2000 Pacific Crown Royale Uncirculated Archive Proofs

In 2000, Pacific came out with a Crown Royale die-cut set. These beautiful cards feature gold foil and were die cut in the shape of a crown. In typical Pacific fashion, they produced a number of parallels to this. The most notable are the 2000 Crown Royale proofs.  These black and white offerings were printed on clear acetate and fell less than one per box. Greater still, are the 2000 Pacific Crown Royale Proofs serial numbered to 50.   These cards are the exact same as above, but with a gold stamped box and serial numbered.  It took me two

HOW TO: Enhance a National Treasures Bash Brothers Booklet – With Pictures

I'm going to keep my writing to a minimum, and try to tell the story mostly with pics. In 2015, Panini came out with the first BASH BROTHERS booklet card.  It came in two flavors:  Autographed and Patch.  They were numbered to just 5 each. The Autographed booklet Pros: First and currently only "real" autographed booklet of the brothers in bash. Cons:  Drab looking, it says "combo materials" instead of "combo signatures", the McGwire autograph is UPSIDE DOWN  (NOTE: To the others who have this card, please do not think I'm putting this card down - I really want one!) The

New High End, Customs and … High End Customs!

On the heels of a dry spell, things have picked up ... a lot, and that is in no small part to being hit with the releases of Topps Series 2, Museum and Tier One.  (Stay tuned!  Stadium Club, Allen & Ginter and Clearly Authentic ALL drop within a few weeks as well!)  I just hit a milestone, passing up 600 pack-pulled autographs of Canseco alone! Before showing off some of the latest 2017 stuff, I wanted to show some of the other cool cards: This Stadium Club Ring Leaders is cool enough by itself, but as it isn't all

Interesting Story about 1990 Topps George Bush + Other Musings

This article is a mere 4 years old today, but I've never seen it and enjoyed the read, as well as the questions that it kicked up in my head. https://www.psacard.com/articles/articleview/7795/hobby-update-by-george-its-complicated-1990-topps-bush-baseball-card Cliff's notes: The story on this card is that 100 were made and specifically presented to/for the White House. The quantity has been challenged, as Topps sheets typically have 132 on them, and some card shop owners in Illinois claimed to pull one from a pack, even though Topps claimed it as being impossible. A former Topps employee also took 70 copies and sold them privately. Here is where

A New Twist on Jersey Cards

Over the past several months, I've gotten more comfortable with the idea of creating cards for my collection using the premium pieces of the jerseys I had Canseco wear.  Jumbo patches, name plates, bat barrels, cleats, laundry tags, etc. and more have been used to create cards with Refractor finishes, gold trim, cabinet cards, wood cards and canvas cards.   Shown below are a few of my favorite creations from last October until now. While I did have Jose wear a number of jerseys, let's be honest.  Patch material is at a premium, and there is much more plain jersey

Does this Mike Trout card BUG you?

How hilarious is this?!  Imagine you have participated in a group break, and you go for the Angels, because ... well ... Trout and Pujols.  The star of the show becomes a base Mike Trout card.  The problem?  The back actually has a BUG embedded in the card!  The seller has mentioned that he has had offers of $500 for it.  Crazy, right?!  Check the video below!

Home Alone

My wife and son are up north for the next several days visiting friends.  It has been strange having the house all to myself.  Instead of family activities, I've been filling my time with eating plenty of non organic junk food and catching up on mah stories like FINALLY finishing Parks & Recreation  (though I wouldn't call Parks & Rec rubbish!)  Actual footage of me this week... This also means I have more free time to create custom cards for my collection :)  For the first card, I wanted to do something fun with one of the new Rated Rookie

Will the REAL Barry Bonds Please Stand Up? A Game

If you know me, you know I love photoshopping things.  I've been wanting to do something like this for a while, but wasn't sure how it would manifest itself until last night.  I have come up with a fun game.  Can you spot the error?  The game is to look closely at the cards below, and see if you can figure out what is wrong with them ... NO CHEATING!!!  That means, NO GOOGLING.  The answers are at the bottom of the post for you once you are done :) Let's get started, shall we? 1982 Topps Cal Ripken Jr.

It has begun.

Well, peeps - it's happening. Bowman is now releasing autograph-only boxes. Is this the beginning of our hobby turning upside down? In this cardboard enthusiast's opinion, the answer is YES. In the year 2020, we will see this as the norm, where every single card of every single product is autographed...except for the case hit: A non-autographed base card. Before you know it, the card companies will turn every single living player (current and former) into Pete Rose - that is, it will be tough to find a card NOT autographed of any given player. This will also change the

Holographic Projection Custom Card

Today, I played around with some video and graphics editing programs to see what a holographic projection baseball card would look like, using my most recent baseball video card custom.  Here is a video and a pic.  I think they turned out cool!