more silhouette custom/cardart

My latest cardart projects still involve finding silhouette ideas to put together. Lately I've done a few more glow-in-the-dark 4-card displays.

Here's one for Derek Jeter:

And I thought it'd be fun to do a series of Carlton Fisk hopping around:

More Rickey Henderson, too:

And Barry Bonds breaking Hank Aaron's record:

Finally, here's another Rickey.. getting a little weird with my first attempt at spin art splattering:

And there's what I've been working on lately. If anything caught your eye, I'm always down to talk trade or check out my eBay listings.

Oh, thanks for the well-wishes in the comments of my previous post, by the way! I'm doing much better now, with my smell/taste thankfully returned.

new cardart: Silhouette Cards

I haven't really shared any new art projects of mine so far this year, but I've been tinkering on a project for the past few months. All the Christmas tree ornaments that I made back in November '24 kinda burned me out on that style of cardmaking (cutting up real cards and adding shiny backgrounds, etc.) and so starting in mid December, I began working on a new concept: silhouette cards!

Rickey Henderson was my muse the first subject chosen. When he suddenly passed away shortly after I began working on the concept, it became a more somber tribute to him. I made a lot of "prototypes" as I figured out the best way to go about things through trial and error, so it was nice to at the same time be celebrating the memory of a legend. And while I've got other Rickey silhouettes in the works (running, etc), for this initial batch, I stuck with his rookie card stance, in a Warhol-inspired repetition of variations.

In addition to singles, I've wanted to put together displays, further leaning into the Warhol aesthetic with the color quadrants. I customized a BCW 4-card magnetic holder with "The GOAT" banner in the middle.

I've also got Bo Jackson in this "GOAT" series, putting a vertical twist on his iconic '90 Score FB/BB card.

This "Black Metallic" themed display is available in both standard (sharp corners) and rounded corners:

Also a "Black Gold" variation display..

I really want to improve at making videos, because this stuff generally looks better in-hand with the light jumping around.

And you readers know I'm nuts for glow-in-the-dark stuff, so the glowing versions are probably my favorite. I sampled several types of glowing material searching for the best and brightest.

The trio of this first batch of silhouette "GOAT" cards is rounded out by a renowned basketball guy.

Riffing on the iconic Michael Jordan card in 1986-87 Fleer basketball.

So there you have it, an overview of the latest creative endeavor in the Baseball Card Breakdown catalog. All these cards and more have been made available for sale on eBay now. (I might soon try putting stuff on Etsy too, and of course I'm always down to trade.) I'll be interested to see what styles sell and what don't. Then I'll likely work up a second batch once I get a feel for what people like (ie, more variations of the styles that sell well), along with other ideas I've got kick. Even if this stuff does sell well, it'll be a while till I recoup the investment on my manufacturing costs. But if people dig them and I can achieve my dream of being able to make a thing and then easily sell the thing, that'd be awesome. I don't do it for the money, I do it because I like creating neat stuff (and generating walks to the post office with my dog), but sure, it'd be nice to eventually turn a profit and be able to consider myself a "working artist" with this crafty side-hobby of mine.

If you're interested, here's the link to my eBay listings. 

Thanks!

Cards from Rickey collectors

I received a couple maildays this week that both came from big Rickey Henderson collectors, funny enough, and that's good enough motivation to whip up a post.

I got this shiny relic card from supercollector @rickey939, A.K.A. the Man-cave of Steal Twitter account that shows off sweet Rickeys on the daily. He was one of the few to reach out to me regarding the 1991 Fleer lightened border mods that made the rounds back around Rickey's birthday. I agreed to give him a heads up once I had another Rickey mod available, and when I did, it was a quick turnaround.

He also threw in a few later-career cards which are appreciated to help pump up the PC, as late 90s to early 00s is often underrepresented in my PCs.

Thanks, Kent! Pleasure dealing with you.

-   -  - -o

My first Rickey '91F mod from back in December was for friend-to-all-cardbloggers, Fuji. He was nice enough to return the favor and include me in a recent round of mailings to some of his trader buds.

Just what I hope to see whenever opening up a blind batch of cards: vintage needs! Some Cubs-heavy help with my 1976 Topps setbuild plus a sole '75.

Garry Templeton (one of my oldest PCs) and Dave Stieb (one of my newest PCs) are presented in cutting-edge 3-D, while the Brian Giles relic has a bit of mystery staining to spice up the white swatch.

Thanks, Fuji! Great stuff.

-   - - --o

Kind of a short post so far, so maybe some random photos and checking in.

I think this is my first attempt at a jigsaw puzzle since childhood. It's tiny, probably tinier than ideal (phone charger cord for scale). It was fun for a while, working on the tower and the boats.. even the rippling water. But now that I'm down to only sky and trees, it's gotten harder and not much fun so I'll likely give up here. So there's a photograph for posterity before I crumble it back into the box and get rid of it.

We had a dead tree in the backyard that I took out but it turned out it had a little sapling next to it, and I've been kinda trying to look after it these past few months in the hopes it grows into a respectable tree. Glad to see it apparently survived the winter ok-- through the most snow Portland has gotten since I've lived here-- and has some buds popping up.

My attempts at getting a good photo failed, but a couple weeks ago while walking the dog, there were a pair of bald eagles soaring overhead for a few minutes. That was cool. Crazy that I live in a big city like Portland yet I get wild rabbits in my backyard (which are a bit of a nuisance because Ruby seems to think bunny poops are nature's dog treats) and probably not coincidentally, occasional birds of prey in the neighborhood.

In one of my more popular tweets in a while, I pointed out the big shirtless guy lurking in the lower left of the Dwight Evans cards Topps put out in 1988. Just wanted to mention it here so you non-Twitter folks can have it haunt your nightmares as well. lol

A big DIY project I've been spending time on lately is fixing up my attic. The height isn't tall enough to make it into a full-on 2nd story, but still plenty of wasted space that I could take advantage of. The plan is for it to become a little "reading nook" area with some bookshelves and a beanbag chair, as well as a "Cardroom Annex" where I can move stuff to free up space in my cardroom. It's not climate controlled up there, meaning it'll get very hot in the summer and very cold in the winter, so cards from the UV gloss era (prone to bricking) as well as vintage or anything valuable shouldn't be stored there. But my boxed complete sets from the 80s and early 90s should do fine up there (right?). And in the slim chance something bad happens to the cards, oh well, for the most part they're not worth much and I'll still be glad to have the extra space freed up in the cardroom. I bought some big plastic tubs from IKEA to put the cards in to help against moisture and other attic threats (don't want no spider eggs in there, or critters gnawing on the cardboard!). If anyone has experience with storing cards in their attic (or tips for converting an unfinished attic into usable space), feel free to let me know.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

Rickey Remix

In a group email a few days ago, my boss accidentally typed, "The Gavin and I are available to help..." And so now I have the work nickname of The Gavin. Haha. I like it. Kinda like The Fonz or The Flash, but not quite as cool. And sometimes I have fun with it and refer to myself in the third person as The Gavin.

The Gavin can't help but think of Rickey Henderson when this happens. (...though Rickey didn't call himself The Rickey.. that might've been a little over the top!)

So if you're on Twitter you probably saw the Project 2020 cards that Topps has been offering online. Basically the idea is they got 20 different artists and each is getting creative with 20 iconic Topps cards, with the offerings spread out over the summer, each card being available to order during a limited-time window. Kind of a cool idea, though the $20 per card price understandably turns a lot of collectors off. And honestly many of the cards look dumb as hell.. (Topps Project 2020 eBay search)... but I suppose that tastes vary when it comes to art appreciation, so what looks dumb to one collector could be loved by another. And some of the cards look kinda cool to me, but not "will-pay-$20-for" cool.

But one card that seemed to get near universal approval was artist Matt Taylor's "totally radical 80s" take on Rickey Henderson's 1980 Topps rookie card. I liked it so much that I caved and purchased one for myself pretty quickly.

Sure is a cool looking card! I'm definitely gonna have this bad-boy out on display for a while.

Back to the 80s! (That's a vintage Trapper Keeper folder from my youth, btw. Does this now count as a Sentimental Sundays post? LOL) I wouldn't say that the purply interpretation is an improvement over the perfection of the original green/yellow cardboard classic, but I think it's a sweet alternate view of a favorite. I look at it and just start hearing the chill 80s synth tunes fill my head.

Fingers crossed this is the only Project 2020 card I end up buying, but I guess we'll just have to see if anything else grabs me by the time the project is over.

The print-run was 2104, which I believe is among the most plentiful of these offerings so far, but I'm not really sure. Wait, this same artist's similar version of the Jeter rookie apparently sold many more (9322).

A neat looking card in its own right, but I'm fine without this one. If, say, these were regular ol' inserts in flagship or Archives, I'd probably try to score myself more.. but at $20 per card, gotta be selective.


Oh, the most ridiculous one so far is the allegedly "1983 Topps Tony Gwynn inspired" card that is simply a random mid-80s Gwynn picture in a simple design clearly mimicking 1991 Fleer.

WTF? It's like the artist googled "Tony Gwynn baseball card" and just quickly crapped this out using a couple images that popped up in the search results. There's no connection to the '83 rookie card it's supposed to be paying tribute to.


But the ones that seem the laziest to me are those that basically just add some tracing to the card design.

Not to disparage someones artistic output, but... Why? No way I'd pay $20+ for that! Even a buck for that would seem like bad deal to me. But to each their own, I suppose. Collect how you want.


So there's my thoughts regarding Topps Project 2020. What do you think?
Until next time, this is The Gavin saying, "Thanks for stopping by!"

Collection Origins: 12/25 Christmas Cards

I've got some quirky avenues of my collection, and one of those is my "Christmas Card collection", which despite the name, isn't Santa cards and stuff like that, but rather any card serial-numbered 12/25 (or 12/24). I've been at it for a while now, with over 200 different such cards. This minicollection debuted on the blog 6 years ago, and I figured a look back at the inaugural class was in order.

I started this blog back in spring of 2013. Later that December, I thought I'd celebrate my then newfound love of cards serial-numbered 12/25 with a series of 12 consecutive posts featuring a different card taking center stage (--the old "12 Days of Christmas" shtick). It turned out to be a lot of work and loaded a bunch of stress onto an already stressful time of year. Plus, the posts didn't even get much traffic so it ended up feeling like a dumb undertaking on my part. LOL. No regrets, but let's say it was a learning experience. (Specifically: a post-per-day blog series is a bad idea, especially in mid December.)

This year, Topps began including variations into their Walmart-exclusive holiday cards that feature silly holiday imagery photoshopped into the pictures of ballplayers on the field. Well, not to toot my own horn, but I was doing that back in 2013 for my 12 Days of Christmas Cards series of posts.

In the spirit of these fun variations, let's revisit the altered holiday cards I made back in 2013. I'm not claiming I gave the folks at Topps the idea... but maybe-just-maybe I helped plant the seed for creating fun holiday-themed versions of their cards.

12 Days of Christmas Cards: 1st day (Jody The World)

This post got zero comments. Well, I suppose just adding a simple "snow effect gif" to a card isn't all that interesting. Still though.. ouch. (The serial numbering is on the back, but trust me, this Jody Gerut auto is #'d 12/25.)

12 Days of Christmas Cards: 2nd day (Santonio Claus)
Now we're getting a little more involved. Santa Holmes is looking pretty festive here guiding his sleigh. This post only got one comment, by good ol' "petethan", a favorite blogger of mine back then who ended up stepping away to focus on some real-life drama and now only shows up once in a blue moon commenting on a Night Owl post. I always figured he'd return to blogging once things settled down, but nope. Hope he's doing ok these days.

12 Days of Christmas Cards: 3rd day (The Nutcracker)
Jim Piersall as Santa with a big bag of toys over his shoulder is pretty great, if I say so myself! This was the very first 12/25 card I ever added to my collection (purchased via eBay on July 30, 2013), so it's got some added significance for me.

12 Days of Christmas Cards: 4th day (Happy Xmas, literally)
As I said back in 2013, "When I can't think of anything cool to do with a card, I either add a snow effect or slap a santa hat on the guy. Went with the latter this time." I was happy to get a Padre onto the list, especially a guy I sorta PC such as Xavier Nady.

12 Days of Christmas Cards: 5th day (Moments & Mistletoe)
I thought this one was pretty neat, but looks like I was in the minority as this post got few views and no comments. Hell, Hanley was even still a relevant player at the time! *shrug* The box is filled with toys I was into as a kid in the 80s: Transformers, Star Wars, and GI Joe.

12 Days of Christmas Cards: 6th day (Wilkins Wonderland)
Look, he's holding mistletoe over his head trying to get a smooch! And there's a big candy cane over the card for bonus festiveness. Another dud of a post with zero comments. Man, not to whine too much, but it's hard to believe I even kept up with the whole blogging thing after pouring my heart into this series that was so universally ignored. lol. This post even had a cool gif of Santa dunking the card into my stocking.

12 Days of Christmas Cards: 7th day (Orlandoly Night)
While Topps might phone it in by lazily changing bats into candy canes (yawn), I think outside the box and change bats into cartons of eggnog, haha. And the reindeer antlers are the icing on the cake. Another post that few read and no one commented on. Maybe if I was on Twitter back then I could have gotten a little traction in the card-collecting community with this stuff, but alas, I didn't start doing the Twitter thing until the following April.

12 Days of Christmas Cards: 8th day (Girlie card! Pretty lady!!)
On the 8th day, a little sex appeal was added to the mix. Not much photoshop work on this one (I didn't have much time as I was about to DJ at a wedding reception that evening and was still working out my playlists), but there's mistletoe over Spencer Scott's head and she's holding a candy cane. I've since gotten a Benchwarmers card or two (or several) that are actually Christmas themed, no doctored photo needed. But yeah, speaking of "Collection Origins", this card essentially kicked off my "girlie card" minicollection, something I didn't really realize until looking over these old posts.

12 Days of Christmas Cards: 9th day (An Art Monk Christmas)
I went a little overboard on photoshopping this "card" in that all that's left from the card is the Art Monk head pasted into the album cover of one of my all-time favorite holiday records (--well, cassettes). I thought the Monk/Chipmunk gag was kinda clever, though it too was met with crickets where the views and comments would typically be.

12 Days of Christmas Cards: 10th day (Vida Blue Christmas)
As us bloggers know, non-baseball posts like Art Monk the day before, typically see a drop in traffic. But surely fan-favorite ballplayer Vida Blue would bring in the readers hand over fist, right? Nope, the 10th Day of this blog series got nothing either. I'm sorry to harp on it so much in this post, but I just think it's funny in a sad way how I spent so much time on these posts only to have them flop so hard. I'm grateful that I've been able to build a decent readership over the years since, and it's pretty rare these days that I don't get at least a comment or two on a new post. I very much appreciate everyone's comments, with Fuji being the clear Commenting MVP of the cardsphere.

12 Days of Christmas Cards: 11th Day (Webster Christmas Episode)
Nearly to the end now, with the 11th of 12 posts. Alex Karras (that's his face on the Santa body) was a solid football player and went on to make a name for himself as an actor with parts such as Mongo in Blazing Saddles and the dad on Webster.

12 Days of Christmas Cards: 12th Day (The Festive Finale, with a Peppermint Twist!)
Ok, this might be the coziest picture with a baseball card you will ever see. Just looking at it, I can taste the eggnog and smell the yuletide blend of douglas fir and cinnamon as the fireplace snaps in the background.

This post had a surprise bonus card-- in addition to the Ralph Kiner auto, there was also...

Rickey (Christmas Day birthday boy) tossing out gifts to the good little girls and boys. Gotta love it.

And with that, the 12 Days of Christmas Cards blog series came to a close. You're probably pretty busy right now, but hey if you've got some time to kill, feel free to check out those old posts (and even though they're several years old, don't be shy to comment on them! Better late than never. LOL)

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:
Two thousand thirteen Topps Five Star Rickey Henderson and two thousand four Topps Retired Ralph Kiner
Two thousand nine Upper Deck Alex Karras
Two thousand four Donruss Vida Blue
Two thousand thirteen Panini Playbook Art Monk
Two thousand thirteen Spencer Scott Benchwarmer
Two thousand four Topps Retired Orlando Cepeda
Two thousand twelve thirteen Upper Deck Dominique Wilkins
Two thousand eight Topps Hanley Ramirez
Two thousand one Donruss Xavier Nady
Two thousand four Topps Retired Jim Piersall
Two thousand eleven Santonio Holmes Prime Signatures
And a Jody Gerut two thousand four Leaf


And a bonus post...
My Christmas Card minicollection made its debut on the blog Dec. 12, 2013 in a 12 Days of Christmas Cards "Prologue" to fill readers in on what was in store. (A tip of the cap to Daniel Wilson for being the lone commenter on that post.)

In that unveiling of the minicollection, I showed off 5 cards #'d 12/25 that weren't quite interesting enough to make the cut for the main list of 12. Let's see how this initial batch of Christmas Cards has fared. (These are just as-is; no holiday photoshopping.)

Dwight Smith, Jr 2011 Playoff Prime Cuts #'d 12/25

Back in 2013, I was doubtful Dwight Smith Jr would ever make the majors, but he made his debut in 2017 with a cup of coffee in Toronto, and this past season saw action in 100+ games with Baltimore. Good for him!


Austin Aune 2012 Leaf Metal Blue Prismatic Parallel #'d 12/25

Austin Aune wasn't so lucky. The former Yankee prospect flamed out in 2017 without ever making it out of A-ball.


Jake Smolinski 2009 Tri Star Projections #'d 12/25

Jake Smolinski was another guy I didn't see having much future in back in 2013-- When I first started collecting 12/25 cards, I'd basically just grab anything I could find at a reasonable price.. Nowadays I'm more selective about what I go after.. There are simply too many 12/25 cards in this parallel-happy hobby these days-- but a tip of the cap to Jake; he's managed to see MLB action every year from 2014 through 2019, with the A's most recently.


Jordan Todman 2011 Panini Prime #'d 12/25

Jordan Todman seems to have been out of the NFL since 2017 without ever making much of a name for himself. At the time, this being a Chargers card was a plus for me. Now? Eh, not so much. (They're dead to me since leaving San Diego.) Nice bit of patch here, at least.


Brandon Lloyd 2011 Panini Prime Signatures #'d 12/25

Back when I originally showed this card in 2013, I said it looked like Brandon Lloyd's career was done after not playing in 2013. But it must have been a Christmas miracle, as he came back in 2014 for a swan song season with the 49ers.

And that wraps up this look back at the inaugural batch of my Christmas Card minicollection. These 18 cards kicked off the collection nicely in 2013, and they have a place in my heart even though if I were to work up a list of my "Top 12 (or 25) xmas cards" today (possible future post idea?) only the Rickey Henderson would be a lock.

Oh, and as for "Collection Origins" in the post title (possible recurring blog series?).. I think when I returned to the hobby as an adult after stepping away in 1993, the concept of widespread serial numbering on cards was foreign to me and I wasn't sure how to process it. But seeing "12/25" always made me smile, calling to mind Christmas, holiday memories, and how special that date was to me as a kid.. waiting all year for the 25th of December to finally arrive. So I decided to start collecting cards with that "date" stamped on them. I guess it helped me get onboard with the serial-numbering craze and feel more connected to modern cards in general.

Didn't take long for me to expand into 12/24 cards as well, as that's an even more significant date for me (though parallels numbered to 24 are much less common). Not only is that my birthday, but in my household we'd typically open most of our Christmas presents that evening after a big family dinner, just saving one or two big ones (i.e. whatever Santa brought me, plus stocking stuffers) for Christmas morning. And no, I never resented my birthday being so close to Christmas. I love it, in fact! School's out.. extended family's often around.. everyone's in a festive mood.. And as someone who often gets uncomfortable being the center of attention, it's nice that the holiday helps take the focus off me. I may have been screwed out of a gift here or there due to the dreaded "combined" Bday+Xmas gift, but my mom and rest of the family are/were super cool and I was a somewhat spoiled kid, so it's not like I was ever really hurting for toys or anything.

So that's the story behind me collecting cards numbered 12/25. Thanks for reading and Happy Holidays!