Filling the Ted Williams gap in 1960 Topps

A couple of days ago I presented a truly ugly Ted Williams card from the 1959 Fleer set.

Now I want to show you my custom/fantasy card of Ted Williams done in the style of 1960 Topps. Because of his exclusive Fleer contract, Williams did not appear in Topps sets of 1959-61.

While paging through the latest auction catalog from Legendary two weeks ago, I saw a lot offering vintage Ted Williams photos. Looking at them, I knew they had the makings for a 1960 Topps-style card. There was a picture of a smiling Williams standing at the batting cage and a picture showing his classic swing.

I had the feeling I'd seen the batting cage portrait somewhere before, and sure enough when I googled "1960 Topps Ted Williams" images, up popped a picture of a custom card by Keith Conforti.

Massachusetts collector and card artist Conforti has done some masterful work in custom baseball "cards that never were." His 1960 Topps Ted Williams is similar to mine, but he went there first. I don't believe Keith does card backs, however.

Here's a link to a gallery of his cards:
 https://picasaweb.google.com/TwistCreative/CardsThatNeverWereDesigns

The back of my '60 Williams was a challenge. For many of its originals, Topps presented bullet-point "Season's Highlights" for the player. 

Frankly, in 1959 Williams didn't have many season highlights. It was his worst year ever, batting only .254. Still, with the aid of baseball-reference.com's Game Logs for the year, I was able to fill the required space.

While you'll notice that Conforti has created a number of the 1959-60 Topps subset cards with Williams, I think this is likely to be my only Ted Williams card.