Roberto Clemente

One of my next projects might be a nice run of Roberto Clemente cards.  As you know, Clemente passed away quite a while ago.  You also probably know that he was one heck of a baseball player. Did you know though, that he hit number 3,000 for his career in the last regular game he ever played?  Yup, he had exactly 3,000 hits.  I think that is just so amazing.  It kind of makes me bummed out thinking about Gehrig, and how he was only 7 shy of 500 homers.  Clemente getting 3,000 smack dab on the button?  Awesome! It

Customs – Atomic, Cracked and Canary Goodness

So, the last few days have been very, very exhausting and frustrating.  I have been trying out many different methods to get the desired look *just right* for my newest customs. Before I go any further, I'm going to remind you who is writing this.  Me.  The crazy dude who collects that one dude who had a ball hit off his head and go into the stands for a homer.  The guy who put the spotlight on the whole steroids thang, and hurt the generation of ballplayers I grew up watching of going into the hall of fame.  Well hey,

Custom Card with some Easter Eggs!

Easter is around the corner, and I thought it would be appropriate to toss some easter eggs into my most recent PC item:  A 2013 Topps Jose Canseco (duh!) - autograph prototype  1/1 SSP.  :) This one was a doozie, as I was practicing all kinds of different methods, papers, techniques, etc.  I have finally risen from the card stock, cutters and recovered from the adhesive vapors to tell the story. One of my first customs was a 2013 Jose Canseco A's card.  Just a plain, base white card.  I enjoyed it, but wanted to do refractors and a super.

More Custom Cards – McGwire & Ripken Style!

As I was just getting into creating custom cards a few weeks back, I thought I should probably venture outside of the realm of Canseco-dom, and try other players.  One player that came to mind was (of course) his former brother of bash - Mark McGwire. I love cards of his when he was playing for team USA, but the problem was that I simply could not find many (or any!) suitable pics for my project.  I remembered seeing some 2011 Topps chrome blue refractors of players on Team USA, and absolutely loved the design.  I thought to myself, how

Fun with Goudey

Ah yes, Goudey.  First introduced in the 1930's with spokesperson Lou Gehrig at the bottom.  Throughout the years, many people have tried to remake them, and finally, in the late 2000's, Upper Deck did, and got it right.  They added two flavors:  1 with Jeter on the front, and 1 with Griffey on the front.  The packs contained potential minis, green backs, black backs, red backs, blue backs, and a host of inserts. The back has some cool little silhouettes (yes, I can spell that right ... finally!) of players playing baseball.  They vary in action shots from card to

My FIRST Custom Booklet

Okay everyone - I've been laboring over this for quite some time now.  The learning curve / research / testing / time / materials has been huge, but here it is: Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire Custom Dual Patch Booklet! I started out designing in Photoshop, of course.  I was working on another for someone, and ended up using similar artwork, but changed it to meet the needs of my personal collection.  I found a GREAT picture, of the Bash Brothers doing the bash.  I'm very happy with how the graphics turned out. Then, after I got everything lined up,

My First Custom Rainbow

This week, I have had the house to myself, aside from my dogs.  The wife and kid were in Mexico on a mission trip to help build a house.  They are coming home tonight - while it was fun for a while to live the life of a bachelor (ahhh, McDonalds, how I have missed you!) I am more than ready to have my family back. You know it's bad when you start talking to your dogs so much, they just get up and leave the room. While I was envisioning this plethora of time watching tv, while swimming in

Frank Thomas Rated Rookie? Former Donruss Employee Confirms Existence

SPORTS CARD DAILY ONLINE Monday, March 17th 2014 Written By: Joseph King Frank Thomas Rated Rookie? Former Donruss Employee Confirms Existence.  In what could be the most exciting news to come out of baseball cards from the early 90's, a former Donruss employee has confirmed that there are a very small number of Frank Thomas "rated rookie" baseball cards from the 1990 Donruss "AQUEOUS" set in existence.   Known by collectors as the "junk wax" era, the late 80's and early 90's were dominated by the "big Five" - Topps, Donruss, Fleer, Score and Upper Deck. "The printing presses literally

Tier One Bash Brothers Dual Patch … CUSTOM STYLE!!!

So, I think I've continued to drive my family nuts by obsessing over how to do some patch cards.  How to cut straight, how to glue, how to do this, how to do that, etc. And then the questions - why isn't my printer printing straight?  Didn't you hear me, printer?! I SAID LANDSCAPE MODE!!!  How can anyone possibly cut these jersey windows properly? I'm serious, people.  This is draining so much of my time, it is getting in the way of my television watching.  I haven't been able to watch mah stories all week! Well, at a little past

A VERY good week for my Personal Collection

I have posted a few times this week about some custom cards for my pc (Canseco). I was really bitten by the custom card bug hard. Mainly because Canseco prematurely ended his career, and I wished that the card companies would make more legends cards of him. Since that didn't happen, I decided to step in :) Soooo ... I pulled out the big guns ...   After doing a few mockups, I knew I wanted some of my favorite years of Topps ... in some of my favorite colors, blue and yellow: of 2009 ... and 2011 ...  and