Chipz and dip into my COMC order

After being distracted by holiday stuff, it's now time to resume unpacking my Black Friday COMC order.

I've said it before but I hate Topps Chipz. They really botched what could have been a fun product. The colored parallels were way too tough to pull. If they would have been more generous with the red and blue chips, guys could have actually used them for playing poker. I'm not even a card player, but that would have been pretty cool. But instead it was white chip after white chip, with an occasional metal parallel or glow-in-the-dark parallel. Don't even get me started on the glow-in-the-dark parallels! Instead of making the actual plastic chip glow-in-the-dark (which would have been awesome.. I'd have gone after the complete set!), they cheaped out and only put a teeny-tiny bit of glowing behind the player's head. Terrible! I'm so glad this product died after 3 pathetic years.
All that said, I was compelled to actually own some of the near-mythical color parallels, so I found the cheapest examples I could find of guys I collect. The black Matt Kemp also allegedly glows in the dark a bit. I suppose it's nice of COMC to treat these like coins and put them in those little cardboard holders which make them slightly less of a pain to store.

1990 Topps TV is a mysterious (to me, at least) overproduction-era set that I've heard about here and there, but never actually had an in-person encounter with. So like with the colored Chipz, I wanted to get some representation in my collection, and hunted down the cheapest available cards of any dudes I collect, settling on Howard Johnson and Kevin Maas here for about a buck combined.

Flipping these over, I was confused how they were both numbered 53 in a series of 66, and had somewhat different back designs. Turns out there was a main "All-Star set" (where the Hojo is from), but some teams (like the Yankees) also had a separate Team Set (where the Maas is from). It's my understanding these sets were sold on the home shopping network or something like that, hence the name Topps TV. Or actually, from googling it just now, per baseballcardpedia.com:

Topps TV are a series of six different 66-card sets produced by Topps in 1990 and available via a special TV offer. There were six different sets made: All-Stars, Cardinals, Cubs, Mets, Red Sox and Yankees. The five team sets were only marketed in the respective team's local TV market; while the All-Stars set was available nationwide. Collectors living anywhere in the country could, theoretically, order any of the sets. Distribution: Factory sets. Available through a "1-800" number.

Interesting. I looked for the commercial on YouTube but didn't see it up there. I wonder if it was just a quick ad or more of an infomercial.

Here's another oddity from the junk era (forgive me for using the hobby slur). I also wanted to add some more 1991 Topps Operation Desert Shield cards to my collection. I previously only had the Bip, I think. You know the deal, I searched by cheapest-first and looked for dudes I collect. Ended up with a couple of the Springfield Nine and Hendu, each costing me a buck or two.

Lastly for today, a short-term stop trio of Kevin Mitchell cards. I don't really PC him, but for whatever reason was compelled to track down a card of his from each team he played for. (This was likely around the time I scored the 12/24 card of his and was reading up on him more.) The Giants, Reds, and Mets are the main teams he's known for, of course. As far as partial-season stints, Red Sox (27 games), Indians (20 games), and A's (51 games) are represented here. There's also the Padres (which I know I have a card of) and the Mariners. Pretty sure I had a Seattle Mitchell card at one point, but may have traded it away over the years.. so I may have to rectify that at some point to complete this mini-goal of mine.

That's all for now. Thanks for checking it all out.

The Simpsons custom set for Homer at the Bat

A couple years ago, I did a blog series called The Simpsons Fortnight where each day I posted about a player who guested on the classic "Homer at the Bat" episode of The Simpsons (it ended up not lasting the full fortnight I had originally planned, but I did cover all 9 players from the episode). Each post featured a couple junk-era custom jpg's using images from the show. This was back before I was making hardcopy customs, though a while later with the help from a guy I knew, I did make a limited run of magnet cards featuring some (not all) of the virtual Simpsons cards I had whipped up.

Anyways, now that I've gotten the hang of printing out customs, I had been meaning to make hardcopy customs out of these designs. And so that's what I did!

The autographed Simpsons cards from my recent Wade Boggs-centered contest were easily the most popular of the 3 designs I made, based on the response in the comments. It was no surprise when both contest winners chose that one. (That means I still have a couple each of the Cheers card and the Always Sunny card available for trade, BTW.)

The other catalyst for this project came from negotiating a trade with a reader named Josh, who had a couple nice cards I was interested in, and to seal the deal, he inquired about a set of my Simpsons customs. So I've spent a few hours over the past fortnight cleaning up those original digital customs from 2014, as well as creating backs for them, and making them a physical reality.

So without further ado, I present to you The 2016 Baseball Card Breakdown Simpsons "Homer at the Bat" Custom Card Set!

Wade Boggs cards from The Simpsons

Jose Canseco cards from The Simpsons

Roger Clemens cards from The Simpsons

Ken Griffey, Jr cards from The Simpsons

Don Mattingly cards from The Simpsons

Steve Sax cards from The Simpsons

Mike Scioscia cards from The Simpsons

Ozzie Smith cards from The Simpsons

Darryl Strawberry cards from The Simpsons

Cool stuff, huh?

As with most of my customs, these are up for trade. Drop me an email if interested.
(Sorry, but these are not for sale. It's just too much of a headache from a legal standpoint.)

And if you missed out on the original blog series (it didn't get much traffic at the time), here are links to all 9 posts:

Wade Boggs

Jose Canseco

Roger Clemens

Ken Griffey, Jr.

Don Mattingly

Steve Sax

Mike Scioscia

Ozzie Smith 

Darryl Strawberry

The Simpsons Fortnight, Day 6: Steve Sax goes to jail

Player:

before The Simpsons appearance

Steve Sax was one of the best second basemen of the 80s. In hindsight, Ryne Sandberg would seem to be the obvious choice for the Power Plant's 2nd slacker (and in fact, he was asked, but declined), or maybe Roberto Alomar, but Sax was a good choice too. 

His career got off to an exciting start, getting called up during the Dodgers' incredible playoff run of 1981. He won ROY the next year and made the All-Star team a few times. He was with LA through their next World Series Championship, then signed with the Yankees for the 1989 season. When "Homer at the Bat" aired (early 1992), Sax had just recently been traded to the White Sox in the offseason.

Homer at the Bat

On the show, Steve gets pulled over after Springfield Police profile him due to the New York license-- Guess he hadn't gotten a chance to get his Illinois plates yet-- and ended up missing the game while in jail.

Police Officer Lou: I heard some guy got killed in New York City and they never solved the case. But you wouldn't know anything about that, would you, Steve? 

Sax: But there's hundreds of unsolved murders in New York City. 

Police Officer Lou: You don't know when to keep your mouth shut, do you, Saxy Boy?!

after The Simpsons appearance

Sax never really got on track for the White Sox, and retired a month into the 1994 season. These days, the fact his career really fell off after the episode adds to the feeling that he was out of place among the talent of the Springfield Nine. But again, from '82 through '91, he was easily one of the game's best at his position and likely would have been on track for the Hall had he kept it up for a few more seasons.

I believe he's currently first base coach with the Diamondbacks.

Highlights from my Collection:

I recently picked up that auto in my quest to own a signature from each of the players who guested in "Homer at the Bat". Otherwise, not much Saxiness in my collection besides his Topps RC which I got in a Listia lot a few months back.

Random Filler:

How bout that sweet Bart flexi-frisbee up there? I've had that forever. A couple posts ago, I alluded to the fact that it'd be cool to have an animation cell from an early Simpsons episode, or maybe an autograph from someone involved with the show. Well, I don't own any awesome Simpsons collectibles like that, sorry to say.

But I do have a couple cool animation items that I might as well show off here.

A few years back, I befriended (online-acquaintanced, really) Craig McCracken, who is the creator of the Cartoon Network shows The Powerpuff Girls and Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. Turns out we're both big fans of the musician Frank Black, and so we traded live bootlegs a few times (He had initially contacted me about a trade and I was like, "Wait-- are you thee Craig McCracken?!"). He was nice enough to hook me up with some pretty cool stuff.

Here's a signed episode-used animation cell:

Sweet!
And here's a personalized original sketch he whipped up for me (the top text are Frank Black lyrics):

Neat, huh? He also hooked me up with a couple signed DVDs and various swag, plus some great stuff from one of my all-time favorite bizarre shows, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, including a poster signed by Dana Snyder, voice of Master Shake.

Craig, if you're reading, thanks again!

See you tomorrow for the next Simpsons spotlight. After Sax, next up is the other player who might seem a bit out of place among the superstars in the episode, backstop Mike Scioscia.