Back in the summer of 2022, I made a bunch of 1991 Fleer "white border" mods. This past summer I was back at harnessing UV rays on cardboard, but this time I turned my attention to the big dawg of the hobby that is 1987 Topps.
While '87 Topps was a bit trickier to work with than '91 Fleer, gotta say I saw some neat results. The tan woodgrain burns down to a mellower gray, with hues of red and blue often coming out. Variances in the design, original ink levels, and bleaching duration can all contribute to how a card ends up looking, resulting in many subtle differences, or revealing several "hidden parallels" (if you wanna get whimsical about it).
This photo gives you an idea of the range we're talking about, with a regular Bo for scale. The Nolan is about as blue as I've gotten any '87, while the Joyner is probably the most red. Drawing on junk is something I've been doing a lot lately as part of my 2023 cardart exploits, so you might assume I manually colored in the borders somehow with ink or paint or something, but nope-- it's a case of solar-powered addition by subtraction.
I had an extra McGriff "Topps rookie" from the Traded set to work with, and eventually ended up with a cool unofficial variation for my PC-- pairing "gold" (unaltered on the left) & "silver".. sort of. Turns out the regular flagship cards on dark stock are easier to work with than white paper stock versions-- I'm talking about Traded, OPC, and tiffany-- which seem to hold onto their color more.
I thought about coming up with cute parallel names... "Birchwood Edition", "Mahogany", "Smoked Wood", "Rosewood", etc... but think I'm ultimately just sticking with bleached border mods.
It's hard to keep the photo unaffected, as the right side of this pink Will Clark shows.
I had been on the fence on whether or not I should put my "cardartist stamp/signature" thing on the backs or leave them untouched. I'm now leaning towards stamping them going forward (as well as the 1991 Fleer mods, which up to now I haven't stamped), if for no other reason than to prevent confusion down the road, as another cardart guy was recently talking to me about. You guys know I'm just here for finding fun in the hobby, not trying to trick or confuse anyone!
Anyways, here are a few more...
I've started adding a few of these to my eBay store, still working on getting a cardart side hustle off the ground by the end of the year. Always happy to talk trades, too.
But one card I've been hoarding for myself so far...
I've ended up with a nice rainbow of the classic Bo Jackson Future Stars card. I usually stick to cheaper cards to deface-- I like to think of them as "quarterbox canvases"-- but am willing to pony up a bit more for this one. Here we have the base, tiffany, (he wasn't in OPC that year), and then some mods of varying hue.
Not a dupe among them! LOL. The plan was to make some extras to sell/trade, but dang it, I just love 'em and so far they've been different enough that I've been compelled to hang onto them all. I'm tempted to eventually make one more to "complete a page."
In addition to 1987 Topps, I messed around with '86 over the summer a little as well...
Just playing with the big yellow PADRES up top on these. Might be hard to tell on the Flannery, but it's kinda speckled.
1988 Topps gets into the bleach-away-yellow action with this "white stripe" Don Mattingly. A simple yet satisfying (unofficial) variation of a classic baseball card.
Of course I'm still doing some border art here and there, too.
Always loved Ron Gant's '88 Topps Traded card so it's a fun one to work on.
As a creative-type card collector, I've longed to get into the #cardart scene that popped up during the pandemic. I've whipped up tons of customs over the years, but "making cards" without relying on photoshop and a printer is a whole 'nother ballgame. Took a while, but I think I've found my niche with border art. I take cool (but cheap) cards with plain borders and fill them it, either as "full bleed" imagining a larger image, or as a "mashup" inspired by a different design, by just drawing on them freehand. I gave a sneak peek in my previous post with some early attempts, but this post is more of an official "opening" of my would-be gallery. Check it out...
Rickey's 1989 Topps Traded is one of his best-looking cards and quickly popped to mind when this idea first hit me.
Fun to use some imagination filling in the catcher with his hand up Boggs' butt.
Now we're into the mashups. 1985 Donruss is one of my favorite designs to vandalize cards with, as seen last post.
The Topps/Donruss 1988 mashup is another go-to of mine. These make my brain go "Wait, what?" for a millisecond when I look at them (which I like). If I'm distracted, I turn them over expecting to see the standard Donruss back, lol.
Some of my early efforts with Upper Deck cards, including unsolicited collaborations with Vernon Wells, Sr.
This series making Bo Jackson's 1988 Topps card even bluer might be my favorite so far. You can bet I'll be doing more of these.
I even classed it up with a special stamp. Every card I draw on is finalized by having the back stamped, signed, and dated with the year. I don't bother to "number" them because I want to be free to repeat myself if I want to, but I suppose technically speaking they're all "1/1" since I couldn't repeat my freehand drawing exactly, even if I tried.
Still unemployed after getting laid off earlier this year, I would love to work this artsy endeavor into a side-hustle that could help subsidize my hobby purchases at the minimum, or ideally even create a little stream of household income and help me squeak by without getting another dreaded real job for the time being. I'm hoping that these, along with my other cardboard creations such as the creamy 1991 Fleer mods, will find a market for "homemade parallels" or whatever you wanna call this style of cardart. After not seeing much interest on Etsy, I updated my eBay account to let me start selling on there again for the first time in years and have slowly started putting together a few listings.
I'm hoping to add new stuff weekly, if not daily, until I've got a decent selection available. And I'd love to work out off-eBay deals for this stuff, too, so feel free to get in touch regarding a trade, purchase, or commission-request and we can hammer out a deal. (I'll likely add a cardart section to my Trade Bait Page soon.)
I've got a lot of ideas cookin' up that I'm excited about-- border art and beyond-- so expect more stuff from me over the next while. Hopefully you don't hate it! :)
Following up on the post a few weeks ago where I began logging my Tony Gwynn collection at the Trading Card Database, I'm more or less wrapped up now. Unfortunately I fell short in my lofty goals of either hitting 1k cards and/or cracking the top 10 in the site's rankings. But I ended up with a pretty cool consolation.
Yep, I'm ranked #19 on the site! I will rep this prestigious "jersey number" position with pride. I know collectors sometimes toggle their collections between public and private, and so there could be a shakeup at any time that either bumps me up or down, but I'll hope to stick around at #19 for a while if I can. (...not that it means anything, just a fun little thing to smile about.)
Currently I'm just narrowly above #20 (another guy, like myself, on the cusp of 900 unique TG cards) and about 40 cards from #18. It puts me in the funny position of not wanting to add a bunch of new Gwynns, thereby possibly forfeiting my special rank. But yeah, I would like to eventually hit a thousand cards. Tony is my "top guy" after all. But my hobby funds/interest gets pulled a lot of ways, with me working on those pricey Topps Retired refractor autos, ATFF refractors, and several vintage setbuilds in addition to having a bunch of "PC guys" of varying priority. I wonder if that YoRicha guy at #1 has time for other hobby interests, or if being a Tony Gwynn supercollector consumes his entire experience in the hobby.
Anyways, let's take a look at some more cool Tony Gwynn cards.
I didn't collect in 1995, so when it was time to sort out to this pair of cards, I was sure one must be a parallel. The card on the left has "Extreme Corps" in rainbow lettering, while the card on the right features the same text all in red. But nope, TCDB considers these the same exact card. Turns out 1995 Stadium Club used multi-colored foil that resulted in variances like this but they aren't considered unique cards. Ha, try telling that to a player collector with 2 different looking cards! If I did a "my count" of my Gwynn collection, it'd likely hit a thousand already, counting things that TCDB doesn't, such as the above foil variant, plus a bunch of customs, mods, and other unofficial variations and whatnot that might not be considered "real cards" but are close enough for me.
Logging my cards also gave me the opportunity to "see what's out there", and discovering this "Complements" insert from 1999 Finest on TCDB lead me to search out one. There are 3 flavors of this card: full refractor, or having the refraction limited to either side. I had never heard of a partial refractor before, and as I've been becoming more of a refractor enthusiast in recent years, was compelled to look around for a good deal on one, and lucked into this "Gwynn refractor / Boggs not" in my latest COMC order that arrived a few days ago. I'm really tempted to peel off the protective coating, especially seeing how it's directly over Tony. If I had gotten this for my Wade Boggs PC, I'd feel better just leaving it. Should I do it? Gah, the collector's conundrum.
But when I've got a dupe of a card with a protective film? Then it's an easy call to peel. I pick to peel the one where the text is most obtrusive. The above pair aren't too bad (top half of body unaffected), but I went with the card on the right since the text covers more of Tony.
That looks a lot better. I should probably be less precious with my protective films and just remove them from any "keeper" of mine. It's my understanding that chrome cards all still get manufactured with a similar protective film, but they remove it before packing it out now rather than leave it to the collectors since we can't be trusted to do it ourselves, lol. (But yeah, I get it, if that's how it comes from the manufacturer, then to peel is technically altering the card from its original, packed-out state... if that means anything to you.)
Speaking of altering cards, I think I've found my niche in the "cardart" landscape: Border art.
I've been going nuts making "mashups" or "full bleed" artsy homemade parallels lately. Tony is typically my guinea pig for stuff like this since I have so many dupes of his junk-era cards. I know these are silly (and no doubt some collectors look down on the cardboard vandalism), but it's fun getting creative turning a dupe into something that's no longer a dupe. And sometimes they turn out pretty cool looking!
Ok ok, let's go ahead and peel that '99 Finest.
Ahh! That looks terrific and so much nicer without the tire tracks over Tony!
To close us out, here's a card that just arrived today (actually it's still out for delivery as I draft this post and it feels like I'm tempting fate by typing that I already have it because you never know, but I'll snap a pic as soon as I get it) and it's a big one, hitting multiple bullseyes for me.
Boom! I've been picking up 2005 Topps Pristine Legends refractors at an accelerated clip over the past few months, now nearly a third of my way through completing a refractor parallel setbuild of the 140-card set of past greats. This card was a need towards that project.. plus San Diego State cards of Gwynn are kinda like the closest thing I have to a "focus" in that PC. I showed off my SDSU Gwynns recently, coinciding with this year's Aztecs making an incredible run to the Final Four. As seen in that post, I already had the base version of the card (graced with a faded in-person auto, to boot) and I'm happy to be able to pair that with the refractor now, a whale I had been after. Helps make for a satisfying conclusion to getting my Gwynns logged. #19, Baby! I'll take it.
