My latest customs

The new printer has been working out pretty well other than sometimes having trouble getting on the Wi-Fi without turning it off-and-then-on-again. I owed return card packages to blogging buds Johnny and Bob, and I don't have much in the way of real cards available that they'd want, so my first priority with the new printer was to finish some customs to send their way (again).

Back in 2022, I made a 9-card custom set called Bubble Gum Baseball featuring bubble-blowing photos of ballplayers. I had whipped up a "2nd series" with a new design in the middle of 2024, but my home printer at the time wouldn't cooperate, so here in 2025 I got to do the thing like real card manufacturers and not actually put out a product until the next year, kinda like how Topps (Fanatics) typically puts out those Chrome Anniversary sets a year late.

But yeah, here's a second page of bubble customs:

I retained the Bubble Gum Baseball logo and '73 Topps position silhouette from the 1st series for continuity. However, I decided to go all-horizontal and full-bleed this time. I admit the gumball design is not my best work, but it's fine. When it comes time to make a 3rd group of these, I'll most likely go back to a vertical design with borders.

 

The backs each feature a write-up paragraph, typically with added context for the front photograph (e.g. that was Joey Votto's final game in Cincinnati). Tiny text, but zoom in if you like.

 

 

 
The print run on this set is currently just 3: Bob, John, and one for me. But I could print more if anybody wants to make a trade offer involving any.

But wait, there's more!

I also made some All-Time Braves customs for Johnny in the style of cards put out by TCMA in 1986. I tried to think of notable Braves who don't have (m)any Braves cards out there. I love stuff like "short term stops" and other familiar person in unfamiliar uniform pictures.

I remember as a new collector getting a card or two in this design from a Sears catalog "collector kit" repack, circa Christmas 1990, so I've got a soft spot for it. Chances are I do more of these, and for more teams, because they're fun for me to whip up.

The backs mimic the real TCMA cards and similar to the bubble customs feature a write-up with more context.

 

 

I made a couple extras of each of the above All Time customs for trade bait and trade package thrown-ins, so if you'd like any, just let me know. Shameless link to my wantlist.

 

 

And one last new custom to show off today, but this one is really just for me. Two of my "under the radar" PC guys happen to be in camp with the Padres this spring as non-roster invitees fighting for a bench spot. I've got my fingers crossed that at least one of them makes the club.. hopefully both! But regardless how it shakes out, I at least wanted to get the moment documented in my card collection.

 

Trenton Brooks is a guy who went to the same high school as me, and Gavin Sheets shares my first name. I've been following/collecting both dudes for years, so it's cool to have them suiting up for my favorite team this spring. For the custom, I modified a 1986 Fleer rookie prospects template I had from years back. I plan to print out a copy for each PC.

 

 

Trenton would be just the third Guy From Granite to play for his hometown Padres, with the Giles brothers being the other two. And Mr. Sheets would be the first guy named Gavin to play for San Diego. Good luck, fellas!

Thanks for reading and I'll see you next post.

Desperate steps with '72 Topps

A recent sportlots order pushed me over 3/4 complete with 1972 Topps. I then decided to crank up the priority on this setbuild and take the plunge of raiding my player-collections to find needs.

Jackson, Clemente, and Wilhelm are "inner circle" names in my collection. It'd be tough for me to rank my PCs subjectively, but these three would surely be in my personal Top 10, perhaps even spending time in the top spot for a while. (Though these days Tony Gwynn is pretty much locked in as my #1.) So subtracting from the PCs is not a step taken lightly, but damn it, I'd really like to finish off '72 Topps soon and these cards aren't easy gets! In a perfect world I'll end up with dupes to replace these '72s in the PCs before long, but if it doesn't happen, I can live with that. Oh wait, just remembered Reggie is actually an upgrade; the lesser-condition card that was in the setbuild can now get bumped to the PC, preserving my complete career run of Reggie's base Topps cards. Not likely I'll ever achieve similar with Roberto and Hoyt thanks to their very expensive rookie cards, so I suppose it stings less to steal from those PCs. (If you missed it, my previous post told the story of acquiring Reggie's rookie).

Some more needs that were technically haves all along, with Clemente making another appearance (still never had his In Action card where he's apparently grimacing over a called third strike.) Turns out I have 2 of the NL HR leaders card; Hank Aaron PC gets the dupe, but Stargell could use one too.

Here's the sportlots haul. Hate paying a few bucks a pop for commons, but when going after '72 high numbers, it's just something you have to accept.

Here's the cream of the crop as far as my current trade bait goes. Perhaps somebody reading has a nice cache of '72 high numbers available and/or some of the big cards in the set I'm needing* and would be interested in working out a deal involving any of these autos.

* such as #49 Willie Mays, 299 Hank Aaron, 300 Hank Aaron IA, 310 Roberto Clemente IA, 550 Brooks Robinson, 559 Pete Rose, 595 Nolan Ryan, 600 Al Kaline, 620 Phil Niekro, 686 Steve Garvey, 695 Rod Carew, 696 Rod Carew IA, 751 Steve Carlton TR, 752 Joe Morgan TR, 754 Frank Robinson TR, 761 Ben Oglivie/Ron Cey RC.

Anyhoo, here's the link to my 1972 Topps needs spreadsheet.. feel free to get in touch regarding a trade.

How about you guys? What are your thoughts about raiding PCs (or team sets or whatever) to get cards for a set you're working on? Do you have steadfast guidelines regarding what gets priority, or do you take it on a case-by-case basis?

Bubble Gum Baseball (9-card custom set)

Once I finally got back into the groove of making customs earlier this year, my first order of business was to make a few cards with bubble-blowing photos for Bob at Best Bubble, whom I needed to thank for some cards he sent me spread over the prior several months.

Usually when I make customs, I'm borrowing a known design, like a classic Topps design or something oddball from the junk era. But I decided to try coming up with a "new" design for this project. That's not my strong suit, but I think the cards came out pretty decent. I like going with 9 cards total for convenient paging.

This is a fun group of cards, yeah?

My "new design" ended up looking like more of a mashup, but with the thousands of sets out there at this point, it's not easy to come up with something fresh. Can you identify some familiar aspects? Here's a closer look:

The name plate area is an allusion to the packaging of Big League Chew, while at the same time paying homage to my personal favorite Topps flagship set, 1973. I decided to use the color dot to roughly match team color rather than keep it assigned by position, mainly because I knew I'd end up with several outfielders and I wanted more variety than a bunch of green dots.

The Bubble Gum Baseball logo is a little busy, but it provides all the backstory you need to understand what the set is all about. (I tried seeing how it looked without it, but it made things look a little too straight "1973 Topps" [instead of the subtle "1973 Topps" look I was going for].)

I'm not taking these to a professional printshop or anything, just using photo paper on my streaky old Canon home printer, so they're not perfect-- the digital files look better than the printed versions-- but good enough.

The backs have a little write-up captioning the front picture, often revealing added significance to them, such as the fact that the Trout photo was taken during warm-ups before his very first game in the bigs.

The first 6 of these were made a month or two ago, and then more recently I finished out the page with the bottom 3. My plan is to stop here, at least for this year, but may whip up a "Series 2" next year if there's interest. I would likely tweak the design a bit for future editions, but keeping a similar look.

Want any of these in your own collection? I don't sell customs, but can usually be talked into trading. My top priority at the moment is 1972 Topps baseball. If you've got any 1972 Topps on my wantlist available-- especially high numbers-- I'd be interested in working out a trade with you. I'm still aiming to finish 1972 by the end of the year-- you know, to commemorate its anniversary or whatever-- preferably through trading more than purchasing, and you can expect to see more "trade bait" on the blog fishing for '72s coming up this year. So when you guys go to card shows or whatever, keep an eye out for good deals on '72 high numbers to get and then trade to me! lol

Oh, and there's a special parallel. Get ready for this.

I haven't actually finished creating them yet, but each card theoretically may have a pink parallel. But the color of the border isn't the main draw with these parallels. I think I'm still in the "prototype" stage with these, but if Blogger with cooperate and let me share a video, it'll give you an idea of what I'm going for...

There's a "real bubble"! Let's see Topps or Panini do that! I gotta say, the bubble is fun to play with.. just squeezing it a little and knocking it around for a moment is very satisfying. It'll most likely deflate over time, but my earliest tests from over a couple months ago are still looking just as good, so hopefully plenty of time goes by before the bubble goes flat. I toyed with shoving in a cotton ball to help it keep its integrity long term, but that makes it clumpy and less fun. So I guess I'll just consider them "living" cards that may change over time as the bubble slowly deflates.

These pink parallel bubble cards are a pain to make, so forgive me for being stingy with trading them, but you could pry one away from me if you happen to have '72 Topps superstars I need. (I'd specifically love to score any of these big needs: 49 Willie Mays, 299 Hank Aaron, 300 Hank Aaron IA, 309 Roberto Clemente, 310 Roberto Clemente IA, 550 Brooks Robinson, 559 Pete Rose, 595 Nolan Ryan, 600 Al Kaline, 620 Phil Niekro, 686 Steve Garvey, 695 Rod Carew, 696 Rod Carew IA, 751 Steve Carlton TR, 752 Joe Morgan TR, 754 Frank Robinson TR, 761 Ben Oglivie/Ron Cey RC, 777 Hoyt Wilhelm.)

As for the base cards, I've got 3 complete sets ready to go and could crank out singles for team/player collectors if there's interest. Just check out my wantlist and feel free to get in touch with any trade offers.

Thanks!

Heavy-Weight Trade Bait

Here's a post with some high-dollar cards I could part with. Please note that I'm only interested in quality-for-quality trades with these, no "nickel & diming" with quantity (unless maybe we're talking pre-1974 vintage). Also, since these are pretty good cards, if I haven't traded with you before, for safety and to dissuade scammers, I reserve the right to wait until I receive your end of the trade before I send.

I'm specifically after Topps Retired refractor autos I need, as well as big names on my vintage setbuild wantlists, currently focused on Topps sets from 1957, 1964, 1970, and 1972. Other stuff I can think of that would be great to get in exchange: 1984 Fleer Update Roger Clemens (need all that Update set besides Kirby), Clayton Kershaw RC (2008 Topps Update or Ginter). Pete Rose rookie. Willie Stargell rookie. 1952 Topps Hoyt Wilhelm. 1914 Cracker Jack Gavvy Cravath. 1956 Jackie Robinson. Bip Roberts 1/1's. 2011 Update Altuve RC diamond or cognac. Rare/numbered Trouts are always nice. Complete sets (or near-complete) of 70s Hostess, Kellogg's, or OPC would be sweet. And in the rare chance you've got early vintage Mantles/Clementes available, I'd likely be interested.

And I would love work out a deal for pack-certified on-card autograph cards from any of these folks: Mickey f'ing Mantle, Ted f'ing Williams, Joe f'ing DiMaggio, Daisy f'ing Ridley, Mark f'ing Hamill, Harrison f'ing Ford, Patrick f'ing Mahomes II, Tim f'ing Duncan, Michael f'ing Jordan, Albert Pujols, Randy Johnson, Christian Yelich, Cody Bellinger, Alex Bregman, Craig Biggio, Corey Seager, Mariano, Jeter, Judge. The current hot young dudes: Acuña, Vlad Jr, Juan Soto, Yordan Alvarez, Alonso, Gleyber, Lux, Wander, Tatis, etc.

So there are some ideas, but I'm up for listening to any offer you think might get my attention. Here's the link to my main wantlist. Note that I'm not really looking to sell, but I suppose I wouldn't rule out selling either. I'm listing "estimated eBay value" for most of the cards in this post, but that's to give folks the idea of return I'd be wanting in cards.

Without further ado, here are a bunch of nice cards I've got up for trade:

1957 Topps Willie Mays PSA 3
Estimated eBay value: about $70. Recent completed listings range from $55 up to $144.

1965 Topps #3 Home Run Leaders feat. Mickey Mantle / Harmon Killebrew / Boog Powell PSA 4
Estimated eBay value: $25-30

Cal Ripken, Jr 2017 Topps Five Star green parallel auto #'d 9/15
Estimated eBay value: Only one for sale right now is asking $134.99 OBO. Sold auctions include $55 (graded BGS 8.5) and $76 (also graded BGS 8.5). I assume this copy I pulled (and went directly from the pack to a one-touch) would grade better than an 8.5, so I'd ballpark it a little above that.

Reggie Jackson 2003 Topps Retired Signature Edition Autograph
Estimated eBay value: No recent completed sales. There are a couple currently listed both around $100, though a more realistic price would be closer to $70.

Harmon Killebrew 2003 Topps Retired Signature Edition Autograph (not serial numbered, but an announced print run of 76 made)
Estimated eBay value: Probably around $80.

Gary Carter 2004 Topps Retired auto
Estimated eBay value: Probably around $50-60

Tony Gwynn 2004 Topps Retired auto
Estimated eBay value: $250? (Realistically, probably more like $150-200, but since Tony is my favorite player, I'd have to put a premium on this card.) It's not numbered but has an estimated print run of 75 copies (Group C).

Stan Musial 2004 Topps Retired auto
Estimated eBay value: $200.
Notes: Not numbered, but as a "Group B" card, it has an estimated print run of 50.

Cesar Geronimo 2004 Topps Retired auto
Estimated eBay value: $100+.
Notes: I recently acquired the refractor parallel of this, making the base expendable to me. As I mentioned in the refractor post earlier this month, Cesar doesn't have many certified autos out there, so "the base version of this card sells comfortably over $100 these days-- the two most recent sales were both around $130 (print run estimated at /468)".
And by the way, as an epilogue to that post, the seller did eventually come clean, explain his side of the situation, and apologize for lying, which I thought was admiral of him.

2004 Topps Retired autos
Estimated eBay value: These guys probably run about $10-15 each.

Greg Maddux Panini stickergraph auto #'06/25
Estimated eBay value: $40-60

Mark Trumbo 2014 Gypsy Queen wood mini #'d 3/5

PS3 games
Estimated eBay value: $10-20 each ($50-75 as a lot)
Notes: Figured I'd throw some non-card stuff onto the list of things up for trade. Our PS3 console broke a few months ago and we decided not to get a new one, meaning we've got several games to get rid of now (plus a few original PlayStation games, which also play on a PS3). Some of these we never even got around to playing, though I think all were bought second-hand, except for DuckTales which was new. I'd love to work out a deal to trade all these to someone for some cards.

Whitey Ford auto
Estimated eBay value: $80-100

Paul O'Neill auto
Estimated eBay value: $20-30

Goose Gossage auto
Estimated eBay value: $20-30

2003 Topps Retired autos
Estimated eBay value:
Spahn $20-30
Stieb $10-20
Evans $80-90
Cey $10-20

Jim Lonborg 2005 Topps Retired refractor auto /25
Estimated eBay value: $30-40

I also have a similar Zane Smith (Braves) refractor auto available.

Gavin Lux - 2015 Leaf Perfect Game (high school) auto #/25
Estimated eBay value: Only one on eBay currently is $200 OBO, though a more realistic figure would be half that.
Notes: Lux has been ranked as the #2 prospect in baseball at the moment and has been named Baseball America’s Player of the Year for 2019, so his cards are very hot right now. I collect him, but this is a dupe for me.

MST3K
Nearly an entire run of Mystery Science Theater 3000 here on DVD and burnt DVD-R. I'm just looking to get rid of these and at least cover the postage. Many hours of hilarity await you here. I don't need them anymore (backed up).. do you want them? Let me know!

Ken Griffey Jr 2016 Topps Archives Father & Son auto 1/1 black parallel
Notes: This is my best pull ever. I threw out some feelers a while ago, wondering if any high-rolling Griffey collector would pay me $5k for it, but the answer was no. Still though, I think around 2-3k would be a fair price for a certified, on-card, fully-licensed 1/1 Topps Ken Griffey Jr auto. I'm not anxious to part with it (don't want to regret letting go of my all-time greatest pull if it didn't landed me a mind-blowing grand slam return), but I'd listen to offers.


There you go.. some heavyweight trade bait. Get in touch if you're interested in maybe working out a trade. My wantlist. Thanks and have a great week.

back to more random card show pickups

I've been distracted by ballgames n' Musials n' stuff, but now let's return to my haul from last weekend's card show. All the cards in this post aren't intended to stay in my collection. I suppose this is a "trade bait" post. But hey, today is my blog's 6th anniversary, so I guess it should be a contest-type post too. I don't think I have it in me right now to do a big, drawn out contest-event thing, so let's just make it easy and say the first 3 people who comment can pick one of these lots to receive in a PWE as a prize. (UPDATE: the 3 winners have spoken. Thanks, everybody.) Say which lot number you'd like in the comment, first come first served. Oh, and you have to have already left at least one comment on my blog this year to be eligible! Sorry, lurkers and prize hounds. Thanks and good luck!

#1 - a pair of autos

#2 Yankees lot

#3 White Sox autos

#4 Cubs lot

#5 Pirates autos

Now the lots aren't exactly all from the recent card show, but I'm also mixing in some other tradeable stuff I've had sitting around looking for a new home.

#6 Reds autos

#7 More Reds plus Tom Seaver lot

#8 Kirby Puckett lot plus a low-numbered Twins prospect

#9 various

#10 Giants autos

#11 auto racing lot

#12 various

#13 basketball lot

#14 football lot 

#15 various

#16 George Brett lot

#17 Ozzie Smith lot ('79 is a CYMTO reprint)

#18 partial '89 Mother's Giants set missing a few cards

#19 Bowman football auto lot

#20 Upper Deck football auto lot

#21 more football autos

#22 yet more football autos I'm trying to get rid of

#23 Jeff Niemann auto/relic

#24 more various baseball autos

That's it. The first 3 lots to get called dibs on in the comments below will be 6th Blogiversary Celebration prizes. After that, what's remaining is up for trade. I've got a big wantlist with lots of sets I'm working on and players I collect, so take a look and drop me a line if you'd like to swing an easy swap. Thanks!