This week has been stuffed to the gills with making customs for people who won my customs contest & customs just for fun for my own collection.  While it has taken a long time and kept me busy, it sure has been fun.

I was kind of bummed about Topps not making a NOW card as a throwback of Canseco,

so I made my own.

After I did that, I thought HEY!  What not do one of Tim Tebow on the Mets?

and what about Ginny Baker from the new show Pitch?

As if that weren’t exciting enough, why not turn my boring life into a set of baseball cards?  Here is the start:

The next day was the presidential debate.  While I’m not going to publicly critique how each candidate did, I will say that I think we were all thinking the same thing last night:

After the debate and everyone went to bed, I got to work on a project for Phillies_Joe.  He was nominated – and was a winner – of my custom contest.  I did some custom cards of his family, which I wrapped up last night.  Joe also sent along some money as well as this:

Know who that is?  Don’t feel bad, because I wouldn’t have either just by looking at it.  It is none other than Phillies pitcher Aaron Nola!  The back has an MLB authentication hologram as well.

I went to work …

The end result was this booklet.  I think it turned out great!  I love that 2 portions of the ball were used and that it is a book.

Since I have the destroyed baseball as well, why not pose it with the finished product, right?

It is because this came out so well, that it made me want to do something similar for my own personal collection.  (I’ve actually wanted to do a card like this for several months now, so this gave me a good excuse to dive in!)

Several months ago, I picked up a game used baseball used in a game Canseco played in and was signed by Jose.  I didn’t care much for the signature, as it was purchased with the intent of destroying it.

More recently, I made a HUGE pickup.  A 1997 game used home run bat.  It is quite a rare bat!  It appears almost black, but in the light, it has a gorgeous green appearance to it.  It is beautiful.  Canseco used several bats throughout his career, but I’ve only seen him use this type once.

As you can see, it is inscribed gamer and mentions that it was used to hit home run #12 in the 1997 season.

I know what you are thinking … ZOIKS!

Don’t worry … I didn’t do that with this one. nor do I intend to!  I have always wanted a full game used / autographed home run bat, so it is going to stay in my collection as-is 🙂

So, while the bat itself didn’t make it into my latest custom, a picture of it did!

This is the ONLY picture I could find of him using this type of bat.  I was fortunate to have seen it, and it looks like mine is the one in the picture!  How can you not use this as the pic of the card, right?

Here is the end result:

And … just like the Nola pic, I wanted to pose it with the baseball that was used:

That’s all for now – thanks for reading!