Updated checklist of my non-sports custom cards

Until now, there has been no place where all of my custom cards could be found in checklist form.  It is my intention to update this posting as new cards are created. Similar checklists for my baseball and football custom cards will also be posted.

Custom card availability. Unless noted, all of my custom cards are available to collectors for $12.50 each, postpaid for one or two cards; $9.95 each for three or more (mix/match). To order, email me at scbcguy@yahoo.com for directions on paying via check/money order, or to my PayPal account.

Civil War News
89   Grays Wiped Out
90   Victory Parade
91   Death at 1,000 Yard
(NOTE: My Civil War News cards are
note available for sale.)

Flags of the World
81   Islamic State
82   Iran
83   Scotland
84   Wales
85   England
86   Northern Ireland
87   Alaska
88   Hawaii
89   Vatican

Hit Stars
89   Johnny Cash

Rails & Sails
201   Chicago & Northwestern Diesel
202   Queen Anne's Revenge
203   U.S.S. Monitor
204   C.S.S. Virginia
205   Orange Blossom Special
206   City of New Orleans
207   City of Miami
208   Bamboo Grove Lounge Car
209   Hiawatha Skytop Lounge Car
210   R.M.S. Titanic (sailing right)
210   R.M.S. Titanic (sailing left)
210   R.M.S. Titanic (night)
211   Alton Railroad Abraham Lincoln
212   Gulf Coast Rebel (GMO RR)
213   U.S.S.Indianapolis

Spins and Needles
81   The Quarreymen
82   Marty Robbins
83   Roy Orbison

TV Westerns
72   Maverick -- James Garner
74   Maverick -- Gentleman Gambler
75   Maverick -- Well-Dressed Strangers
77   Rawhide -- Clint Eastwood
78   Rawhide -- Strategy Session
83   Rifleman -- Lucas' Rifle
86   Wyatt Earp -- Hugh O'Brian
87   Wyatt Earp -- A Legend is Born
88   Wyatt Earp -- Buntline Special
91   Wyatt Earp -- Taming Tombstone
92   Bat Masterson -- Gene Barry
93   Bat Masterson -- County Sheriff Bat
97   Cheyenne -- Clint Walker
98   Cheyenne -- Lonely Man, Cheyenne

World on Wheels
181   Buick Centurian (front view)
181   Buick Centurian (back view)
182   Dodge La Femme
183   Volkswagen Microbus
184   London Black Taxi
185   Schwinn Whizzer
186   Vincent Black Shadow
187   Minerva Town Car
188   Airstream Wanderer
189  Chrysler Town and Country
190  American Moto-Scoot

Wyatt Earp customs added to TV Westerns

I've just completed a major addition to my recent work on custom cards done in the style of Topps' 1958 TV Westerns bubblegum cards.

Presented here is my quartet of cards based on the long-running (1955-61) series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, starring Hugh O'Brian.

The show was more "legend" than "life," but that's been the case for the past 140 years. I spent a lot of time on the internet researching Wyatt Earp and have come to conclude that much of what we have seen from Hollywood about the frontier lawman has been, shall we say, embellished. Even the first comprehensive biography, 1931's Wyatt Earp Frontier Marshal, by Stuart N. Lake, was largely made up of whole cloth. His fictionalized accounts have been picked up and reworked time and again ever since in movies and films.

The Wyatt Earp TV show drew heavily upon Lake's book. I've chosen to base my cards on the show, rather than strictly historical fact.

Fortunately for my process, there are lots of great color photos of Hugh O'Brian as the title character, so I had no trouble coming up with four cards.

Here they are . . .

While it is not at all pertinent to my TV Westerns Wyatt Earp custom cards, I want to put in a plug for the Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership programs.

Inspired by meetings in Africa with Dr. Albert Schweitzer, O'Brian in 1958 founded an organization to inspire youth to take leadership roles locally and thereby positively affect the global future. You can read about it here: www.hoby.org/mission .

I became aware of HOBY when my daughter was a high school sophomore in the mid-1990s and was selected (heck, she may have been the only kid in her school interested) to attand a stateside HOBY conference.

That weekend seminar inspired many of the subsequent educational and career choices that have brought her to where she is today.

For that, I have to thank Hugh O'Brian.

Rifleman custom card added to TV Westerns

With the creation of this card based on The Rifleman television series of 1958-63, I've expanded into my third addition to the original Topps 1958 TV Westerns bubblegum card issue. (My Maverick cards were featured on the blog on Aug. 13, and Rawhide cards were presented on Sept. 28.)

The Rifleman is one of the few classic TV westerns that is currently (as of late 2014) being shown in reruns regularly on cable; Saturday mornings on AMC.

I'm not going to say too much about the television show, itself. There is plenty of readily available information on the internet. One recommended site is the "Official" web site of the series, at http://www.therifleman.net.

I can tell you why I chose to make this custom card. I've always been a fan of Chuck Connors; moreso since I met him at the National Sports Collectors Convention in 1985.

A couple of years earlier, one of my contributors at SCD, Paul Green, had worked up a profile of Connors and conducted a Q-and-A session for the paper. The article heavily leaned toward Connors' career in professional baseball: One game with the 1949 Brooklyn Dodgers and 66 games in 1951 as a Chicago Cub, plus more than 950 games in the minor leagues in 1940, 1942, 1946-52.

As we were setting up our booth at the Anaheim National, a tall, well-built fellow, whom I instantly recognized, strode up to me, shook my hand and introduced himself as Chuck Connors.

He wanted to thank me for publishing that interview and, parenthetically, for kick-starting a secondary "career" as an autograph guest at Southern California card shows. Connors didn't do card shows for the money, obviously, but rather because he really seemed to enjoy interacting with fans both baseball fans and Hollywood fans.

When he invited me for a drink, I left the booth set up to my minions and we adjourned to one of the bars at the Disneyland Hotel. We probably talked for two hours.

I listened to great stories of his days in pro ball. I got a real feel for the frustration he suffered in going to spring training with the Dodgers every year in the late 1940s, only to be sent out to Montreal or Mobile  when the season started, where he'd regularly hit around .300 with nearly 20 home runs.  He summarized his lack of success in breaking into the Brooklyn squad by saying he'd had "Gil Hodges stuck up my ass all that time."

We also talked about  his acting career. I was particularly interested in a new project that he had just signed on for. He was going to play Capt. Jonas Skorzeny, an evil lycanthrope, in a series that eventually aired for some 30 episodes in 1987-88 as Werewolf.

Our conversation came to an end when it was time for him to participate in a card-flipping contest. If I recall correctly, he lost in the celebrity division finals to Bob Feller. 

At the 1985 National Convention in Anaheim, Chuck
Connors stands by while Bob Feller makes his throw.

Not long after I returned to Wisconsin from the show, I received an envelope with a handful of autographed 8x10 photos from Connors. We corresponded a time or two prior to his passing in 1992.

My Rifleman custom card focuses on character Lucas McCain's "gimmick gun." Many of the TV westerns of that era featured some sort of signature weapon wielded by the star. Wyatt Earp had his Buntline Special, Johnny Yuma had his double-barreled sawed-off shotgun, Josh Randall his cut-down Winchester, etc.

Lucas McCain had a tricked-out Winchester Model 1892 saddle-ring carbine. Viewers were expected to suspend disbelief that a character in a series set in the 1880s in New Mexico Territory was sporting a rifle that wouldn't be invented for a dozen years.

The Winchester had a 20" barrel and a capacity of 15 rounds of .44-40 ammunition. A modified reverse-D lever had a set-screw that could be deployed to make the rifle fire without pulling the trigger, allowing McCain to get off a string of rapid-fire hip shots.

Viewers also had to suspend disbelief that a rifle could be fired in that fashion with any degree of accuracy. 

According to what I've seen on the internet, there were five rifles used in the series. Several of them have made their way into the gun collectors' market, where they have fetched good prices at auction. 

This may be the only Rifleman custom card I'll make. Good color photos relative to the show are not plentiful. This surely will not be the last time Chuck Connors appears on one of my custom cards, however. Some day I'll work up a baseball card or two.

TV Westerns newest "cards that never were"

I really wasn't looking for any new custom card creation projects.

My to-do list of vintage baseball and football card homages will already outlive me. Maybe the sheer size of my files of future fantasy cards has caused me lately to feel a little up in the air about which project to tackle next.

The recent death of James Garner has pushed me in a new direction.

As a seven-year-old buying packs of TV Western cards I never  gave up hope of finding cards from my favorite Western -- Maverick. There was no checklist issued with that set, so with the eternal optimism of youth I kept hoping to see Brother Bret and Brother Bart peeking out from beneath the bubblegum.

However, when nobody in the neighborhood ever found a card numbered above 71 -- what an unusual number for a Topps card set in that era! -- and Maverick, nor several others of our favorite shows, were not to be found, we figured "there's always next year."

However, like some of the shows that were featured, there was no "next year" for the TV Westerns card set.

The issue featured between three and 15 cards each (averaging half a dozen) for 11 television programs. While many of the TV shows were broadcast in black-and-white, all of the TV Westerns cards were in color, even if some were only colorized.

Truth be told, of the 11 shows, I only regularly watched four: Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel, Wagon Train and Wanted: Dead or Alive. Today, 55 years later, I have little or no recollection of the other seven: Trackdown, Yancy Derringer, Union Pacific, The Restless Gun, Boots & Saddles, The Californian, and, Tales of Wells Fargo.

As I said, Garner's passing got me thinking about TV Westerns; the shows and the bubblegum cards.

I determined that, much as I have done for 10+ years creating "cards that never were,"  in vintage baseball and football formats, I could fill in some of the gaps left by Topps.

Just as is often the case with my baseball and football custom cards, the process of researching, photo gathering and piecing together the elements has proved educational, challenging and rewarding. I especially enjoy writing the backs, attempting to recreate the tone of the original Topps cards.

Fortunately, I still own a complete set of the 1958 Topps TV Western cards, so I was able to scan the real thing to make  front and back templates for my Maverick cards. 

Those tools will also allow me to rather easily expand my "Second Series" TV Western customs to include more shows that Topps missed. I've identified five other childhood favorite shows upon which I will base two or three cards. Be sure to check in on this blog occasionally to see what's coming down the pike. If you were a fan of these great old shows in the 1950s and 1960s, or whether you only know them from reruns that continue to this day, I think you'll like where this is going.