Keepin' at CardArtin'

When Ruby is at doggy daycare-- because otherwise she'll rarely let me focus on a project for long-- I still spend much of my spare time working on CardArt ideas. I'm now in my 4th year of being a dedicated wanna-be "artist / creative-type" and while I would have liked to be in a better position by this point (grown a little fanbase, see consistent sales, etc.), I keep at it. It's humbling when I whip up something I think is really cool, but then I can't find anyone who wants it. I make a sale from time to time that keeps me from getting too down about the situation overall and I'm still optimistic my stuff might "catch on" at some point, but even if this never becomes a financially-rewarding use of my time, it's a hobby-within-a-hobby that I don't plan to quit anytime soon.

Recently it hit me that it's probably some sort of midlife crisis thing driving me. Like.. I never had children, or had a profession/role that really positively impacted anyone, or even done much charity/volunteering. Realizing I don't have much of a "legacy" to remember me by has started to weigh on me as I get older. And so I guess I figure if I can tweak a baseball card in an interesting way and it finds a "forever home" filed away in some guy's massive player collection, then in some small way I'll have made a mark that will live on after my time on earth wraps up. Or something like that?

And as long as I'm opening up...

June 2026 saw some turnover in my extended family. My uncle Ed passed away the first week of June after months of declining health. He had been semi-estranged most of my 20s and 30s, but thankfully reconciled with the family in the past few years. The last time I saw him was at my cousin's kid's wedding last summer. That happy young couple just now welcomed their first child, son Lewis, on June 30th. 

Real "circle of life" vibes for me, losing the family's de facto patriarch and gaining a new baby boy within the same month. And believe it or not, I've been the "baby boy of the family" my whole life. Baby Lewis is my first male blood-relative who's younger than me, after a few girls leading the way for the next generation. I know it's a long shot these days, but fingers crossed little Lewis grows up to be a baseball fan, as it'd be nice to have somebody penciled in to leave my card collection to once I'm no longer around to enjoy it. (It really seemed like my wife's brother was bound to pop out some kids [unlike my wife who's always been quick to shoot down any talk of her ever becoming a mom] -- and I was excited to be the fun uncle-- but now he and his wife are deep into their 30s, and travel the world whenever they have time off, no indication of settling down as parents, so it's not looking good as far as an heir on my wife's side who might want my shit.)

But enough introspection, let's check out some junk wax I've gussied up!

Here's a page worth of Griffey, specifically his 1991 Topps All-Star card reimagined into some parallels-that-never-were.

 
Ryne Sandberg getting the '91 AS treatment too.

And here's fellow Cubs great, Andre Dawson. 1993 Topps Black Gold inserts are fun sentimental favorites for me to mess with.

Here's a page of Robin Yount 1988 Topps remixes. 

Late update to the post: 1987 Topps Ozzie Smith. Love doing the "full wood" treatment with '87 Topps (and they often look better with rounded corners).

 

1988 Donruss like you've never seen it! Imagine back in the day if these things were randomly inserted one per case or something. That'd be a fun chase.

Tony Gwynn minis! Did you immediately clock the source of this Tony? It's from the 1988 Topps "Padres Team Leaders" card, with apologies to Benito Santiago who gets cropt out for the mini refinement.

Maybe you remember a few years ago when there was a stack of 1990 Leaf Tony Gwynn cards making the rounds from Rod to Fuji to me? I've finally started doing something with them!.. 

Only doing a smaller segment like that as opposed to covering the full card means these are quicker and cheaper to create, which should help me work through the stack.. Still like 50 "blanks" left! I think my plan is to make a listing for Gwynn cardart like these where I ask $3.94 for each (maybe $6.19 for the fuller ones), with the majority of the profits going to a San Diego area charity.

 

Your mental health probably just bumped up a notch after seeing that many smiling Rickeys. I might try to keep these together as a 9-card display. Sometimes a group of Rickeys just looks cool together. Like..

This 4-card display of a blinged-out 1992 Score is likely bound for eBay eventually, but I liked it so much that I'm enjoying it up on my own wall for the time being. I need to get better at making videos so you can see it actively shining in the light. It's a treat for the eyes!

There you have it, highlights of my creative efforts from the past several weeks. If something caught your eye-- or you think to yourself, "I bet Gavin could make some cool versions of my favorite junk-era cards for my PC..." and want to trade me something cool to make that happen.. just let me know. The Younts are already up in my eBay store, and I'll likely get around to adding the rest soon enough. (But again, I prefer trading for stuff on my wantlist, and I really only sell cardart on eBay because that seems like the distribution method of least resistance.) And as always, thanks for taking the time to check out my blog.

Rickey Henderson Christmas

Two posts in one day?! It's a Christmas Miracle! 😃 🎄🎅

Sure, these posts won't get a lot of views/comments since most folks are busy with family stuff today, but screw it, I'm more concerned with my goal of besting last year's post total. This post at least ties 2023 for my lowest annual total ever (35) and I'll still have a few days to catch and pass 2024's count of thirty-six. And yeah, Christmas Day just happens to be the best day to post about 12/25 cards and the subject of this post: Rickey Henderson!

I've been a bit nuts for refractor reprints lately, and one I really wanted to score was a shined-up Rickey rookie. This is the 2019 version (write-up back), and I'm still on the hunt for the 2014 version (original back). (Surprisingly, this card didn't get reprinted in Topps' big "50 Years" revue in 2001.) I've got an original in my 1980 Topps complete set, but not in the PC. (And I've told the story of how I had a poor-condition Rickey rookie briefly in middle school that got swindled by Dustin Engel for a pocketful of change that I still kinda hold a grudge about. [Dustin, you out there? Never too late to apologize, bro. lol.])

The refraction continues with this Hall Bound diecut insert from 1998 Chrome. I've got the Gwynn of these already, and when I stumbled upon this Rickey at auction, I threw in a competitive bid and ended up winning it. Just love the look of these cards, though the "ascending into heaven" vibe of the design adds a touch of melancholy to Tony and Rickey (on the Angels, at that), both taken from us sooner than we'd have liked. 

I've got a couple Topps Tek cards of Rickey, and those are fun to play with, like putting them on a glow-in-the-dark surface and then checking out the "scar" they leave behind.

Not to blow your mind, but there are zero cards in the above photo, just the mark from where cards used to be.

Sneaking in some cardart, I made 3 or 4 "full-bleed border art" cards in 2025, a couple years after first messing around with the concept back in 2023, with this '91 Fleer Rickey (slash Tony Fernandez) being one of the better ones I've done.

I also ended up with a Ginter refractor mini earlier this year. Nice little card.

And speaking of Rickey minis, I've been making a bunch of these "logoman" silhouette cards. This one changes color, glows in the dark, and even changes color in the dark!

If this video uploaded successfully, it'll show it in action. 

A page worth of the other Rickey minis I've made recently. These are a lot of fun to whip up and try new combos, finding out what looks cool together.

And some highlights of the full-size cardart mods I've been whipping up with Sharpies and holographic layers. They're a mixed bag; some look kinda cool when you catch them in the light. And of course a lot of attempts are failures that look like shit or I fuck up somehow, but that's par for the course with creative endeavors. Ultra-junk like '88 and '89 Topps are good for toying around with since they're virtually worthless but still kinda cool because it's Rickey.

That'll do it for this post. Happy Rickey Henderson's Birthday, everybody!

Sunwashed Junk

It's another rainy day here in Portland, and so I thought I'd throw back to some summer cardartin' I did in collaboration with ol' Mr. Sun.

This post is also inspired by Nick V. who left the following comment on my recent Don Mattingly post:

"Okay it took me a moment to realize that the 88 mod was Baseball's Best. I was briefly SUPER impressed that you managed to fade the blue. Occurs to me to wonder how the red and orange 1990 borders would fare here."

Way ahead of ya, Nick!... 

This "white border" '90 Donruss Tony Gwynn took me a couple years, if I recall, maybe three. Got a little sloppy on the sides of the photo, but not too bad. If the player name had been in black or blue, this would look pretty cool, but since the name gets washed away, I wouldn't grade this mod variety as one I'm compelled to make more of, especially considering how very long they take to make. But it was a neat experiment and left me with another unique oddity for my big Mr. Padre PC.

And back to Nick's '88 Donruss comment, yeah, if you try bleaching the borders of a regular '88D card, all that will happen is the little red bits in the middle will fade, but the black and blue hold strong*. But then those orange Baseball's Best cards in the same design give you something more to work with. I haven't made much of these, just the Donnie, this Mark Grace, and a Barry Bonds for my Barry Bonds guy**.

*Probably after like a decade the blue would fade? 

**Actually, I think I stopped that one at yellow so it would be a Pirates colormatch

Here's another idea I have to give Nick V. credit for suggesting. Yeah, the folks at Topps bizarrely tinted the background on Billy Williams' 1974 Topps card, ostensibly to make the player pop better in the photo, but it just looks weird, like it was Free Bowl of Curry Day at the stadium and the crowd rioted. I've been making my own "collector corrected" variations, bleaching away the yellow but keeping Billy and his bat from getting faded with it. Above are 3 of my mods along with a regular card for comparison. I put one in my set, can use another in the PC, but have several that I've been meaning to make available FT/FS one of these days. I figure anyone with a "master set" of '74 Topps could use the unofficial variation to kick up their set. And I do still need several '74 Topps variations to "fully" complete my '74 set (spreadsheet) so I'm hoping these will make good trade chips.

With the '82 Kmart set, the AL MVPs feature a middle bar of blue in the background (won't fade), but the NL MVPs have yellow, so those are fun and easy to whitewash into a cleaner look like the Cobra here. I've also got Clemente, Mays, and Garvey versions that I couldn't locate in time for this post, but if any of my trader buds want one, just let me know.

Speaking of Steve Garvey, here's a funky one for gcrl if he wants it. There was a surface blemish in the background of this card, so I did a "blackout" style that came out ok. Sometimes figuring out the best way to deal with a problem helps come up with new ideas.

More playing with 1987 Topps. Some of these I tried to make the border sorta sync up to the photo, with the Pete Rose turning out the best of those attempts. These are up for trade.

 

But I'm still hoarding 1987 Topps Bo Jackson cards all to myself! Each of these is unique like a snowflake or someshit. Love 'em and hope to make more next summer.

Thanks for stopping by!

Mattingly Madness

Donnie Baseball time! I didn't get into baseball until 1990, so, having missed out on his 80s peak, I wasn't really a big Mattingly fan growing up. But since returning to the hobby as an adult, he's become one of my favorite guys to collect and I've ended up with some pretty nice cards of his in my collection.

Very happy to finish his Topps Retired refractor trifecta recently. I wouldn't mind someday upgrading my '04 to one that is unfaded/ungraded. But still, so satisfying to have these three secured after years of chasing this set.

Another look at 'em refracting away in all their glory.

Here's another completed trio of Mattingly refractors from the years 2003-2005, these from Topps All-Time Fan Favorites. I've nearly completed the full set run of TATFF refractors (/299), with just a few from '04 remaining. 

 

Here's a trio of different rookie reprint refractors. I mentioned last post I've been going nuts for reprint refractors lately. I mean, years back I completed the Archives Reserve base sets (which are essentially all reprint refractors), but I've recently been expanding into Chrome inserts from other years. I think of the 2019 versions as "Refractors Your Mom Threw Out" because they've got a write-up on the back, while the 2014 versions are more desirable as "original back" reprints. Otherwise they look pretty similar on the front, even if the one on the right didn't shine much in the above photo.

Now to feature some cardart I've been whipping up lately.

Last time I checked in with what I've been up to in regards to cardart, you may remember I was all about coming up with silhouette cards. Further down that path lead me to come up with "logoman minis" which I'm really digging. The plan is keep each of these as a 1/1, but try to come up with several variations.

A second Mattingly style. I've also got Rickeys in the works.

I'm still making lots of "mods", tweaking real cards to spice them up as after-market parallels. This is the latest style I've been working on. Holographic overlayers on cards is basic "cardart 101" stuff, but I think it looks dumb when you cover up the player with it, so I don't cover up the player on mine. I plan to start putting some of these in my ebay store soon. Been trying to keep these all one-of-one and not repeat myself.

Took a long, long time to make this "white border" mod. I had intended to make it to sell, but with all that went into it, no one could ever appreciate it as much as me, so guess I'll hang onto it. ha

I've got a couple Mattingly cardart displays I made a year or two ago that I've been meaning to make available. But again, sometimes the combination of being lazy and liking it enough myself, I end up hanging onto stuff I originally intended to "side hustle" out of the house.

Last year I was all about making custom displays, but don't think I made many in 2025 other than for silhouette ideas.

More original cardart from a year or two ago. Available for trade or maybe I'll add some of them to my ebay listings at some point. I generally shoot for $10@ but settle closer to $5 if I don't find much interest after awhile. Yeah, maybe it's silly "making" cards like this when there are billions of real cards out there already that collectors would rather spend their money on, and if it was just about me making money, I have plenty of decent real cards I could list, but cardart is a fun creative outlet for me, so I'll keep at it.

Leftovers of some Mattingly customs I've made over the years. Funny, that Big League Chewing Gum custom I made in 2016 ended up getting "mass counterfeited" on eBay, even with the back crediting Baseball Card Breakdown. Dumb.

As far as Donnies I'm still on the hunt for, there's yet another rookie reprint refractor out there I need (the "50 Years" one), plus relics for my ARMS (Archives Reserve Master Set), and a couple tough "junk" era issues.

MY MATTINGLY MOST WANTED:
2004 Topps Retired refractor auto /25 (signature upgrade wanted)
2001 Topps Chrome Through The Years refractor reprints #32 (1984 Topps)
2001 Topps Archives Reserve Relics ARR7 (“1984” jersey)
2001 Topps Archives Reserve Relics ARR28 (“1984” bat)
2002 Topps Archives Reserve Relics TRR-DMB (“1985” bat)
1992 Leaf Preview - Black Gold parallel #22
1990 Topps Batting Leaders #4 (aka "Kmart greenies"; I'd be down for the '89 red, too)

If you happen to have any of those available, feel free to drop me a line.

Ok, I guess that's pretty much all the Mattingly stuff I wanted to mention. To keep things light, I've deleted my sour rantings about the HOF and the Dodgers and other things that suck the fun out of today's game. But yeah, baseball back in the 70s through 90s.. that's my wheelhouse. And Donnie Baseball is a major figure of that golden era.

Thanks for reading, guys!

1991 Fleer "white border" mod tutorial

Figured I'd put a post together about how I make de-yellowed 1991 Fleer mods. I meant to get to it earlier in the summer, but hey, there are still plenty of sunny days left.

First, get the 1991 Fleer card you'd like to modify, along with a common/dupe that you won't mind destroying. For this example, I'm looking to bleach the border of the Tony Gwynn card, while sacrificing Kelvin Torve's card (no offence to Mr. Torve, who got into 42 more MLB games than the rest of us).

So now you want to cut the picture out of the chump's card. This will be our mask to block the sun from the good card's photo. If you have access to a paper cutter, you should probably use that to help you keep the edges straight. Scissors work fine if you've got a steady hand. And of course you could just measure the dimensions out on a non-card piece of cardboard to avoid needing a common '91 Fleer to sacrifice, but that's more work to get just the right size.

I like to use a hard case such as a screw-down like this one, and you just place the cut-out photo on top of the good card's photo. I've found that a small piece of paper towel on top can help prevent the top photo from sliding around much. Try to get the mask as perfectly centered as you can and then screw it down with everything in place.

Then you just find a sunny spot to put it. Your best bet is a window that gets a lot of afternoon sun. You'll likely notice fading after a couple weeks, with the bold yellow mellowing out to a nice creamy tone after a month or two. The longer you leave it, the lighter the border will get, until eventually it's as white as it'll get. You'll probably want to rotate the card at some point to account for shadows, and you can speed up the process by moving it around to different sunny locations throughout the day-- chasing the sun, as it were-- instead of leaving it in the same place all the time. Some '91 Fleer cards are bolder than others, so that could factor in with the timeline, too.

Troubleshooting: If your mask wasn't a good fit, you might notice yellow slivers remaining on the good card, in which case try trimming the mask at those parts. On the other hand if the mask was cut too small, you may notice fading around the border of the photo of the good card. It's hard to get it perfect, but it's not like you're submitting these for grading, so remember to have fun with it.

But yeah, after a few weeks pass, you should have yourself a sharp-looking homemade parallel ready to spice up your collection. I stamp/sign the back, like with my other cardart. You may choose to make a similar notation, or perhaps make a little explanation note to store with the card.. you know, to prevent confusion down the line. Definitely don't be a douche trying to pass off your mod as an official variant, like to fool somebody into overvaluing your polished turd. For the record, I've sold a handful of these mods over the years at about 5 bucks a pop (which I think is pretty cheap considering how long they take to make). I'll admit I've been coy with my process in the past, hoping to keep these as somewhat of a "brand exclusive" as I've tried to make a go of it as a niche cardartist. But demand never really took off and at this point I'm off to other ideas, though I still consider making 1991 Fleer mods one of my favorite summertime activities these days, funny as it sounds. It's fun to "make a thing" and these aren't much work, just patience. Makes unbearably hot days a little easier to take because you at least know your '91 Fleer mod is soaking up the rays, making progress for you.

So there you go. I hope some of you readers are intrigued about do-it-yourself parallels and maybe give it a shot yourself. You could even get funky with it, like try fading a gradient or with stripes or something. Good luck and have fun!

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.