Ginter Gap Cards #4

The fourth installment of Ginter Gap cards - custom A&G cards with subjects that Topps didn't include - uses the 2024 design.  

It's unfortunate that this tribute comes at the time of Bob Uecker's passing.  I won't go into his career and biography, since almost everyone that knows baseball knows who he is.  Just check out some of his appearances on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson via YouTube if you want a good laugh.

I took a bit of a liberty and moved the Topps name from between the subject name and the A&G wordmark.  It seemed so crammed in there.  

This picture is somewhat more square, so there's a lot of headroom (and background to fill in when I removed the player that was in the original template image.)

You can see that Kirby is shown from halfway to his beltline, while Uecker's image stops just below the collar.  It didn't take me nearly as long as it typically does to create the framework and then integrate the image in it.  

I actually started with the name.  I moved the "U" on top of the "P" and then copied the "E" into the space that was created.  That gave me "UECKE", so I just had to find an "R".  It came from Gunnar Henderson.  That "R" was out in the middle of a bright background of the same color, so it pasted right in.

Then all that was left was to adjust and fill in the background around him.  And paste over the side "rails" where the image covered them, or extend the blue areas of his jacket to meet the side edges.  And voilà!

Gavin Rocks The Custom Card Art

After a flourish of show loot posts, I have maintained my pattern of silence for almost a month between posts.  Between sorting the Storage Hoard, adding to my TCDB trade lists, and now setting about 100 new cards on COMC for sale, all my card time is used up in the evenings lately.

There have also been a steady (though not as heavy) stream of trade mail, including a package from Gavin of Baseball Card Breakdown.  He made me several customs in response to some loot I snagged for him at a couple of the shows.  Just recently, he posted many similar customs on his own blog just this past week.  

He did send me a few actual cards...

Three Topps All Time Fan Favorites...

And this Leaf Bo Jackson, which killed my set.  More on him in a moment...

So here are the customs I got, though now with somewhat less mystery.  And the scans don't do these justice visually....

Sparkly Ozzy that he showed too.

 

Two of Ozzy's guitarist and Black Label Society front man Zakk Wylde

Bulletboys with the gold swirl background that is even cooler in person.

Customized on the backs as well.

 

And back to Bo - several takes on the '88 Topps design.  You almost need a laser to cut out around the letters, I suppose.

 

These are cool too...not sure which one I like best.

Hybrid '87D/'90T?  I like it!

And finally, what I think is the cleanest custom, this '90 Fleer Bo football card - front & back.

Thanks Gavin, these are definitely a unique addition to my rock and player collections!

Ginter Gap Cards #3: Had To Do It

I was hoping to whip this up in a couple hours tonight just so I could break up the last two A&G box posts.  But image editing with a program from 1992 just takes a lot of time.  Plus I was starting from scratch since this subject has to be in the 2023 Ginter design instead of last year's, which I already had the templates made up for.

From what I've (briefly) read, the most popular couple nickname for Travis Kelce & Taylor Swift is "Traylor".  But that was just one article.  I kinda like mine - pronounced "tray kay and tay tay".  

Now I'm a metal head from the 80's so I'll never consider myself a Swiftie at any point.  I don't know a lot of her songs, but she's geniunely and extremely adorable.  Kelce seems like a bit of a frat boy, but he's goofy too, so I wish them well.  There are hardly any good shots of the two of them together yet, so I had to fake it with these two images.  Does it look legit?

This 2023 design is tough to piece together.  I took Max Scherzer's card (since he had the nice light colors) and eliminated his picture.  Then I extended the upper background all the way across to make it easy to paste on top of it.  But then I realized I had to separate the bottom half and make that so it would paste on top of the photo.  Took some liberties with the edges, so they differ from the original.  The name section is a bit narrow, but I'm rolling with it.

One of these days I'll learn PhotoShop for real and be able to manipulate layers much better and also make the photos look more like drawings so they blend better.

Ginter Gap Cards #2

The half dozen people that responded favorably to my custom A&G cards of Malika Andrews inspired me to create some more.  I'll call them Ginter Gap cards, since they are subjects that Ginter didn't include.

This time, it's the new owner of the Washington Commanders.  He's already brought good fortune on the franchise - they're 2 and 0 on the season so far.  There are also reports that a new stadium is in the works.  Not to mention that he replaced the dark cloud over the team in general.

Guess I could have waited a few days for the new 2023 A&G to come out, but so far I like this base design a whole lot better.

Ginter Gap Cards #1

The half dozen people that responded favorably to my custom A&G cards of Malika Andrews inspired me to create some more.  I'll call them Ginter Gap cards, since they are subjects that Ginter didn't include.

Today's subject is a guy that's on a lot of people's minds.  

So great to hear he's awake, and talking without the breathing tube and looks to be heading toward a full recovery.  A remarkable story.

Another Nice Ms. Andrews

Allen & Ginter typically features a variety of celebrities, sportscasters, musicians, athletes from other sports, and even objects to go along with the current and retired baseball players.  And several of their subjects are usually women, and deservedly so.  

Especially appreciated are the really attractive ones.  I usually designate a "Babe Of The Set" each year and sometimes will go after the minis and parallels.  Started that with Erin Andrews and Mrs. Verlander, Kate Upton.  They are so popular that I've not found too many and have only done a few others, including Paige Spiranac, who has some cards in other sets like Upper Deck Goodwin Champions that are even better shots than the usually conservative A&G.

This year's candidate is Malika Andrews.  She's the former sideline reporter for the NBA on ESPN who now hosts the NBA flagship show on the channel.  Her card is #258 in this year's set.

Not bad, but again, the conservative image.  She's got such a bright smile that this shot doesn't quite bring out with the impact it should. 

So I made some custom alternatives.

Now, my image editing program has been around as long as the WNBA, so I don't have the tools to match the painting-like images on Allen & Ginter cards, but I tried to mimic the faded backgrounds as well as I could. 

That's better, but the background was so bright that it looks like she's in a lava lamp.

This one's cute, and is really close to the actual card image.  Much better smile though.

I like this one the best.  She doesn't wear her hair down too often any more (at least in the few times I've caught the NBA show, which is almost never.)  But this one captures her the best IMO. 

Which one do you like?

Online Addition to 2021 Topps Series 1

Well, I guess seven insert sets of the same repetitive reprints or rehashes of old designs just wasn't enough.  Now Topps has come out with more recycling as online exclusives.  Just saw this:

Not really a reprint, but a stamped buyback of a 1984 insert.  Commemorating nothing in particular, it comes with a special 70th anniversary price.  

Is it special shiny technology?  No.

Autograph or game-used relic?  Nope.

Exclusive serial numbered version?  Sorry.

It's just a buyback like the ones in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017.  A repeat of something Topps has done several times before, even though they only celebrate anniversaries every ten years or so.  (Well unless you count the 35th anniversary tributes in the last few flagship sets, which are different than Archives, which uses old designs a few at a time, which in turn is different than Heritage which uses the next old design each year.)

Lead, Follow, Or Drop The Exclusive Contract

 Maybe I'm just old school, but this is a League Leader card:

In the next decade, they were similar...

And in the 80's...

Not sure what happened in the 90's.  They kinda went away.  Then in 2000, they did this:

OK, not bad.  Change it up a little.  Somewhere they quit featuring pitching victories.  But then we got back to normal.

And swung around to horizontal again...

Now they called 'em "Wins".  Continued on til 2016...

Then this happened.

 

The card on the right is not a League Leader card.  It's just like the one on the left with an extra title.

 

Same thing in 2018.  Single player base card with a small text addition.  (The white border is just bad cropping on my part.)

 

OK, now you're not even using different shots.  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Over.

Skip forward to this year.  Same deal.  

The windup, quick tilt of the camera, the pitch...and an even SMALLER "League Leader" tag.

C'mon Topps.  Go back to something like this.  I put this together in a couple hours.

Oh yeah, and - extra bonus - you can read the text from more than a foot away!

Famous Cards Updated for 2020

 

 

 

 

 

2008 Heritage custom

I'm starting a new mini-series that will compare the original 1959 Topps set to it's Heritage counterpart in 2008.  I was going to tackle the 1971/2020 pairings, and while I have the whole set of '71 Topps, I'm not quite done with Heritage.  So I figured I do have both of the '08 combination, so let's see how they match up.

Well, card number 1 was Strike 1 right away.  I guess Topps didn't want to shell out cash to use the images of MLB executives (or managers for that matter - there aren't any) in Heritage, so card #1 is Vlad Guerrero.  No offense to Vladdy, but here's what Heritage #1 should have looked like:

Remember, this is 12 years ago, so Manfred wasn't the Commish yet.  It was an easy transformation from the original Commish card.  Found a font that pretty much matched, and then just had to remove the photo, extend the background and paste in the new picture.

Stay tuned for the Heritage pairups/mismatches posts!