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Monday, March 8, 2010

National Chicle Art From Dave Hobrecht

UPDATE: corrected some errors and added the Crawford original.

Remember way back when Topps showed off a few cards from National Chicle and everyone was like ewwww what's Ichiro doing in a Pilots' uniform and then like a dumbass I had to chime in and went for a joke that flopped instead of saying what I was actually tying to say and then everyone lost they damn minds and some dude from a national baseball card publication e-mailed me a couple dozen times and the artists got all pissed off at me for speaking truth and I ended up becoming the poster child for BOOOO NATIONAL CHICLE when all I was trying to say was chill homies National Chicle is gonna be a sweet-ass looking art set and that Chipper Jones card looks mighty fine but why did they put Babe Ruth's name on it?

Remember that?

No?

Good, maybe that mess has finally blown over then. Anyway, Topps is steadily releasing more and more images of the base cards (remember them? base cards? Beuller?) and my predictions were 100% accurate. It really is an excellent looking card set and the paintings for the cards look fantastic.

In the middle of that brouhaha, artist Dave Hobrecht e-mailed me and offered to give me a sneak peek at the artwork that he contributed to the set once he got the OK from Topps. He got the OK and e-mailed me images of the artwork he created. Dave paints in black & white and Topps added the color so it would match the rest of the set. CORRECTED:  Dave painted them in black & white and  added the color himself. Topps tweaked a few of them (like A-Rod) so it would match the rest of the set. This is the basic art you will see on the cards. Enjoy!


(I'm guessing on a lot of the names here, if I'm incorrect please  let me know)

Shane Victorino
Rich Harden (in Texas uni?)
Orlando Hudson
Miguel Cabrera
Michael Saunders
Marlon Byrd
Kosuke Fukudome
Josh Thole
Jonathon Broxton

(my eyes suck and I'm breaking in new glasses so if it's not a close up, I'm hopeless)

Lou Gehrig?Mel Ott (wrong New York team!)
David Wright
Babe Ruth (for reals!)
Carl Hubbell?Christy Mathewson
Ty Cobb
Alex Fraudriguez
Josh Beckett
Walter Johnson in a Nationals uni maybe?
Hunter Pence
(how do I not recognize the Brave immediately? what has happened to me??)

Carl Crawford
Joey Votto
Asdrubal Cabrera
Russell Martin
Jayson Werth
Johnny Damon
Reid Gorecki (oh, that's why)
Aaron Hill
Victor Martinez

Ok, why is Reid Gorecki in every damn Topps set? He played about three games for the Braves last year and isn't even in the organization anymore. I'll admit I cheated on a lot of these by going off the names listed on Dave's eBay auctions.

What's that I say? EBay auctions? Why yes! Dave got to keep the artwork and is selling much of it on eBay.

Here's Russell

And Jayson

And Crawford

And Pence.

You can look over his entire eBay store if you like, there's lots of cool goodies there.

SO WHAT I'M A TRYIN' TA SAY HERE is that National Chicle is going to rock your ass with ART. All you fellows out there who are bored with the utterly subdued '61 Heritage set might want to give this color explosion a try when it comes out. When does this come out anyway? Please let it come out after payday. Make that two or three paydays. I need to save up for a box. Even if they don't correct the error on that Chipper Jones card. Yay National Chicle!

ALSO: Some of you weren't happy with Crawford's beady little eyes. Um, Crawford's eyes actually do sort of look like that. Here's the black & white original for comparison.


Seriously, do a Google image search for Crawford, dude's got jeepers creepers peepers.

13 comments:

Goose Joak said...

Just awesome stuff. Thanks for sharing. Going to be pumped for this set.

Corky said...

About a 10 days ago I wrote up a review on my blog about a 2009 National Chicle football box that I broke and I specifically pointed out that I felt Dave Hobrecht's coloring seemed to have an over usage of green in his artwork.

Now that I have seen his submisisons to the baseball set I have a different appreciation for his work. These pieces are wonderful, I love the simplicity of the backgrounds, it makes you focus more on the players.

Steve Gierman said...

Awesome, with one exception. What's up with Carl Crawford's eyes? The rest of it looks outstanding!

MJ said...

Gorgeous cards...I know lots of people "balked" when they first saw the cards, but when I saw them, I thought they were just strikingly beautiful. The 2010 Chicle set will be the only baseball set I collect this year. I've said that all along on my blog and these preview pics just proves my point.

night owl said...

This set looks like it will administer a 2010 Heritage beat down!

Yay, color!!!!!!

IkesCards said...

Great post. What card size is the set? "Regulation" or an oddball size to match the set?

Cardsplitter said...

As soon as I saw it I vowed to collect it, probably over A&G. I think it is due in late April.

dayf said...

Pack Addict's scroller has a May 12th release data. I need to start saving up.

Roy said...

They're mostly real nice...but that Crawford...yikes.

Ben G said...

Hobrecht is a great artist. I dont want to slam him. Can't Topps hire artists that work in color? this whole black and white art digitally colored comes off as.... black and white art digitally colored. I dont like it.

Steve Gierman said...

The black & white Crawford looks better than the color.

NMCLax24 said...

Sadly I have to agree that the Black and white originals are better than the color versions. I thought I was the only one that noticed those on ebay, they are just waay too much dough for me.

This set is gonna be awesome! I can't wait!

Anonymous said...

The Cabrera looks a lot like the Votto.