Custom TTM Success: Kelsie Whitmore and Stacy Piagno

Earlier this summer, Kelsie Whitmore and Stacy Piagno made history by becoming the first female teammates on an otherwise all-male professional baseball team. I thought that was cool, and made a couple customs for them as my own little tribute.

I sent separate through-the-mail requests to them via their team the Sonoma Stompers. Ms. Whitmore kindly sent back my request with just 8 days turnaround, tying the record for quickest TTM return I've gotten.

Looks great!

The back includes a nice little bio that was mostly copy & pasted from the Stompers' site. Cool that Kelsie is from the San Diego area, like myself.

I sent 3 copies of this custom along with a short fan note. I asked her to please sign and return one for me, and accept the extra 2 as my gift if she'd like (which she did).

Kelsie even took the time to write me a little thank you note. So awesome! Not that I ever expect it, but it's very appreciated those rare instances that the person I'm asking for an autograph goes the extra mile by taking a moment to write back.

So yeah, that one arrived Saturday, then Stacy Piagno's return showed up Monday...

Nice! As you can see, I've again paid tribute to the classic 1983 Topps design. And again, I made 3 copies, and Stacy accepted the other 2 offered her.

Bio on the back.

Another sweet thank-you note! Getting this return was the highlight of my Monday by far.

There's a relevant article at USA Today about women in baseball gaining acceptance that you might want to give a read.

I would love to see a woman baseball player make the major leagues one day. Women in independent ball is definitely a step in the right direction and I hope the sport continues to expand, welcoming anyone who can play, regardless of society's perceived limitations. That's one thing that makes baseball so great: anybody can potentially excel at it. All races and backgrounds, fat/skinny, young/old, tall/short, men/women, straight/gay (You might remember last year, my first-ever custom TTM success was Sean Conroy, the first openly gay player in pro ball, also with the Stompers). Heck, you could have been born with only one hand and still throw a no-hitter if you work hard enough. Don't tell me what I can't do. Ok, I'm rambling now.

Again, huge thanks to Kelsie Whitmore and Stacy Piagno for the autographs and thoughtful notes! They'll be cherished parts of my collection for always. Best of luck with your baseball careers!

Custom TTM Failure: Pee-Wee Herman

I've always been a big Pee-Wee Herman fan. I loved watching Pee-Wee's Playhouse as a kid, and Pee-Wee's Big Adventure has been one of my all-time favorite movies as long as I can remember. (Thankfully I had kinda grown out of him just before the whole scandal that crippled his career for a while.) Even today I watch the Playhouse on Netflix and enjoyed the recent direct-to-Netflix film, Pee-Wee's Big Holiday.

I read a while back that Paul Reubens is a decent signer (though some say most are "sec" autographs; not really him signing it), so I gave it a shot. I ended up with 3 different customs I liked, all in the 1996 Leaf Signature style, so I sent a strip of all 3, and in my little fan letter asked him to sign the one he liked most (...though, sure, I was kinda hopeful he'd be generous and sign all 3).

Well, several months have gone by with no return (sent back in January), so I'm writing this one off as a failure. Bummer! Maybe I'll give it another try one of these days. Or maybe he'll finally get around to returning it sometime in the future. Fingers crossed.

Here are the cards I had whipped up:

I think the swinging on a vine one is my favorite, but like 'em all.

Somebody emailed me the other day asking for a template I use for the these customs. There's not much to it. You just need a square-ish photo, feather the edges, then add the text. The font I use is Ebrima bold, but I bet Arial would look fine too. Black for the top, grey for the bottom, all caps with extra spacing between letters. That's it.

Anyways, too bad I haven't been able to get these signed. I believe I sent via his agency, William Morris Endeavor Entertainment. If anyone has a better address to try for his autograph, please let me know. Thanks!

A sweet contest win: 2016 Allen and Ginter complete base set including SPs!

The cardsphere is a generous place, with usually a couple contests for free cards running at any given time. I'm happy to throw my name in the hat with most easy contests that I come across ("just leave a comment to enter" type), and sometimes I'll put in a little effort for the ones where you need to guess a number or something.

Anyways, Matt over at Bubba's Bangin' Batch of Baseball Bits recently ran a string of Ginter related contests. There was one where you had to come up with some words for a mad lib. I remember having fun with stuff like that when I was a kid, so I spent a couple minutes picking words that might make for a silly mad lib. Lucky me, I was selected as the winner!

Matt had a nice list of available prizes culled from the case he cracked of '16 A&G. I just had to make my first choice the big boy: a complete base set including SPs. The 350 cards arrived today and I'm pretty stoked!

My collecting is mainly focused on player collections and minicollections, with set-bulding usually reserved for my favorite vintage sets. I've yet to take the plunge of attempting to complete a current/modern set. Before today, my most recent complete full-sized set (>100 cards) was 1992 Stadium Club that I bought off eBay a few years back. So this is pretty sweet and adds some diversity to my collection.

He even threw in a nice bonus lot of 2016 Heritage to fill up the box

Huge thanks again to Matt for the awesome prize! Everybody should definitely check out his blog, especially if you're a Ginter fan.

Alex Rodriguez PC

Back in the news due to his retirement ceremonious release from the Yankees, Alex Rodriguez is a polarizing figure in baseball, that's for sure. I hated him for most of his career, but after he eventually accepted that year-long suspension, I started to root for him to come back strong. I guess it's human nature to build up our brash heroes, knock them down, then build back them up again.

Even without cheating, you gotta figure he'd still be one of the greats. Check out where he ranks on the all-time lists as of the other day:

HR: 4th (696)
RBI: 2nd (2,084)
Runs: 8th (2,021)
Hits: 19th (3,114)
Grand Slams: 1st (25)

Pretty incredible.

(I kinda hope he latches on with the Marlins or somebody to pinch hit those 4 more home runs. They should also sign Fred McGriff and Al Kaline while they're at it.)

I never really collected his cards at all, but then a year or two ago, I bought an entire big nickelbox at a card show. Among its contents happened to be dozens of Arod cards, so I figured I'd start up a little PC of the guy and see if I could push him over the top and into my Hundred Card Club without too much effort. I broke down and actually spent decent money on an Arod card a couple weeks ago...

2005 Bowman Chrome on-card certified autograph #'d /99

As I mentioned yesterday, it's hard for me to feel satisfied about my player collections unless I've got at least one auto to crown the lot. And so I settled on grabbing this one. The signature is a bit faded, but hey, it's an apt metaphor for Alex's career: Big and extravagant, but the glory since diminished over the years. I'll just pretend is a rare "gray ink" parallel or something, haha. Maybe another Arod auto will fall into my lap someday, usurping the "best card of the PC" crown, but for now, I'm fully content with this one.

Now let's take a look at my PC and see if I've hit the magic #100 yet. As I draft this up, I'm not sure, but I think it'll be close.

A few other hits: 2 bat chips and a piece of fielding glove.

I'm not going to go through the trouble of sorting all the cards by year like I sometimes do when I post my player collections (it's not like this post is gonna get any views anyways.. everybody hates the guy!), but instead I'll group them by team era.

Mariners

Rangers

Yankees 

Here's one more hit I forgot about initially because it's stored with my 2004 Chrome Black setbuild, not the PC

By my count, that's well over a hundred cards (I think about 120), so yep, mission accomplished.

Congrats on the impressive numbers, Mr. Rodriguez, and best of luck in the future, whatever it holds.

Shaking up the wantlist a little

I started my Hundred Card Club idea a year or two ago to help give me some focus with my collection. I like collecting a lot of different players, but it's a bit overwhelming to go after cards of a bunch of guys forever, never getting any closure. So now if I decide to collect a guy, my goal is to acquire 100 cards of him, then I'm off the hook and don't "have to" keep on going after his cards. A hundred different cards will generally give you a nice overview of a player's career. When financially possible, I try to make sure each "completed" PC contains at least one autograph, relic card, and rookie.

Boasting 9 autos, my Goldschmidtload is among my most impressive PCs.

A couple favorite active players for me to collect over the past couple years have been Paul Goldschmidt and Giancarlo Stanton. It's been a fun ride, but these two sluggers have now officially been knocked off my wantlist and into the Hundred Card Club. While I'm sure I'll continue to add to these PCs from time to time, they are no longer priorities for me. You trader buddies of mine can feel free to keep on sending me their cards, though, especially hits and other less-common cards.

Other active (for now) guys who've similarly joined the HCC and been removed from my wantlist in the recent past include Adrian Gonzalez, Jake Peavy, Alex Rodriguez, David Ortiz, and Matt Kemp.
Big thanks to you generous traders who've help me reach the magic number with all these guys.

Among dudes I've kinda stopped collecting prematurely are Andrew Cashner and James Shields.. a couple former Padre pitchers who've seen their careers take downturns and get traded out of San Diego. I just ain't feeling these guys anymore, so they got deleted from the wantlist too.

I've started up new PCs for a few guys to fill the void. Names I'll now be sorting out into my player collection boxes include Josh Donaldson, Manny Machado, Adrian Beltre, and Billy Hamilton.

The initial stages of a couple new PCs.

Some new retired guys have been added to my wantlist, too. I already got Rickey Henderson in the HCC, but now I'm turning my attention on a lesser-celebrated Henderson: Dave. I collected him a bit when I was a kid, but up to this point, haven't restarted since rejoining the hobby. He always seemed to be having a good time, with his infectious smile gracing several of his baseball cards. Sadly, he was taken from us too soon, passing last December at age 57. He doesn't have much available out there as far as certified auto cards, but I was able to score this 2007 Topps Co-Signers stickergraph for just $5 shipped. I think the only card of his I kept from my childhood collection is his 1982 Topps RC that I pulled from a pack circa 1991. Other than that, I have very few of his cards, so you guys with big overproduction-era stockpiles, feel free to dump your spare Dave Henderson cards on me.

As always, my updated wantlist can be found here and linked on the right sidebar. It's nearing 3000 hits (Eat your heart out, Ichiro! lol) Check it out and feel free to get in touch about a possible trade if you like. Thanks!

2017 Topps design revealed

Topps unveiled their 2017 flagship design this morning via this Clayton Kershaw mock up. Figured I'd jump and get a quick post out of it (I know not everybody is on Twitter).

What do you think?

I was kinda hoping they'd go back to borders next year. At least the "fog" is limited to the bottom. I wonder how they're gonna handle parallels with this.. or horizontal cards, for that matter. Looks more like an insert than a base card, but could be worse I guess. Makes me think of Legos. I wonder if that red stripe is going to be on every card, or will it be different colors for different teams.. because here it looks kinda like a trail of blood on a blade.

Here it is - the 2017 #Topps Baseball Series 1 card design! pic.twitter.com/3b5PCzG4k5

— Topps Company (@toppscards) August 9, 2016

If They Were Full Bleed: 1979 Topps Edition

Time again for this fun little series where we use our imaginations (and photoshop) to picture what classic baseball card designs would look like if they were full-bleed. The borderless concept had been around for decades, but didn't really gain mainstream traction until the early 90s with the rise of Stadium Club.

But what if Topps had been ahead of the times and put out a full-bleed flagship set in 1979? Well, it might have looked a little something like this!

Here we have the top-dollar card of the 1979 set, the Ozzie Smith rookie. Looks pretty good without the white space, and would have cut down on the notorious off-centeredness this card is known for.

Side by side comparison with the real version:

Let's do another one for good measure.

Joe Morgan brings an All-Star banner into the mix.

And the side by side:

The color is a little off, but I do the best I can when I come across the original raw photos, usually thanks to Topps Vault auctions.

That's it for this time. If you missed them, check out the first and second installments of this series as well.

So what do you think of the full-bleed 1979 mock-ups? Love 'em or prefer the originals?