Turning Ahead the Clock

I'll freely admit it.  I love wild and colorful jerseys.  The late 90's brought on some crazy times when it came to jerseys.  Uncommon colors, wild fonts, logos that were straight out of Sunday morning cartoons.  All that under the specter of the impending new millennium.  Y2K aside, it was worth freaking out over.  After all, we can probably safely say this was the first, and hell maybe only, millennium humanity has really been able to realize and go wild over.

So it's no real shocker that I absolutely love the absurd Turn Ahead the Clock jerseys.  You have to give the Mariners credit.  Seattle is a pretty forward thinking place.  But with turn back the clock jerseys becoming quite the rage in the early and mid 90's, it took some creativity to take the clock the other direction.

The idea was to try to envision what baseball would look like in 2027.  And the Kingdome already had the future space-agey vibe going.  The original promo in 1998 between the Royals and Mariners some interesting leaps forward.

The Mariners color scheme would be altered, ditching emerald for a rust color.  Maybe they were going for a post-industrial blade runner vibe.  Maybe they were just ahead of the curve on ditching the teal before the newly minted Grizzlies and Diamondbacks could even ponder the concept.

The Royals took a little more conservative (I'm using that term very, very loosely) approach, keeping yellow and blues, but ditching their normal shades for a more yellow and aqua scheme.  The Mariners added silver batting helmets, while the Royals went with a very appropriate sparkly gold.

It's worth mentioning nowhere in all these futuristic interpretations was anyone trying to add in a pitch clock, count mound visits, or stick a runner on second base in extra innings.  See, back in the 90's people had the good sense to want to see a future filled with joy, reason, and baseball the way it was meant to be played.  Anybody have a time machine to send Rob Manfred back there on a more permanent basis?

In 1999 the promo went league wide as part of a promotion with 21st Century real estate.  Ah, nascent corporate branding.  We really were entering the 21st century.

The promo was decidedly less inspired.  The boring teams like the Yankees and Dodgers opted out.  And many of the teams that opted in thought the 21st century meant just rotating your logo to the side a little and making it reeeeeally big.

Still, the somewhat forgotten uniqueness makes these some fun options.  Some teams, like the Brewers, Twins, and Mets took the extra step of reimagining their logos and/or uniforms.  But many teams just sort of phoned in the concept.

 

High res photos from these games are frustratingly hard to come by.  But as I've played around with customs, I've wanted to make a Turn Ahead the Clock set for quite a while.  I usually don't use my own designs, since I love the nostalgic aspect of taking a classic design that I like and giving it a fresh take with new players or eras.  But in this case I wanted something both futuristic and with enough space that I would be able to feature the Turn Ahead the Clock jerseys prominently.  After all, they are the stars of the show.

I'm pretty happy with how these turned out.  Many of the teams featured silver prominently in their logos, so the colors get a little plain for my taste.  But I can't really complain.

There are still a few other photos that are high enough quality that I should be able to put together a 15-20 card insert set.  More high res photos of the games have popped up in recent years, so I'm somewhat optimistic I'll be able to represent all the teams that participated.  I'm looking forward to getting these cards printed out and into binder pages.  While they were far from the most complex I've made, this set has some of my favorite customs in my collection.

And in case you weren't aware, the Mariners are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the original TBTC night with a game on June 30 where they'll be dusting off the silver and rust.  You can expect many, many customs to follow.

DocumentaryNOW

This hobby is a funny thing.  Sometimes it feels like it's standing still, resting on the laurels of ideas that came about ten, twenty, sixty years earlier.  Other times, it speeds by so fast you think somebody hit the fast forward button.

I had been slowly dropping out of blogging when ToppsNOW first started up, but was still actively collecting.  If you'll remember, then-Pirate Francisco Liriano was the first card in the "set."  There wasn't much time to think over whether I cared for the cards or not - I had a couple hours to order or not order the first Pirate card.  Ultimately I decided to pass.  The idea of instantly capturing the biggest moments in the game seemed great.  The price didn't.

I don't regret the decision.  It's a cool novelty, but not worth the price to me.  A similar price can nab me most autographs of Pirate HoF'ers Ralph Kiner or Bill Mazeroski.  I could add some low numbered parallels.  Heck, most 1/1 press plates sell for less these days.  And with many print runs higher than a Topps Gold, I think we'll see a lot of these Topps Now cards popping up in dollar bins at shows in 3-5 years. 

But maybe the biggest driving force is the fact that I have all the tools to make those Topps Now cards myself right within an arm's length.  Literally.  I've been making custom cards for years, and have gotten pretty comfortable.  I have a printer, and have a printing process that produces a card that's actually a thicker stock than the flimsy Topps cards (though I do skip card backs - just personal preference).  Why shell out $10 to Topps when I can make something more memorable and special to me right at home?

When Topps announced their Living Set money grab concept, some conversations started up in the collecting communities I'm in.  In my Team Collector group, we discussed the idea of making our own Living Set.  And on Twitter (@battlinbucs) the a few different collectors and bloggers who make customs started kicking around the idea of doing a Topps NOW style set for our teams.

The conversation kicked in a few different directions - a highlights set, a 40-man type set with highlights, using the Rookies app, printed versus digital cards, and if it was possible to have a common design shared across teams.

Ultimately the conversation sort of petered out.  And apparently everyone went back to their corner of the internet and went to work.

Over the next few days the conversation picked up again.  It turned out that a number of collectors, including myself, had run with the idea.  But we all went in completely different directions.  Be sure to check out Summer of '74 and Matt's (@mjpmke) late 70's inspired set.  Meanwhile Nick (njwv.wordpress.com/@vossbrink ) went for a '93 Upper Deck design.

And me? 

 This is what I came up with.  I'm very excited to show off my 2018 DocumentaryNOW cards, based off of the 1960 World Series Highlights subset in '61 Topps.

It made sense to me.  First, the '60 World Series is such an iconic moment for Pirates fans, and the highlights cards are some of my favorite from that era.  Second, I don't print card backs on my customs.  So I was looking for a design that would feature the critical info I wanted - game, score, and memorable moment - without being too busy. 

I found it really cool that each of us picked three very different designs (or in my case, a modified design) from completely different eras of collecting.  Hopefully a couple other custom card makers get on board - it would be a lot of fun to see as many teams as possible represented this season.

I loved the 2008 Documentary set, and initially was trying to build a design that played off that set.  Documentary was the most excited I've been about a card set in ages.  I loved the idea of commemorating each game of a season.

But UD's effort fell well short.  They recycled the same 8 or 10 players and six players through every card in the set.  And the "highlight" sounded a lot more like a random piece of info picked from a box score.  When you have thousands of cards to design, it's not a shocker.  But I wanted to capture everything I hoped Documentary would be in a set - photos from each unique game and flavor text that included something memorable. 

I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll be able to keep this up for a full season.  I'll be posting the set daily (or close to it) on Twitter with the hashtag #DocumentaryNOW and hopefully some occasional updates on the blog.  I hope you'll check out the awesome work myself and other collectors are putting together throughout the season.

Oh, and remember how I said the idea of doing a 40-man style set was kicked around as well?  Check back in the next few days.  I may be working on something on that front as well that's a little less retro-inspired.

Catching Up on Customs

I guess I'm an "all or nothing" kind of guy.  During my extended hobby break in 2017, I didn't just stop buying cards.  I stopped making them too.  Creating customs has been one of my favorite hobby-related projects in recent years.  They've been great for autographs, and I've slowly been working on creating "complete" team sets, filling in the gaps of players that Topps overlooked in the flagship and update sets for a given year.  But even my arts and crafts projects fell by the wayside during my cardboard break.

 But there were a few cards I had either completed before my blogging tailed off or ones that I've recently put together that are fun enough to show off.  The card to the right is based off of the team-issue 1989 Very Fine Juice Pirates set.  Pinstripes, Pirates wordmark...there's so much to love.  I was so excited about the set that I was about to buy one of the originals for myself off ebay, but ended up forgetting to bid before the auction ended.  Good thing I did, because a couple weeks ago I discovered I already owned two complete uncut sheets of the set.  Guess I really do have too many cards...

Another local oddball card I put together was the Pirates East Hills Shopping Center set.  Built in 1960, it was a major outdoor mall in the area until indoor malls came into fashion in the 70's.  The 1966 set has oversized dimensions, but i modified the design slightly to match the standard 2.5X3.5 card size.

 Both the Luebke and Asche (apparently there's a theme of guys who have e's at the end of their last name) are part of a batch of customs I made for one of my collecting pals who lives in Arizona.  She gets a ton of autographs during Spring Training, and I'm always happy to put together customs for some of the lesser known guys who don't have any/many cards released.

 The 2003 Topps design is one of my favorites, and one of the first customs I tried to create.  I wasn't 100% happy with the results though.  The fine lines between the photo and the name box are a real pain to get just right.  So much so that Topps doesn't even bother with it!  I was looking at a Jose Rijo Archives auto from last year that used the 2003 design, and noticed that they had skimped out on the fine white line that runs between the red and yellow stripes.  But I'm neurotic enough that I kept fiddling until I got it right.

And finally, a little something different.  A wrestling custom.  Since I've been gone, I have started watching (re-watching?) early-mid 90's pro wrestling from my childhood.  My wife things I'm absolutely nuts.  But I decided to try my hand at a couple wrestling card designs from the era.  The design is from WCW's 1991 card set made by Impel.  It was actually the first box of cards I ever opened - my mom bought me a box sometime in the early 90's at local discount store World of Values.  The design just screams early 90's, and was pretty fun to recreate.

The original card set had a pretty limited checklist - just the top of the card guys, who all had 4 or 5 different cards in the set.

I'm hoping 2018 will involve more customs, and hopefully picking up on some projects that I never got to a few years back.

Custom Ink

There are a lot of nice things about moving (aside from the actual moving...that was terrible).  Going from driving an hour each way to being 10 minutes from the office is nice.  Not tossing a rent check into a financial black hole every month is great too.  But the best part?  Being able to stretch out a bit.  Our is a cape cod with about 1,400 sq. ft.  It's not huge, but after living in apartments or dorms since starting college, the idea of not having to store all your extra stuff in the same spot where you're also trying to live is a real nice change of pace.  And from a collecting standpoint, it's nice to be able to actually have my entire collection (well, mostly.  I still need to unload a few more boxes from my parents' house) in one place.

It had gotten to the point where new cards that came in were just getting tossed into boxes to be dealt with later.  There was no space to sort through them in our apartment.  Well, later has finally come.  There are probably 6 months + worth of mail that had just been added into boxes.  Cards that, for the most part, I had taken a quick glance at and then into the box they went.

In with that group were come customs that my collecting pal got signed for me during Spring Training this year.  She lives right near the White Sox camp, and I was able to whip up customs for lesser known players who didn't have many cards.  And she was gracious enough to get a few signed for me as well.

These two are by far my favorite.  It's almost impossible to find a photo of the LaRoche brothers together from their time in Pittsburgh.  This shot was the best I could do, even though I'd have liked to have both guys facing forward.  Andy signed this last year when he was in Sox camp as a non-roster invitee, and Adam apparently finished it up before he left the team this spring.

And the Zach Duke card is one of my new favorites, custom or otherwise.  Though they only wore them for 2 seasons and across a couple dozen games, it's amazing that no photo of the Pirates "McDonald's" vest made it onto cardboard.  Heck, even finding photo evidence that the jersey existed is tough.

A Custom Sampler

I had a blog comment the other day suggesting I show off some of my other customs.  Seems like a pretty simple idea, so why didn't I think of it sooner.  I've tried to capture some of my different custom projects with the post labels, but I've undoubtedly missed some over the last two years.  And after all, why scroll through all those posts when you could see everything on one page?

So you can now check out some of my past Franken-cards in the Custom Card Gallery.  It's not comprehensive, but it's a pretty good sampling of some of my favorites and most of the various designs I've recreated.  It's been a blast creating these cards, and has easily become one of my favorite aspects of card "collecting," even if only in the loosest of definitions.

Oh, This Thing

Everybody handles stress differently.  Some rise to the occasion.  Others wilt under the pressure.  Me?  I'm a procrastinator.  And while I consider myself pretty good at coming through in the clutch, when there are also less urgent things doing on I tend to...well, ignore them.

And blogging sort of fell into that category for the last week.  Things have been crazy around here lately.  While I absolutely love my job, one of the drawbacks to working in the education field is that schools don't exactly work on a flexible calendar.

If it's not in the budget in February, you're persona non grata come September.  So you basically get to wait another full year before you try again.  So the last couple weeks were a whirlwind of driving around, meeting with school districts and trying to hammer out who was interested in working with us for next school year.  Add in the fact that PA has yet to pass the 2015 state budget (yes, you read that right), and that school districts may be shutting down since they can't make payroll and it's a heck of an adventure.

 Throw some house hunting into the mix in the free hours that remain, and yeah...I've pretty much started ignoring everything else.

 So when I had some free time this weekend while Kate was at a wedding shower, I made the most of it.  And by that, I mean I camped out in front of the computer and made baseball cards.

 Customs have increasingly become a larger part of my collecting identify.  But they've served another purpose lately.  I've tried to completely cut out any unnecessary (aka fun) purchases for the next few months until we find a house we love.  We're looking for something that has some older charm.  But that also means older...everything.  So I'm expecting that the extra funds will be needed for the less necessary but very desired renovations on this future house.  And even though I'm a low end collector, $3, $5, and $10 here and there adds up pretty easily.

 But I can't shake the collecting bug.  So I've resorted to making my own cards...you know, even more than I already did.  And while the photo paper and ink isn't free either, it's been a heck of a lot more cost effective.

 So I sat down and turned out a whopping 6 new designs today - 1964, 1988, 1992, 2006, 2007, 2008 Topps.  As frustrating as matching fonts and trying to get the look of foil just right can be, it's a bit of a stress reliever for me.

I'll be plugging away at more of my Topps Update Update sets and my quest to make my own Jack Wilson Archives set.  But in the mean time, I do have some actual baseball cards that have crept into my mailbox thanks to some great collecting friends.  Now I just need to clear my mad scientist card creating supplies off of the printer so I can actually scan them.

Weekend Customs

I had been in a bit of a lull when it came to putting together new custom designs.  Not that I don't already have plenty as it is.  But it's always a bit of fun for me to deconstruct some of my favorite designs from years past.  And these certainly presented a fun and exciting challenge.

I have fond memories of busting a few packs of 1999 Donruss football with my dad chasing Ricky Williams rookies.  I don't think I landed anything of note out of the 3 or 4 packs.  But I do recall another ripper in the shop pulling a Terry Bradshaw Gridiron Kings card, which seemed like a huuuuuuuuge pull at the time.

I snagged a copy of the card for myself a couple years ago on COMC.  I think I paid less than $1.

This design was fun to play around with, though it took a little work to get the layering down just right.

 And of course nothing beats a classic.  The '87 Topps design is still hands down one of my favorite designs of all time.  And I have one more step towards having a Jack Wilson card in every Topps design.  Who needs Archives?  Better yet, I managed to find a picture of Jack wearing the famed McDonalds vests that the club would rather you forget about.  Interestingly, there are no cards featuring the Bucs wearing these jerseys despite wearing them for two seasons.

And another headache of lines galore, the Woner Years inserts were among my favorite as a kid.  I may play around with some more trippy color combinations.  The "watermelon" look of the base inserts never really did it for me.

Topps Update Update: An Update

Things have been hectic around here, good, bad, and otherwise.  Last week was a pretty rough week, and I needed to just kick back and do something mindless over the weekend.  

And what fits the bill better than putting together some custom cards?

I started working on my Topps Update Updated sets a few months back, filling in the gaps that Topps inevitably misses every year.  I've been skipping around, taking on years here and there as I had the templates built.  But I finally decided to take a crack at some of the 2010's sets.  These have actually been some of the easiest to do, simply because there are so many more high quality digital files available for some of the more obscure players than someone who appeared in 3 games in say 1992.

I was very surprised how many players I needed to create cards for.  But then again the Bucs cycled through quite a few players in those seasons.

If you'll allow me a brief humble brag, the above card is my favorite from the 30+ card batch, since I actually own the game used jersey that Daniel McCutchen is wearing in that photo.  Game matched?  Check.  Though I do wish it were the jersey for that other McCutchen guy...

 With more photos available, I was able to get a little more creative in finding a cool photo for some of the cards.

 When you end up with the same design for the 40-50 players that appear on a major league roster each year, there are only so many different positions you can find your average pitcher or batter in.  So it's always nice to mix it up a little bit with some unique unis or celebration shots.

I still need to get around to printing out all these cards, but that might be a project for this weekend.

With Spring Training around the bend, I'm going to be getting my custom card production ramped up.  Assuming house hunting, work, and all that other jazz doesn't get in the way too much.

Dr. Frankenstein

Sometimes my custom projects feel a little bit like being a mad scientist.  If you saw my custom "workshop" you might agree.

But my ventures into custom cards has opened up a whole new world of collecting possibilities.  To be blunt, I haven't been crazy about many of the autograph designs of recent years.  And with the ways companies recycle the same players in the autograph checklists for products, there are so many players that never have an autograph as a Pirate.

Enter a razor blade, computer, some paper and glue.

I took advantage of the Black Friday sales on COMC to snag some cheap autograph cards with the intention of removing the sticker and repurposing them into a card that I found more appealing.

So consider this the before post.  I'm hoping the "after" photos will be even better.

Like a Gaylord Perry auto for $4.  While I feel a little bad about deconstructing the autographed card of a HoF'er, I'd at least like to have a card in my collection where he's playing the right sport.

 But hey, at least Gaylord has a photo.  The 2012 SP set has some great autograph names.  And some hideous cards.  UD would have been better sticking these in a vault until they get their license back sometime in 2142.

 Byrd was a fan favorite of mine during his short stint in Pittsburgh.  Now I just need an autographed card for the occasion/

 Corey Hart?  Not so much.  But still...Pirate!

 I don't have a good justification for this one, aside from it having two players who have seen major league time for only $1.  Who am I kidding?  That's just cause enough.

 Chris Volstad is what happens when your team doesn't have enough pitching depth at AAA.  A Chris Volstad auto is what happens when you feel compelled to capture that moment on cardboard.

 Say what you will about Panini, but I'll say this:

 They capture a hell of a lot more autographed subjects than Topps.  And better yet, the stickers are pretty easy to remove and repurpose.

Like I said - not the most exciting post of the year.  But I have a nice mix of some former stars and ex-Bucs that I'm looking forward to turning into autographed cards.  The toughest part is going to be deciding how I want these new cards to look.

The First Customs of 2016

 You can never go wrong with a classic like 89 UD, though I don't know that I'll use this design all that often.

This one is going to be part of a series for all the 2006 All-Stars.  I may adapt it for the 1994 All-Star game as well, though I doubt I'll be able to find many photos from the game itself for that one.  The design still feels a little flat to me on this one.  I tweaked it a few different times, and this was what I like the best, but I'm all ears to suggestions.