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.

COMC haul misc

Happy Opening Day, everybody. I recently got another shipment from COMC and I've been meaning to show off some highlights.

Some refractors that caught my eye. I sorted Juan Soto refractors cheapest-first and grabbed that Béisbol one. I wanted an All-Etch logofractor, and ended up with Austin Riley, whom I've kinda fell into PCing, I guess. The blue 2008 Adrian Gonzalez pickup was inspired by a gcrl post. I haven't logged my Brian Giles PC yet, but I probably needed at least most of this trio of Bowman refractors.

Grabbed a few parallel Gavins. (Not pictured, but I'm happy to see that Gavin Sheets secured a spot on the Padres' OD roster! The first Padre named Gavin!) Gavin Sawchuk, a gridiron Gavin, is a new name for my collection. I don't have much use for modern football cards these days, having detached myself from the NFL over the past 15 years (and never really getting into college sports), but I guess I don't mind an excuse to sample some of the new designs and parallels Fanatics uses for football products, but I won't go trying to "rainbow" any of his cards or go nuts with building a PC (The previous notable Gavin football player, Gavin Escobar, I collected a lot, but he had the added connection of being a fellow SDSU alum). Sawchuk is still a running back for the Oklahoma Sooners-- oh yeah, Bowman U is for college kids; kind of a weird thing to get used to-- so we'll see if he eventually goes pro.

I'm not feeling too optimistic about my Padres this season, but hoping Jackson Merrill continues developing into a star.

Dick Allen PC got kicked up with this four. The Kmart card is a blank-front, so it's an oddity that doesn't count in my quest to hit 100 cards in the TCDb-leading PC.

Unrelated to my latest COMC haul, but here's a photo from the other day when I rounded up all my Dick Allen cards that featured the 1972 Topps design.. including Topps, OPC, customs, and a couple Topps Vault pieces. Dick's card seems to have usually been the last one packaged into the '82 Kmart box set, touching the gum, so it's very common to find with a gum stain on the back. If the stain is raunchy enough, I consider it somewhat of an unofficial variation and add it to the keepers.

Also grabbed some additions for my glowing card collection.

The Harry Potter one and all the Upper Deck Space Patches were new sets to me, and I've since updated my Glow-In-The-Dark Cards page to include them.

Found a couple cheap Project 2020 cards for the Big Hurt PC. This is where COMC's flat shipping comes in handy, since those bulky plastic cases otherwise ratchet up postage. Flippers went nuts back then, so now some of those cards with high print runs can be snagged on COMC for less than they'd cost to ship alone. The artists are Naturel (left) and Matt Taylor (right). Matt Taylor's version of the Rickey rookie is the only Project 2020 card I actually bought "live". I also ended up with his Gwynn thanks to Rod a couple years later. So it seems I've got myself a little Matt Taylor art collection going. But as far as 1990 Topps Frank Thomas, I think I prefer Naturel's colorful rendition here.

I'm embarrassed to admit but when I first saw 1992 Leaf black gold cards come out of the package, I was like, "WTF, I thought I already completed this set last year!?" But duh, I momentarily forgot I'm now trying to complement that set with the tougher "of 33" preview cards. This lot helps get me to 21 of 33.

1964 and 1972 needs, including some notable names and a pair of '72 Cubs variations (green under the "C" and "S" instead of yellow).

And I've now completed 1980 Kellogg's thanks to Garv and Yaz here. Probably. I still need to sort through my set to confirm, but it's tricky because I sort my Kellogg's cards by curvaceousness, not card number. lol

Thanks for reading and best of luck to your favorite team this MLB season.

Happy Thanksgiving

Been meaning to thank GCA for this PWE he sent me recently.

A few appreciated vintage needs, plus a Sheena Easton card to make a cardart version for him.

Thanks, Greg! I'll get a return your way soon.

- -o

Checking Fergie off my '75 Topps needs reminded me I'm not too far off with that set. After snagging the few remaining commons on Sportlots and COMC, I'm now down to just a few big names:

#1 Aaron (Highlight)

80 Fisk

280 Yaz

320 Pete Rose

500 Nolan Ryan

510 Vida Blue

531 Reds (Sparky)

616 (Jim Rice RC)

If anybody has any of those for trade, let me know. I'm thinking it'd be cool to complete the set within its Heritage Year, but I'll have to get serious about it to score all those in the next month.

- -o

Video gaming update.

After playing it regularly for the past year and a half, I've finished Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and have gone backwards to the previous game Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for the first time. It's really frustrating starting over with a weak Link getting my ass handed to me by basic bitch monsters. The sequel really improved gameplay with handy ways to do things, and it's like this first game is a rough draft. But hey, that's on me for playing them out of order, I guess. lol. It's still fun enough to play and I'll try to keep at it. But like, the sequel has rockets to help you quickly blast up into the air when you need to get some elevation, but the first game makes you slowly climb around a lot more instead. There's probably a better way, but I haven't discovered it. I started playing it on Halloween and I'm giving myself a month before I search for help online, but once we hit December, I'm going to have to spend some time watching YouTube tips videos and shrine walkthroughs.

- -o

Excuse the brag, but I had my best financial day as a "cardartist" yesterday, with sales topping $250 on Thanksgiving Eve. Sure would be great if that was a common payday for me, but it was really just a coincidence of a couple outlier big sales (and the Ozzie Smith '90 Donruss tree ornament). The '88 Topps Barry Bonds "Super Rainbow" was made by request after I had made a similar display using Randy Johnson's 1989 Topps rookie. Barry's '87 Topps rookie is a bit too pricey for this concept, but the '88 worked well. I'm not excited about the prospect of making more of these, though, as I kinda get burnt out working on the same card that many times. But it's a cool end result with them all together.

The other big sale was a lot of 36 of my "white border" '91 Fleer mods to a guy who took a liking to the remix of a much maligned baseball card design that dared to lean hard into the color yellow. I think it's the first time I've parted with these things other than as singles. I gave him a good bulk deal. I spent a lot of time of these, but I think it's kinda like a gardener tending to a garden. Caring for them is often a relaxing process, then hopefully your flowers eventually bloom and you can visibly enjoy the fruits of your labor. But yeah, I'll probably try to build up my inventory again with a new crop next summer.

Anyways, I'm glad I had at least that one nice payday. Really it probably just got me out of the red for all the supplies and stuff I've spent money on to see if I could use them to do neat things to cards with. But I feel like I'm in a good place. Don't tell my wife but I'm basically retired from the rat race.. at least for now, but hopefully forever. My top goal in life is to not have to go back to the grind. Sometimes I stress myself out too much just working on my dumb art stuff. Like, I have to have sometime in my life to stress over even when I can basically just play Zelda all day. No but really, let's be honest, my real job these days is "stay at home doggie dad" to an attention-demanding 4.5-year old pit-lab-husky-wolf mutt mix who still acts very much like a crazy puppy. (She even excitedly peed in the house last week for the first time in a long time! I really thought we were over than unfortunate phase. Glad we still have the cleaning enzyme stuff to get rid of the odor.) 

I like when I make cardart sales because then I can walk Ruby to the post office, which makes me feel like I'm actually doing something productive for me and my family, not just aimlessly walking around the neighborhood with my dog so she'll eventually chill for a while afterwards.

I took a picture of her this morning just after midnight in low before-bed lighting. I thought it was funny she saved a little bit of kibble from dinner to ring in Thanksgiving by eating just after the stroke of midnight. Like, she goes hard for Thanksgiving. But no, she does have a blast with the whole local family together in one place.

- -o

Speaking of taking photos in the dark.. 

I found a nicely glowing sheet and had some fun with translucent cards, as you can see from the shadows they left behind. Can you identify which 4 cards were there? One's a Nine Pockets custom.

I'll call the post good here. Thanks for reading and hope you all have/had a great holiday!

Completing sets and shining up PCs with COMC

I requested shipment on my COMC stuff near the end of the Black Friday sale to take advantage of free shipping. Originally estimated for an end of the year arrival, in a minor Christmas miracle, it was delivered yesterday, the 17th. God bless us, everyone!

Having checklist 265-396 in-hand, I can now claim to have completed a basic one-of-every-number set of 1974 Topps. Hey, that's something for the year-end hobby report card. Still need a dozen variations-- dang "Washington" errors. I also found Jesus in the package, with the corrected Alou card complementing the "no position listed on front" error I already had. I still can't quite boast a "complete set without variations" because of the #599 rookie pitchers card that I have the Washington variation of but neither of the San Diego variations (differing font size). I'll hope to eventually add that stuff, but I feel like that's really just "extra credit" and am happy to have more-or-less completed another vintage Topps set.

This "Shaq" was the last card I needed to complete the Sport Ball inserts from 2019 Upper Deck Marvel Deadpool. If you wanna see all of this quirky set that reimagines Deadpool starring on several notable UD/Fleer cards, the blog Nothing If Not Random recently showed them off.

Besides that pair of set killers, most of my COMC order was refractors, my collecting focus these days leaning heavy on the glory days of refractors (mid 90s through mid 00s, IMHO). About half the cards in the order were Topps All-Time Fan Favorites refractors that I won't bother showing in this post because I'm planning a fun new blog series for 2023 that's gonna feature them.

Love these refractors of retired greats in 2005 Topps Pristine. I haven't decided to try completing either these inserts-- The Legendary Years ("1965") and The College Years ("1982"), but will snap them up if the price is right.

As I look for an excuse to add more refractors to my collection, I often check what I can find cheap from some of my lesser PCs that don't have a lot of competition. Quintin Berry and Mike Jacobs are a couple San Diego guys who both went to the same junior college as me-- which is not a minicollection I hit as hard as my same-high-school dudes, but still like to get them decent representation in my collection. Nice to add some more rainbow shine to that pair of PCs.

In a post last month I mentioned going on a bit of a 2005 Finest kick recently. Guess that big circle in the center has got me hypnotized! Love the look of these. But yeah, again just seeing who caught my eye down around the cheapest available refractors and trying to get some parallel variety.

A few more miscellaneous refractors that jumped into my cart, including a couple Beers. My shtick of being a "Pre-covid Card Collector" held true with this order for the most part, with only 1 card from the current decade.. I had to score myself a logofractor to check out.

Finally, a couple glowing cards-- that's the Little Dipper in the middle-- (I already had both, but will sometimes grab dupes of glowing cards if cheap) and a Satchel Paige mini close it out. Love that Brooks Kieschnick card, the only baseball card I'm aware of where the card itself glows (not just glowing ink printed on it, but rather it's printed on glowing paper stock).

Thanks for stopping by, and best wishes to you all this holiday season!

Trades and heads up on my new Trade Bait page

Time to catch up on some incoming cards. 

Let's kick off with my first trade with Hal, whom I became familiar with via Twitter a couple years ago. At the time, he lived pretty close to me, but by the time we finally got around to swapping cards, he had moved out of state.. bummer! Could have been nice to meet in person and save some postage. But better late than never, right?

These '72 Topps needs helped me reach the 80% complete milestone with the set. My goal from earlier in the year to finish it during its 50th anniversary is going to come up well short, but I'll keep on plugging away, and who knows, maybe this time next year I'll be wrapping it up..?

Thanks, Hal! Once I get more cards logged into TCDB you might need, I hope we can trade some more.

-  - -o

Speaking of TCDB, here's a little trade I was able to hammer out on there with a user who goes by DyeHardFan.

I was targeting that Dave Stieb ATFF refractor (if you have any ATFF refractors available for trade, I'm your guy), and got some cognac on the side.

Thanks, Ian!

-  - -o

Next up is a package from Bob at Best Bubble.

Wow, that's a big lot of 1992 Leaf black gold! I mentioned recently that I was shelving much of my "early 90s black gold" pursuits in favor of focusing on this parallel setbuild. Still love the look of these. I figured this was a blind bulk lot sure to have several dupes for me, but no, turned out to be all needs! Very nice of Bob to go through my wantlist for this set.

It wasn't all '92 Leaf, though, as Bob also sent along a black refractor and some ladies.

I'd been wanting one of these Batman Returns glowing stickers since I found out about them while putting together my big list of glowing trading cards, so I was thrilled to see Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman here.

I still haven't hit Bob back from his previous package, so I'm deeper in his debt now. I'll have to start planning a 2023 edition of the Bubble Gum Baseball custom set I did earlier this year.

Thanks, Bob!

-  - -o

Now on the topic of trading and not knowing what to send back...

Seeing as I haven't gone to a card show or ripped unopened product since pre-covid times, it has become harder and harder for me to find cards to make fitting returns for people who kindly send me stuff. Logging more of my available cards into TCDB is one thing I've been trying to do lately. And another is putting together a place on the blog to feature interesting trade bait. To that end... Presenting: 

The Baseball Card Breakdown Trade Bait Page

Lots of autograph cards up so far, and some customs and other stuff. I'm hoping to add more soon, though December is always crazy, so who knows. But yeah, check it out and maybe we can work out a trade. 

A flat-rate box and a PWE

A couple incoming trades to recap.

First is a nice flat-rate box from Johnny's Trading Spot. I've traded with him a bunch in the past, but it had been a while. (I'm at the point where my recent past is split by when we moved into our house, and this is the first post-move trade with John.)

Out of the few hundred cards included in the box, most were Padres, and while I'm not a true team collector, I was able to find plenty of keepers among them. Lots of shiny modern stuff in here.

And some older PC fodder.

John had space in the box to toss in some bric-a-brac. Like I say on my wantlist page, I try to keep my collection cards-only but make exceptions for my top PC guys. Roberto Clemente definitely fits the bill, so this Bamm Beano's #21 bear becomes one of the odder oddballs in the Clemente PC. (It's the 2nd stuffed animal in my card collection.. also got a David "Boomer" Wells bamm beano around somewhere, so now the two can play together when the moon is full and no one is watching.)

I've got a few scattered baseball figures in my collection, but think this is the first Re-Plays toy I've seen. Since the packaging isn't in great shape, I'll likely open it up and play around with Albert a bit unless someone wants to talk me out of it.

John hasn't forgotten my fondness for sparkly 2011 Topps parallels. I've got over 700 unique entries in this setbuild, but I'm still only at around 55% complete (flagship/Update/Chrome). It's a project that's sort of in limbo.. no longer a collecting focus, but I can't bring myself to blow it up. I don't have any expectation of ever completing it, but who knows, maybe one day in the future I'll decide to hit it hard and give it a whole-assed run (already got the Trout, after all). But for now, I'm just happy to receive some in trade from time to time. It's one of the few setbuilds that I kinda try to log the source of each card I get. So I can tell you that John has already sent me some of these exact same cards years ago, lol! But some solid needs, too, with a few Hall of Very Good candidates here.

Very cool to find a near-complete set of glow-in-the-dark '92 Ghost Rider cards in the box. While I have the 10-card set already, a couple of the cards were taken out of the binder for the framed display I put together, so these cards from John allow me to re-complete the set in the binder. And my glowing dupes all get bindered too. Every glow-in-the-dark card is a little miracle and deserves respect!

Bad-ass!

But the real highlight of the box was this factory set of 1988 Score. I love early Score with their insightful essays about each player on the back. In fact, I'd like to get a second set of '88 Score so I can keep one tight and intact, and have another set to slowly meander through, reading every card and splitting the set up between keepers (yep, I'm still missing lots of "junk" in my PCs) and non-keepers.

(Everybody, if you have any complete [or almost-complete] overproduction-era baseball sets available that you'd like to trim from your collection, feel free to casually feel out a trade with me! No set is too "worthless" for my interest [except '91 Upper Deck because I already have 2 of them] and I will of course be sure to consider your postage cost with regards to my return offer for you. I'd much rather trade-for than buy.)

Big thanks for the trade, John! Your return package is all packed up and I'll be heading out to the post office with it as soon as I publish this post.

-o-

And now a quick PWE from gcrl. He took me up on my offer to send a Dick Allen '72 Dodgers "proof" custom for any 1972 Topps need of mine.

Not just one, but a pair of '72 needs, plus a couple surprise 2011 Topps parallels for that lumbering build of mine.

Thanks, gcrl! I mailed out a return PWE to you earlier this week, so that should arrive soon if it hasn't yet.

Thanks for reading and have a great holiday weekend, all.