in with what I've got from him. I briefly toyed with supercollecting Nate, still the Padres' career home run leader, back in the day, but gave up on that endeavor after a while because supercollecting is a pain and expensive. But I still pick up a cool item for the PC once in a while.

Let's check it out! This is the Colbert Report.

Rookie card! It's a high-number '66, so that jacks up the price a bit. I ended up with a graded one. Cool.

Here's his '68 Topps card. Nah, I'm yanking your chain. Nate actually didn't get a card in 1968, not breaking into a big league lineup yet. This is a custom Bru made last year.

His first real solo card was 1969 Topps. Padres got him in the expansion draft to be the big bopper in their inaugural lineup.

1970 Topps is a nice looking card. I'm confused if these Scratch Off things are from 1970 or 1971, but here they are. I count these 2 as different because of the following...

One is scratched off (mostly) while the other is still in more or less "like new" condition.

Check out this trio of black-bordered cards they put out in 1971. Great stuff!

Bonus look at the backs.

1972 Topps. Don't think he got an O-Pee-Chee card that year.

Ooh baby! Three great cards from 1973. The middle one was autographed long ago.

You're not seeing double. You're seeing triple!!! (or are you...?) Different cards all.

1975 OVERLOAD is what I title this above image. The first card is a proof that's missing the black ink. That's the kind of shit you have to buy when you're a supercollector, and they're usually priced.. well, you know, not cheap. The card on the far right is just a dupe but I kinda count it different because of a couple printing flaws on it. You know you're really serious about being a player collector when you hang onto cards that are really dupes but there's a tiny printing difference so you count it as a different card. Bottom row is the mini version (weird printing issues in its own right) and the OPC card (here mislabeled "QPC" because the pen gave me trouble. BTW, of course I'm only writing on the sleeves, and very gently at that!)

The middle 1976 Topps card is the polka-dotted pants variation. Very rare! Nah, I'm joking again, it's just another weird printing flaw.

Nate got a couple cards in 1976 besides his Topps card. (More old oddballs will be covered later in this post.)

If someone were to ask me if I have Nate Colbert's 1977 Topps "Turn Back The Clock" card, I would have to scream the word yes at the top of my lungs. Just look at all these! It's ridiculous. These are a bunch of different proof cards (another thing I bought during the brief stretch I was trying to be a Nate Colbert supercollector). The card on the end is the regular card.

Nate didn't get a base card in the 1977 Topps set, sadly. So I made this custom using a photo from a Topps photo negative that I myself actually own. I thought that was pretty neat.

Sunset card! Full career stats on the back!

I need to make a custom of him in a A's uniform one of these days. Don't have any cards from his time in Oakland (eerily similar to a couple other favorite players of mine, Willie McCovey and Dick Allen.. Topps dropped the ball on A's short-term stops of the mid 70s.)

Check these out!

Oh my! Vintage oddballs at their finest!

More good stuff.

Kellogg's! Love, love, love. At first I was happy to take that dupe out to put towards my setbuild I'd like to get going. But then I noticed they were different. Notice it? One is perforated and one is clean cut on the edges. Count it: Different card!

Nate went into coaching after his playing days, and he has several minor league issues.

On these, I've got both a "single" and an uncirculated team set that includes the card. Some might call that a dupe. A true player-collector? Count it: different card (even if it's not).

Panini was cool enough to include Nate in a Golden Age set a few years back. There's a few parallels to chase there.

Backs of those.

Closing out the post with the hits! Three certified autos. The bottom ones are actually two of the same card, but the one on the right has a custom overlay I made over it.

That's the end. Thanks for reading!