For reasons I do not wish to get into publicly, this past decade has had many years of pain and agony.  It is funny how when life goes smoothly, each day seems to zip by quickly.  These past few years have been filled with those kinds of days (Thank you Lord – keep ’em coming!)

Blogging has been good therapy for me, and has become a fun hobby as well.  It really is great – I have been fortunate enough to have received a ton of flattering feedback, and have been able to use it as a way to chronicle what has been happening in life – good and bad.

Here is a good thing, for instance.  Remember when I said I took my family to see American Ninja Warrior when it was in town?  That episode finally aired, and guess who got a lot of screen time?

Yours truly, (pre handle bar moustache!)

When I posted it on facebook, a friend said “Your expression looks like you are at a posh golf or equestrian event.
I feel like you should be yelling in a British accent, “Good show, old
boy! Good show I say!”

We were on it about 20 times throughout the show, which was really cool!  Now I can say I’m famous – I’ve been on Television!

Now, onto the baseball stuff.

A forum member named @rollx8 reached out to me with some cool pieces … and I mean really cool pieces.  Think:  Roger Maris, Mickey Mantle and Jackie Robinson.

I would have LOVED to have had any one of these pieces whole.  When I started doing custom art pieces a year ago, I did a mock 2013 Topps Jose Canseco & cut it out with scissors, I never would have thought in a million years it would have brought me to this.

Look at them!  They are great pieces to begin with.  Design wise, the Mantle was my favorite by far.  I didn’t care at all for the original designs of the Jackie or the Maris cards.  The Mantle though – very nice as-is, but a guy has gotta do what a guy has gotta do <evil grin>.

The plan was to make some over sized pieces that fit nicely in vertical booklet holders to incorporate the signature and relic pieces together, so let the carnage begin!

Do you know how hard it is to break the psa holders?  Maybe for some of you seasoned veterans, it isn’t very difficult, but for me, it basically took me holding them halfway off the desk and hulk-smashing them with pliers.  Not the smoothest way to go, but it got the job done.  It seemed more difficult to get these done than when I took a simple card out of an SGC case.

I think the most nerve-wracking part of these types of projects are destroying the actual cards.  It simply hasn’t gotten any easier.

It is kind of neat to see how the card companies do it though.  Someone posted a video on how Topps makes baseball cards, and I kept thinking how different our processes were from each other.  I mean, they don’t use kitty litter, microwaves OR lemon juice like I do?  Surely, they must be hiding something.

Next thing you know, they are probably going to claim that they don’t even dry their refractor cards in the presence of a double rainbow.

Each time I open up a card, I do feel like I am entering The Matrix.  This card had a metal plate in it!

Here are the results!

Jackie Robinson Dual Relic Cut Signature

Mickey Mantle Quad Relic Cut Signature

Roger Maris Octo Relic Cut Signature Vertical

All of them together:

Of course, I had to have pictures of the pieces and put them on the back!

I love how they came out!  Doing these over sized cards are quickly making me get over my 89BP, or  EightyNineBowmanPhobia (a phobia of all cards bigger than 2.5 x 3.5″ thanks to 89 Bowman).