Sketch Card #14 - 1954 Jumbo

While I feel bad about being two weeks behind on my self-imposed Card Show post schedule, I am more than two months behind in posting my sketch cards. So tonight I'll procrastinate on one by catching up on another. I could have posted one of two cards tonight, because I've been trying to post these things in chronological order but I forgot to note the date I did one of them. I went with this one just because. Here's a jumbo sized pastel sketch of a 1954 Topps Al Kaline rookie card.

This one went to Sewing Machine Guy as part of a blockbuster trade we pulled off. And this one was big. Bigger than Renteria for Jurrjens even. Bigger than the card itself, which is 8 inches by 6 inches, a tad larger than the real '54 Kaline. This is to date the biggest thing I've created to send off to another collector although I'm in the middle of a project that will beat it. So how did this sucker get so big? Like this:

Most of the time when I'm doing a sketch card for someone I'll to a practice sketch first to figure out what the heck I'm doing before I try to do it for reals. So I pulled out the sketch book, started drawing and really liked what I did on the first go. It wasn't exactly perfect. Al is leaning to his right a tad and the Tiger logo (somehow I've managed to draw that thing twice so far) is a little derped. But it looked pretty darn good and was big enough for me to do a little experimenting with my soft pastels. So, even though I had already pulled out my ruler and made a page full of '50s Topps sized blanks to draw the final product upon, I ripped out the page instead and started scratching away with the pastels.

Did I mention pastels are messy as hell? Colored dust EVERYWHERE. My blue jeans became purple from all the red dust from that background. I wasn't finished though, there's more work to be done.

Even though it was now practically a painting, I still wanted to create a sketch card, so the whole shebang got glued to the card stock I was going to use for the standard sized card. While letting it dry it got slightly smudged sooooo:

I touched up the details a bit, spritzed it with some fixer and pulled out the X-Acto knife and did a little trimming. Once completely dry, I put it in an oversized top loader. This way it would be protected and hopefully thwart some of the curling that was going on. Soon after I tackled this, I started messing with acrylics, so I haven't done a whole lot more with pastels, although I have one project in mind.

All righty then. There's the sketch portion of the blockbuster trade. What about the cards? SMG requested some Tigers from the '50s in his original offer so I pulled these out of my binders and sent them his way.

In order: 1950 Bowman Aaron Robinson, 1951  Bowman  Bob Cain, 1952  Bowman  Bob Swift, 1955 Bowman Bill Tuttle, 1956 Topps Duke Maas, 1955 Bowman Dick Stanfel, 1954 Bowman Fred Hatfield, 1954 Topps Ray Boone.

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE

1955 Topps Bob Miller, 1958 Topps Tigers Team, 1952 Topps Marlin Stewart and 1957 Topps Billy Hoeft. I scanned all the backs of the cards to record the card numbers so I could add them back to my want lists.

You read that right, I pulled these out of my sets to send to SMG for the stuff he had to offer. Oh yeah, I also sent along cash in the deal. Good Grief! Did I get Edgar Renteria for all this? Rest assured, I got Jurrjens. So what did I end up with in exchange for all this stuff? You'll find out later this weekend...

Thirteen 1978 Topps Cards

Twelve good, one bad.

Warren is staring into your SOUL.

Cobra and Carew on one card is dangerous levels of Coolness and Bad-assery.

Dave Chalk's nickname is the Honey Badger because he just don't care.

In my mind, Luis Tiant is in the Hall of Fame. If not for pitching, than for his mustache. I am unanimous in this.

Bob Forsch is either in a hurricane or a cow came up and licked him right in the side of his face.

This one here threw me. The 'As Player' photo has a picture of him playing for Boston. The Boston Braves. Checking the stats on the back, he also played for the Atlanta Crackers. Looks like I have to open up a space in my Braves team set binder now. Sigh.

The only good checklist is a marked checklist. This lucky stiff pulled the Winfield!

This could have been the exact Vic Davalillo card that guy marked off on that checklist. You never know...

I never understood why the Cubs always did the floaty head team pictures. Was the owner back then worried that if he gathered them all in one spot long enough to take the photo, their power of suck would reach critical mass and cause a black hole?*

This is simultaneously one of the worst and best photos ever on a baseball card.

I always liked Jack Clark for some reason. I think I have a soft spot for epic eyebrows.

I like Lou a whole lot better now that he's retired. I think it's because I was mad at all the attention he got every time he was ejected from a ballgame. We all know who the true king of ejections is, now don't we?

Boooooo! BOOOOOOOO!!! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

And here's that pony picture I drew in the video in case you wanted a better look.

Liston never knew what hit him.

*As a Braves fan I really should not be making fun of ANY team from the late '70s. Dear Christ, did we stink back then.

I screwed up my mailday video so I drew you a pony

Pretty much exactly what it says on the tin.



Here's a selection of Cubs Tom inflicted upon me in the package.

I am a bad blogger

I have absolutely no interesting content ready to post right now and I really don't want squirrel balls as my top post anymore so here is a picture of vicious bloodthirsty attack ponies guarding my Jason Heyward autographed baseball.

(If I was a good blogger I'd have the post about how I got the ball in the first place done)

2012 Topps is Live

And ain't no one has a shortprint as good as mine!

(important safety tip - pastels don't work worth a darn on decoy cards)

Joy of a Completed Page - Ludicrous Edition

I haven't done one of these in a while and I'm hopelessly behind on my self-imposed posting schedule, so let's do this. Submitted for your approval: A complete page of 1986-1987 Fleer Basketball.

HEY YOU SLEAZE. THAT'S NOT A COMPLETE PAGE.

Ooooooooooh yes it is.

holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-

Not keeping that particular card in a 9 pocket sheet for obvious reasons. Here's the back for gits and shiggles.

This is in celebration of making a trade for my first additions to this set in nearly 20 years. I got so giddy I made a wantlist.


34 Sleepy Floyd
35 Lloyd Free
36 George Gervin
37 Artis Gilmore
92 Alvin Robertson
93 Cliff Robinson
94 Tree Rollins
95 Dan Roundfield
96 Jeff Ruland
98 Dan Schayes
99 Byron Scott
100 Purvis Short
101 Jerry Sichting
102 Jack Sikma
103 Derek Smith

Sticker #2 Larry Bird

Ya, I need 15 cards to complete the '86-87 Fleer set and the biggest name is George Gervin. I've got over 90 doubles from this set so if there is anyone out there who happens to have any of these I'll be happy to trade you at least two-for-one for any of these suckers. I got all the ones I have from about half a box at 35 cents a pack from McCrory's at Northlake mall in 1987. While I didn't score all the rookies, I traded my surplus of Barkleys and Ewings to knock out the biggies that I didn't have. I think it's about time to put this sucka to bed. If you have no '87s to trade, I'd also appreciate a link to someplace online I could pick 'em up cheap.

Aww what the heck, let's put up the '87-88 Wantlist too while I'm at it.

this is as close to a complete page as I've got from this set

1 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
5 John Bagley
6 Thurl Bailey
9 Charles Barkley
10 Benoit Benjamin
11 Larry Bird
14 Tony Brown
16 Joe Barry Carroll
17 Bill Cartwright
18 Terry Catledge
20 Maurice Cheeks
23 Terry Cummings
25 Brad Daugherty
27 Johnny Dawkins
30 Clyde Drexler
31 Joe Dumars
35 Julius Erving
36 Mike Evans
37 Patrick Ewing
38 Vern Fleming
39 Sleepy Floyd
40 Artis Gilmore
42 A.C.Green
49 Ron Harper
51 Roy Hinson
52 Craig Hodges
56 Magic Johnson
58 Vinnie Johnson
59 Michael Jordan
60 Jerome Kersey
66 John Lucas
67 Jeff Malone
68 Karl Malone
72 Rodney McCray
73 Xavier McDaniel
74 Kevin McHale
75 Nate McMillan
76 Sidney Moncrief
77 Chris Mullin
79 Charles Oakley
80 Hakeem Olajuwon
81 Robert Parish
83 John Paxson
84 Sam Perkins
85 Chuck Person
87 Ricky Pierce
89 Terry Porter
91 Robert Reid
92 Doc Rivers
96 Mike Sanders
97 Detlef Schrempf
103 Steve Stipanovich
106 Isiah Thomas
111 Wayman Tisdale
118 Dominique Wilkins
119 Gerald Wilkins
122 John Williams
123 Hot Rod Williams
130 James Worthy
132 Checklist 1-132

Got a few more stars to pick up in this one... I love commons too though.

Surprise!

Tim Hudson pranks the Braves' next manager.

Half a set of Game cards

This week in posting has gone disastrously, so I'm going to write it off and finish up with a post I should have had up last year. At least I'll have caught up a little! I don't remember exactly what I traded to The Cardboard Don for these things. I'm pretty sure a relic was in there somewhere. I do remember the sketch card though, but I'm behind on posting that one too...

Ah well. one thing at a time. Here's half a set of 1970-71 Topps Baseball Scratch Off Game cards.

UGGGGH. Tim McCarver would have to be the first one out of the package.  These cards were inserts inside packs of 1970 and 1971 Topps. There were 24 cards, one "Team Captain" per team. I have no idea which team gets the privilege of boasting Tim as their team captain because he's such a team player he didn't bother to wear a cap on this card. I suppose I could look it up, but with Google's new policy on combining history among all Google accounts, I'm afraid to have "Tim McCarver" in my search history. My demographics are fairly well calibrated at Male, 25-34 (YESSSSSS) Interests: Sports Memorabilia, Cartoons, Art & Design, Stupid My Little Pony crap on YouTube (the stupider the better!), Armchair SOPA Activism and Showtunes. I can't risk messing that up and getting targeted ads for Tim's latest book.

MUCH BETTER. Mack Jones, team captain of the Expos. I miss the Expos. They didn't have as much money as the Nationals do.

Sal Bando, captain of the A's. People get all caught up in Reggie and forget Sal was a helluva player.

Here's two Tony Perez cards, but they are not doubles. How can this be? While Topps completely recycled this insert in 1971 right down to the players they put on the cards, they did make one change to the set:

The centers for 1970 inserts had a white background.

The centers for 1970 inserts had a red background. I got one of each for Tony. Not that I'm going to try to collect all 48 varieties of this set, hell no. I'm not even picky if the suckers have backs to them, which some of them do not.

Like this Boog Powell card here. The back half is completely ripped off. I ain't even mad. If you've seen one back to these things you've seen 'em all. Like this one here:

The Reds stole one from the A's in the 8th inning according to the back of this '71 Tony Perez card. Every single card has this exact back (minus the added scoring of course) so who cares if you only have half the card. This isn't exactly a condition sensitive set. A game card that came out of a fresh 1970 pack opened in a clean room would still only grade a PSA 4, tops. These things were never mint, ever.

Here's an awesome '70  Yastrzemski with bonus Killebrew!

Well speak of the devil... Here's full Harmon, with a little schmutz on the front. I can't tell exactly what that is. Might be a printing flaw or the card might have gotten run over by a bicycle that just rolled through hot tar. It's hard to tell.

Mel Stottlemyre was team captain of the Yankees? Wow, did their fortunes fall in the early '70s.

Nate Colbert joined Boog as a member of the 50% off club. Nate's missing back is a little more obvious on this scan.

Future Brave Jimmy Wynn is the captain of the 'stros. WHO BETTER REMAIN THE 'STROS. I can handle the Houston Astros in the American League, but not the Houston Oilers or the Houston Gamblers or the Houston Swamp Rats or whatever polls well in focus group testing. The only DECENT name they could possible change to is the Houston Colt '45s which would be promptly kiboshed because omg gun violence. Dammit Bud! Quit screwing up the game!

Dick Bosman got to be captain of the Senators as well as a coaster for an 8 oz. coke bottle.

 Last but not least is Lou Piniella, who is also not wearing a cap, but as anyone who has read Ball Four a couple dozen times knows, he was dumped from the Seattle Pilots and went on to win Rookie of the Year for the Royals. Lou is also one of the cards I got with pristine innards:

Damn, that's purdy. Maybe I should reconsider my position on Tiptons just for this set. Thanks be to the Don for this trade, I hope the return was deeemed acceptable. I'd hate to wake up to find a pony head in my bed.