Recent creative endeavors (1973 Topps customs + some sketch cards)

Here's a post showing off a few card-related things I've cranked out recently, starting with some 1973 Topps customs. While it wasn't really intentional, it seems most of the customs I've printed for myself recently feature this design. What can I say, it's a favorite.

Credit where it's due, this Hoyt Wilhelm "sunset card"/"final tribute"/"career capper" that never was was whipped up by Gio at When Topps Had [Base]Balls. I liked it so much, I was compelled to make it into a physical card.

I made the back myself, however-- no easy task-- so I'm comfortable taking a share of the credit for this card! lol. (I checked with Gio, and he was totally cool with it, said it looked great, and took me up on my offer to send him a copy.) But yeah, Hoyt's one of my favorite guys to collect, and I love sunset cards with complete career stats on the back, so this is a winner for me.

Here's another card I wished into existence. Bill Madlock cracked the bigs in 1973 with the Rangers, but was then shipped off to Chicago after the season, and is featured on a 4-player rookie card in 1974 Topps airbrushed into a Cubs uniform, leaving him with zero cardboard representation from his stint in Texas (not even any oddballs, as far as I'm aware). Yeah, this would have made more sense as a 1974 custom, but screw it, 1973 Topps is probably my all-time favorite design, so I shoehorned it in. Hey, Topps occasionally gave a guy a card before his debut (Yaz, Clemente, Bob Gibson, etc).. so it could have theoretically happened. This is the only photo I've ever found of Mad Dog in a Rangers uniform. Unfortunately there was a big watermark over it that I had to scrub off, which is why it might look a little funky in the torso region.

(Sorry about the watermarks. Is it hypocritical of me to bitch about a watermark, then add watermarks myself? Just don't want some thief to try selling copies of my work on eBay.)
Truth be told, I created the front of the Madlock custom over a year ago, but the file sat around on my computer waiting for me to get around to making a back for it so I could print it out. I got around to it recently after the Heartbreaking Cards blog posted that he was starting up a Madlock PC thanks to his Decatur, IL connection. I took that as motivation to finally whip up the back, and even customized the cartoon to be about Decatur.

Here's another front that Gio came up with. It's a nice posed alternative to Garvey's messy in-game original 1973 Topps card.

The back is the same as the real card, but with a cheekily edited cartoon. I surprised gcrl (huge Garvey fan) with a copy. Ain't I a stinker? Sorry, man, I just thought it was funny! :)

Ok, I'll be the first to admit my strong suit is with the mouse, not the pen, but I still like to crank out a sketchcard from time to time. I never really improve any, but still, I like to keep somewhat active with it. Not sure why this batch is heavy on Astros, just turned out that way. Using "repurposed cards" such as my old bus (train) passes help guide me along a schedule of doing at least one sketch per month. (Just now noticing Manny Machado has the somber distinction of gracing the May 2017 TriMet pass.)

This Batman sketch, a surprise included in a recent PWE for Commishbob might be one of my best in a while, not that that's saying much. The moon glows in the dark.. kinda neat. (UPDATE: RIP Adam West. He was the best.)

So there's some of my recent creative output. Thanks for checking it out!


Contest Update: Ok, let's say the clock is ticking to enter, and I'll officially cut off the entry period for my 1000 Post contest sometime around Saturday morning (6/10).

Thanks to everyone who answered my hypothetical question yesterday. It was pretty unanimous that the right thing to do would be to contact the site and try to swap for the correct card. Interesting!

Let's randomize the folks who responded and award a bonus entry to somebody:

Congrats to KO Rob on the bonus entry!

For the final bonus entry opportunity: The above Paul Goldschmidt sketchcard is done on the back of one of those junk mail fake cards. Be the first to correctly guess which company's card it is in the comments for a bonus entry. (One guess per person. Hint: there are 2 possible correct answers. One's a credit card company, and the other is an airline.) (Update: Jafronius correctly went with American Express. Congrats, man!)

Return of the Griffey Box!

The Junior Junkie did a cool thing late last year when he put together the Griffey Generosity Box, a big box of Griffeys that would make its way around to the Kid collectors of the cardsphere, where you could take what you need and add what you don't.

I got a tip that I was next in line for the box, and was very excited for it to arrive. The weeks turned to months and my excitement soured a bit. I guess the previous recipient had other stuff going on and couldn't get around to mailing it. But eventually (after about 4 months), thanks to the assistance of Sports Card Collectors and the Junior Junkie himself, the guy was persuaded to hit the post office, and the box arrived at my door a few days later.

She might not be as pretty as when she originally left Kenner, Louisiana, but she's got inner beauty.

Could've sworn I heard a heavenly choir when I opened that badboy up. The box was topped with a nice relic card and the project's info sheet.

I couldn't pass up that relic. As I went through the box, I wasn't necessarily grabbing everything I didn't have-- while I've got a respectable Griffey PC, I'm not in the same league as the many of his supercollectors out there, and have no delusions of ever having nearly all his available cards-- so I was basically just looking for cards that caught my eye.

Griffey was a big deal when I collected in the early 90s, but I was out of the hobby from '94 through the end of his career, so I had a lot of holes as far as his flagship Topps cards.

And there were plenty of cards from the overproduction era that I don't think I ever owned even though I was collecting back then. I even grabbed an extra '91 Fleer superstar special with Bonds for my Bonds PC.. there were a few of them in the box, so I didn't think anyone would mind. (More on the junk situation in a minute.)

Upper Deck always put out the best Griffey cards!

Gotta love oddballs.

And the rest! A little bit of shiny here with that Bleacher Reachers insert.

I also took out a damaged '90 Donruss plus a few Donruss and Score cards from 1991.. not because I needed them but because I wanted to help "tidy up" the box a little; there were something like 9 of each card in there. While it's true I needed a few of his junk cards (pardon the derogatory term), you gotta assume the majority of the people who receive this box aren't gonna need flagship base cards from 1990 through 1993. So we probably don't need 9 copies of Ken's 1991 Score card in there. While I love the concept of the box, I can't help but fear it'll get more and more watered down with junk as it passes from person to person, not because of nefarious intent of the recipients, but just the nature of baseball cards. People are more likely to need "good cards" and more likely to have overproduction era duplicates available to contribute.

Not pictured, but I scrounged up a nice bunch of available Griffey cards from my collection that I thought the box could use. I didn't have a ton of quality dupes, though, so I supplemented the real cards with several customs. (I think I even crapped out a shitty sketchcard, too.) Feels kinda like a cop-out, since I know not everybody cares much about homemade cards, but I figure they'll probably end up finding loving homes eventually, assuming the box keeps on making the rounds for a while.

I didn't keep count, but the box left my possession as full as I got it, seemed to me. In my estimation, I took out about 50 cards and replaced them with about 50 others. And my turnaround time was just about a couple weeks. So I feel good about it. The next recipient has already received it, confirming its arrival with an excited email to me yesterday. It was tough choosing who to send it to, as I had 3 top possibilities pop into my head and could only pick one.. but I'm confident the box will make its way to the other 2 guys soon enough.

Big thanks again to Junior Junkie and the previous recipients of the box! That was fun!


Contest Update: We're closing in on the end of the entry period for my big 1000 Posts contest, so hurry up and get in if you wanna. Thanks to everyone who mentioned their favorite Beach Boys song in yesterday's post. I was thinking I'd award a bonus entry to anyone who mentioned "All Summer Long" (a favorite of mine, particularly for its use in a classic Simpsons episode). But no one did, so I figured I'd just go with the answer that tickled me the most. As such, I think I'm gonna have to go with Bo for picking "Kokomo", a song that I think most big Beach Boys fans regard as the red-headed stepchild of the band's catalog. I do kinda like it, though. I've never seen the film Cocktail, though it's currently atop my Netflix DVD queue. Anyways, congrats on the bonus entry, Bo!

Today's bonus entry opportunity question is just a "what would you do?" scenario:
You ordered several cards from a popular online card marketplace. When they arrive, you notice there was a mixup with one of the cards. A $2 card you ordered for a set you're working on was mistakenly swapped with a $10 card from a set you aren't working on. What do you do? Call it good and keep the "better" card you ended up with? Or do you contact the site to see about exchanging for the correct card?

I'll randomize all the responses to award a bonus entry.

Thanks as always for swinging by!

Beach Boys and bikini girls

I've been doing a lot of ripping here in early June. In addition to my two boxes of 2017 Archives (check out that post if you missed it.. fun break), I also had a couple boxes waiting for me from my Black Friday stockpile.

I had scheduled these for June to celebrate the start of summer. (I know technically summer doesn't start till around the end of June according to the calendar nazis, but we all know summer really begins with Memorial Day.. or June 1st at the latest.)

Both these boxes combined ran me just a little over the price of a retail blaster thanks to the sale, so that works out to a lot of packs to rip at a low per-pack price. While generally there aren't gonna be much in the way of mojo hits, there's definitely a possibility to land something real nice.

First let's do the Beach Boys box. I've loved them a long time. One of the first albums I ever got as a little kid was a greatest hits cassette of the band. I think it was specifically the use of "I Get Around" in the movie Flight of a Navigator (a favorite of mine) that really sparked my interest in them. So I've grown up on their fun surfin' hits. A few years after that (high school age or so), my mom picked up Pet Sounds on CD, and that got a lot of play around our house. Eventually I dug a little deeper and discovered some great lesser known stuff like the Holland album and bootlegs from the ill-fated SMiLE recordings. Oh, and The Beach Boys' Christmas Album has been a staple in my household every Christmastime since I can remember. It's cool that they're still kinda going. That recent That's Why God Made the Radio album was actually pretty solid!

Anyways, the box promises a couple hits, but they're most likely relics. Autos are a tough pull, and are really the only thing with solid resale value, as is my understanding.

Here's a typical base card. This one is actually a parallel (gold foil surfer at the bottom), which are pretty common to pull.

These die-cut, metallic-looking inserts are pretty cool.

I also really like these inserts celebrating hit singles. You'll notice some of the inserts also have the gold foil surfer parallel.

My first hit of the box is a Bruce Johnston relic. Cool. The Etchings cards seem to be one per box, and have sort of a dufex type thing going on. I was happy with pulling this Brian Wilson.

A look at a few more inserts. (Hey gcrl, do you need that Dodger Stadium card? It's the gold surfer parallel.) And while not really an insert, I was amused to pull a stray piece of cardboard trimmings (lower right).

My other hit from the box was a good one, apparently a piece of a Hawaiian shirt worn by Mike Love.

So that was a fun box. I'll double back to the Beach Boys in a minute, but first an intermission for some pretty ladies.

Here are some of my favorites from the Benchwarmer box. I suppose I've got "PCs" going for Spencer Scott and Jaime Bergman at this point, as both have made at least a couple prior appearances on my blog.

A cool thing (gimmick) about this hobby box is that each pack came with a piece of bubble gum.. Just like the old days! kinda. I tried a piece, and I'll just say that it tasted like they had some extra silicone lying around.

A few more that caught my eye enough to go into the "keepers" pile.

Always get a kick out of the backside of the cards.

Oh hey, Michelle here is also a minicollection hit for me, sharing my birthday. Plus she's also from San Diego County.. Man, we're a good match. If my wife and I ever split up... oh wait, she says she loves traveling. I'm more of a homebody you might be able to drag onto a plane (domestic only!) maybe once a year. I guess our romance was just not meant to be.

My two promised autos were solid. I hadn't heard of Caitlin O'Connor before, but she a cutie. According to her wikipedia, she's an actress who's had small parts in a lot of stuff. Here's an error card for you: Bench Warmer misspelled her name "Caitlan" on the card.. ouch! She would have been totally justified to refuse signing those cards. But I guess she was a team player and swallowed her pride.

As for Buffy Tyler, she was Playboy's Playmate of the Month for November 2000. Nice.

So again, no low-numbered mega hits, but another fun box to rip through.

Now back to the Beach Boys. Padrographs Rod gave me an opened box of those cards in the big bag he handed me at the April card show. I held off going through them until I had ripped my box, just to keep my break fresh. Rod's box seemed to be a nearly-all-still-there hobby box break, with likely just a small handful of inserts picked out.

I was happy to find a near-complete, already-in-order base set in there, and it only took me a couple minutes to find the missing numbers to complete it. I think there are some gold foil surfer parallels mixed in, but I'm not OCD enough to be bothered by that at all.



Between the rest of the cards in Rod's box and my box, I could probably build another base set or two without much trouble. You can bet that some of these dupes will end up in the 1000+ card prize package.

Here are some more inserts from Rod's box.

But the real highlight..

Brian Wilson relic! Sweet! Barring an autograph, that's what I was hoping to pull from my box, so I was very happy to see Rod let me have this one.

Well, there you go; A bunch of boys and girls on cardboard.

Bonus Entry Opportunity: What's your favorite Beach Boys song? Maybe you have a few favorites? Let me know in the comments and you might luck into a bonus entry in my big 1000 Posts contest. Thanks!

Busting a couple boxes of 2017 Archives

Got my annual pair of Archives hobby boxes yesterday.

Let's see what I got! First up is Box 1:

Archives is always good for giving me a nice stack of guys I collect. Topps listened to the complaints about flimsy Archives card stock in years past and definitely upped their game this time with stock that's more in line with the likes of Heritage and Ginter.

If I had to rank them, I think the 1992 cards are the best. The 1982 cards are nice, but has been bitched about before, Archives already used that design not long ago (though this year's version is probably better, thanks to the cardstock if nothing else). I've never been a big fan of 1960 Topps, plus these are annoying because they're "backwards" in the packs (in regards to the orientation of the backs.. so if you want your card backs to face the same way, you've got to flip around all the 1960 cards). One knock I have against the 1992 cards is the stats on the back are truncated for guys with long careers.. boo! Oddly, glorious full (tiny text) stats are crammed in the 1982 backs. But the dark green backs of '82 make it tough to read the tiny text. If Topps was gonna truncate one of these, they should have done it the other way around (truncate '82, leave '92 full). Oh well.

Nice selection of up-and-comers.

Looks like I got the full Padres base team set from this one box.. nice. Always love to see the Wizard in the mustard as opposed to the ketchup. A notable absence this year is Tony Gwynn.. perhaps Topps let the contract with his estate lapse? (There are also no Griffey cards in the product. No Willie Mays either.)

My parallel game was solid with this box. Ryon Healy is having a fine rookie year (blue, #'d /75). Yu Darvish is a dude I kinda collect (red, #'d /25). I don't care much about Lackey, but hey, Cubs cards are always in demand as trade fodder (peach, #'d /199).

Unlike in 1960 Topps, these Rookie Star cards are an insert set, not a subset. Can't do much better than these 2 names.

Some more inserts. These are fine, though not super exciting. I feel like Topps has used that Arenado photo on like 50 different cards already.

Looks like these Jeter retrospective reprints are 2 per box.

Bummer time! Check the lower left corner of these cards. Ding City! The box got a bit crunched and damaged several cards, including the first auto. This wasn't Topps' fault, but rather Blowout Cards. In the past, I've bought my boxes from Dave & Adam's Card World. This year, I switched over to Blowout since their prices were a couple bucks cheaper. But man, I think I might rather pay a little extra to get the boxes shipped safely with bubble wrap rather than the boxes crammed into a tight shipping box without any extra protection. Sad to see an auto among the victims. Thankfully it wasn't anything awesome like a Hank Aaron auto or something. But still, I kinda like Aaron Boone thanks to the Boone Family being from my neck of the woods (East County San Diego). So yeah, bummer it's damaged.

My other promised auto had me sweating, as it wasn't pulled until the final pack. I was pretty happy with this Bill Lee auto. Not exactly a "big money" pull, but he's a neat character and a guy I collect.

In all, a pretty solid box despite the several damaged cards.


Up next is Box 2...

Glad to see the collation is better this year. After my two Archives boxes last year had nearly identical base cards in them, it was a relief to get plenty of cards in Box 2 that I didn't pull in Box 1.

There were several dupes, however, but not an obscene amount. The above 3 dupes were actually nice for me to pull, since these are the only "guys I collect" that were among the damaged cards from Box 1. So really the only casualty there for me was the Aaron Boone auto.

One key guy I didn't pull in Box 1 was Kris Bryant. Imagine my surprise to pull not one but two of his cards in Box 2. Turns out the grey uniform card is a photo variation. A look on eBay tells me these are selling for over $30, so that's pretty cool. Topps did setbuilders a solid this year by axing a SP section at the end of the set that vexed collectors who worked on completing previous Archives sets. Instead, there are some short-printed photo variations.. which you can choose to fuss with if you want to, or just ignore them and everything will be fine without worrying about "missing numbers." I think that's a good compromise for Topps to give hit-chasers something extra to chase without screwing set builders. I went through the trouble of checking the production code on every card I pulled (which is the easiest way to tell if it's a variant [it will end in 799]), and unless I missed one (again, the tiny text on the 1982 backs is very hard to read) this Bryant was the only one I pulled from either box.

The inserts in this box were highlighted for me by Bryce and Rizzo.

While the first box had some nice parallels, the second box was lacking in that department, with only a couple peaches (/199).

My autos in this box were a couple pitchers who had solid careers. While not amazing pulls (my mojo last year of pulling a 1/1 Griffey auto did not carry over into 2017) I suppose I like 'em alright. I remember Mark Langston fondly from his one season spent in San Diego, even if his numbers weren't great, but it was that magical 1998 season when they managed to make it to the World Series. As for Mike Scott, well, I remember one of the few vintage cards I owned as a kid was his multi-player rookie from 1980 Topps, for whatever that's worth. So could be worse than these guys. Hell, I'm just relieved I didn't pull a Skip Bayless auto, or that annoying foul ball guy or any jokers like that.

Besides the Bryant photo variation, the real star of this box was Derek Jeter. In addition to a couple base reprints, I also hit a green foil parallel #'d 48/99. If I wasn't so lazy, I should throw that on eBay to try to recoup a few bucks. But I'll probably end up hanging onto it.
One other thing to note is that the autos and the Jeter reprints seem to be on the old Archives card stock, noticeably less hefty.

So there you have it. A decent pair of boxes. Probably didn't quite recoup my purchase price, value-wise, but I wouldn't call them complete duds either, thanks largely to the solid pulls of the Bryant variation and Jeter parallel. All told, while somewhat on the fence, I think I enjoyed these boxes enough to keep my tradition going and tentatively plan on picking up a couple boxes of 2018 Archives next year.

Now I've got a couple big stacks of tradeables, so if any of my trading pals are looking for any base cards, let me know. And I'm sure of bunch of these will make their way into the 1,000 card prize package I'm putting together.

Oh hey, great response to my 1,000 Posts contest! Go join in if you haven't yet.

Bonus entry opportunity: The Darvish red parallel was the lowest numbered card in either box, /25. Sadly, not a Christmas Card, but still cool. Be the first person in the comments below to correctly guess the serial number and you'll get a bonus entry for the contest. (Update: congrats to gcrl on his accurate guess of 20/25)

Thanks for reading!

Update: here's the backs I was talking about. Notice the McGwire stats start at 1989. Meanwhile, Billy Williams' back crams in a bunch of wonderful tiny stats:

1000 Card Giveaway celebrating 1000 posts

Hey, it's post #1000! That's a lot of breaking down cards and having breakdowns over cards.

I knew I wanted to run a contest to celebrate, but I've been stressing over the details. I was thinking of maybe doing a Big Fun Game of my own, but I think I'll stick a pin in that for now (I also have a blogging anniversary coming up soon).

Instead, for now, let's just do one big MYSTERY BOX!

That's right, I'm going to give myself the prize of getting rid of some clutter. And one lucky grand prize winner will grant me the privilege of dumping 1000+ various cards on them. Whatever I can cram into a Medium Size Priority Mail Flat-Rate Box. Prepare for an epic Bipping. Ha, no, but don't worry, I'll include some good stuff in there, too. I'll try to weight the content based on the winner, e.g., if the winner is a Yankees fan, I'll be sure to include some good Yankee cards. But yeah, it'll be a mix of all teams and some non-baseball, too. Hopefully it'll be a lot of fun to go through.. find some keepers for your collection and stock up your tradeables with the rest. (or hell, throw them away for all I care, just don't send them back to me.)

Ok, I don't want to scare ya'll off with talk of maybe a few junk wax cards in the mix, so let's specifically state some good cards that will be included. A Fleer Greats of the Game Tony Oliva certified auto, plus a couple hot 2017 rookie cards: an Aaron Judge flagship RC and an Andrew Benintendi dual rookie from Heritage.

Loyal Reader Bonus: If the winner has posted at least one comment on my blog in 2017 before today, they can choose two (2) of the below Topps Retired autographs to be thrown into the big box. (The unselected cards will likely roll over into the tentatively planned Big Fun Game.)

To enter, just comment on this post. I would prefer a fancy acknowledgment of 1000 posts. Something like, "Jolly good show on the thousand posts, each more triumphant than the last!" Perhaps a clever play on words using the word "grand." But it's also fine if you just say "I'm in" or whatever.

The entry period will be open for a week or so, then we'll randomize out a winner. Must be a US resident for the grand prize. Well, you can enter regardless of where you live, but if the winner doesn't have a US address, they'll just get a consolation PWE instead, and the big box will go to the next place person. Sorry, it's the USPS's crazy international shipping costs these days.

Big Turnout Bonus: While I won't be awarding bonus entries for pimping this time out, I will offer some enticement for you to help spread the word. If we get 44 or more people to enter, the winner can also pick one (1) of the below HOF autos:

That's Andre Dawson and Rollie Fingers. The question mark "mystery pick" is pending but should be unveiled soon. So consider throwing out a little plug on your blog or tweeting a link or whatever, as it could pay dividends for you down the line.

I plan to offer several fun bonus entry possibilities in my posts over this next week, so be sure to check back for them.

Thanks!

(UPDATE 6/10/17: The entry period is now closed. Thanks to all who entered!)