Local boy makes good! Custom card for an Iola kid

Iola, the central Wisconsin village that I have called home for the past 35+ years, is a town of about 1,100 souls. Most of them (at least it seemed that way) turned out Wednesday evening for a send-off for a local lad who's on his way to the NFL.

Austen Lane was born in Chicago, but moved to Iola as a two-year-old when his parents divorced and his mother moved back to her home town. The biggest kid in his class throughout his school days, he was a football, basketball and track star for Iola-Scandinavia High School, a school of about 200 students.

On Saturday, April 23, he became a fifth round draft pick of the Jacksonville Jaguars, who traded up a few slots to get him as part of the team's revamping of its defensive line, which was frankly pitiful last season in pressuring opposing quarterbacks.

In the days leading up to the draft, every local business that had an outdoor sign had a "Good Luck" message posted for Lane. The signs changed to "Congratulations!" messages when his name was called at draft headquarters. While the Jaguars will never supplant the Packers as Iola's favorite NFL team, Jacksonville just acquired a whole lot of Wisconsin fans. I'd love to have the first shipment of replica jerseys with his name on the back; they will sell like hotcakes.

It's not just that Iola has its second NFL player (Dave Kreig was born here, though his family moved away when he was barely out of diapers), but rather than Austen Lane is universally liked and admired in town. He worked hard at his studies and athletics. His only offer of a full-ride came from Division I-AA Murray State in Kentucky. He made the most of that opportunity, but might not have been drafted if he hadn't made the most of a last-minute invitation to play in the Senior Bowl, where he returned a recovered fumble for a touchdown on national TV.

The kids in town worship him and to date he has proven himself to be an exceptional role model. His family hosted the send-off at the fitness center and he signed countless autographs for the youngsters. If Lane makes the team, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody chartered a bus to one of Jaguars games.

Naturally, when it became apparent that he was going to be drafted, I had to create a custom card. Until just before the draft, finding a good picture was difficult, but then they started popping up all over the internet. Actually, I found two that I really liked. I couldn't chose between them, so I made cards with both. I had the fronts all done, but had to wait for the draft to be able to finish the back.

With the number of "real" card companies dwindling, and the number of football card sets, as well, it might be that Austen Lane never gets an NFL card -- defensive linemen don't often make the checklist cut these days -- but at least he'll have these.

Newest custom card: 1970-style Carlton Fisk

I found a couple of great early images of Carlton Fisk and thought I'd take a shot at creating what his cards might have looked like if Topps had included him in its 1970 or 1971 sets, rather than waiting for 1972 to give him a rookie card.

I know Topps "All-Star Rookie" designations reflected selection of that honor for the previous year, but I chose to make it a "pre-season" designation.

There's a 1971-style card in the works, as well, with a colorful "action" pose.

NFL draft over, time for new cards

Now that the NLF draft is over, I'm able to complete a few football card custom creations that have been hanging fire.

I wanted to be able to include the information on my card backs of which team had tkane the player, and in which round.

Here's the first . . . Tim Tebow. I was glad to see him taken in the first round. I hope his pro career continues the success he enjoyed in college.

I was fortunate enough to see Tebow play in the first college football game I ever attended. (At least the first one I remember, but that's a story for another time.) My daughter and I attended the 2007 game at Oxford between Ole Miss and then-National Champion Florida.

The Rebels made it an unexpectedly close game and sometime during the third quarter, when Mississippi was driving towards what would have been a go-ahead score, I realized I could die a happy man. I mean I really COULD die. It was only about year after my heart attack and I was screaming the Rebel yell like a University Gray at Gettyburg. That road trip with my kid was something special, and watching Tebow that day, I knew he was something special.

Anyway, here's my 1955 Topps All-American style tribute card. You can see more of my custom cards at www.tinyurl.com/customcards . I'll be posting two other new football cards in the next few days, along with a couple of new baseball creations.

Call for Call-Bulletin Giants transfer data

Can we help out a helpful collector? Larry Serota is a frequent contributor of new finds and information for the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards. He is requesting our help in finding information for which he has been searching for some 15 years.

In his collection Larry has an 8-1/2" x 12" (the picture here is cut off some at the top and bottom) color transfer of Willie Mays.

The transfer reportedly came as an insert with the San Francisco Call-Bulletin newspaper, but the possible date of its issue is ambiguous. Larry believes it originated either from a 1958 issue, when the Giants came to the Coast, or from 1962, when they won the National League pennant.

It is also believed that there were other players issued. If you can help with information (preferably with a scan) on other players in this series, we could probably nail down an issue date. Your assistance is greatly appreciated.

Standard Catalog Update : 1950 Num Num Indians

An interesting advertising adjunct to the 1949-1950 Num Num Cleveland Indians premiums has been brought to our attention by Cleveland-area collector Bob Seedhousde.

About 17" x 11" with a vertical fold at center, this glossy poster appears to be a point-of-purchase promotion for the Indians pictures that were packed in boxes of Num Num potato chips.

In 30 years of cataloging, I can't recall ever seeing or hearing about such an ad piece, so it is definitely rare, even though it might not be of exorbitant value due to the relative lack of interest in the first Num Num premiums.

We date the premiums as 1949-1950 in the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards, but Iwonder if that's strictly accurate. The checklist for the Num Num set has been around forever, and seems to indicate a multi-year run for the pictures.

For those unfamiliar with the issue, the early Num Num premiums are nothing more than examples of the 6-1/2" x 9" black-and-white team-issued picture pack photos that have been rubber-stamped on back with an advertising message from the chip company and an offer for mail order pictures.

Since the Indians picture pack photos for both 1950 and 1951 were re-issues of the 1949 "action" pictures, or new player pix in the same posed-action format, it is possible these overprinted pictures were issued 1949-1951. In 1952 Num Num created a smaller card format for its premiums, though the photos continued to be a version of those issued in the team photo pack.

Animal House icon on a football card

In the half-dozen years that I have been working on creating 1955 All-American style football cards as an exercise in creativity and computer-graphics problem solving, I have created more than 120 cards "that never were" of college footballs players -- some of whom also never were.



One of my favorites is this card based on the Animal House movie character "Bluto," famously played by John Belushi in the 1978 National Lampoon movie.



You may be surprised to see Bluto in a football uniform, as there is absolutely no mention in the movie of the character ever taking the field for the Faber Mongols. I'll admit it: I have never taken such liberties in creating one of my cards as I did with this one.



Animal House has, since its initial release, appealed to the puerile(Keith Olbermann taught me that word)
portion of my psyche. I still watch it about once a year when I can find the uncut version on DirecTV .



Some years back, while paging through a copy of Playboy, I encountered an article about Belushi. The portrait in the accompanying photo clicked with me, and I decided a Bluto football card was next up on my to-do list.



I found an appropriate uniformed body picture on which to graft Belushi's/Blutarsky's head, and I was ready to roll. In the spirit of the movie, I sat down in front of a rerun with a bottle of black Jack and took notes. In some scene or other I saw a felt pennant on a Delta house wall that indicate the Faber nickname was the Mongols. In a stroke of very good fortune, a Google search of Faber turned up the Mongol team logo that appears on the front of my card.



Virtually everything that appears on the biography on back, however, is of my own creation, although -- while I can't verify this with a citation at this late date -- I seem to recall that I found on some website or other the fact that Blutarky's middle name was Adam.

The process of fictionalizing a fictional character in furtherance of creating one of my custom football card creations was especially satisfying. I believe true fans of Animal House will appreciate the effort.

Standard Catalog Update : 1957 Topps paper proofs

After having been involved in cataloging baseball cards for nearly 30 years, I'm surprised that this got by me.

Recently on the post-war section of the Net54 forums, Connecticut collector Mark Rios posted a picture of a 1957 Topps paper proof card. While blank-back paper proofs are not unheard of from the 1960s and 1970s, I'd never before seen a fully printed (front and back) paper proof for any Topps issue, much less one of my favorite sets of all time, the 1957.

Mark not only posted the front and back pictures, but also a copy of an ad from one-time Topps art director Woody Gelman's son Richard that had appeared in the September, 1979, issue of The Trader Speaks, offering 32 of the paper proofs for $6 each.

According to the ad, all of the proofs, which were described as VG condition, were from the high-number series of '57 Topps, #353-407. The Gelman ad didn't offer the real prizes among the 1957 Topps high-numbers, #400 Dodgers' Sluggers and #407 Yankees' Power Hitters, so it is unclear whether those were actually produced in the paper proof version.

As far as I know, no uncut sheet of 1957 Topps high-numbers exists to confirm which 132 cards appeared in what combination of single- and double-prints or even multiple-prints. There are 55 different cards in the high-numbers checklist.

We likewise do not know which cards from that series survived in the paper proof version. It was almost certainly some multiple of the 11-card rows in which Topps cards were formatted on sheets at that time. It may have been 33 cards, or 55 cards, or 66 (1/2 a sheet) or even 132 cards.

What seems likely, considering I have never seen a single 1957 paper proof offered at any show, in any ad or auction, or on the internet, is that each of proofs Gelman advertised, and any others that may have existed, are unique. It's interesting to note that the same $6 Gelman was asking for the paper proof 1957s was the same price at which he was offering nearly two dozen 1970 Topps Cloth Sticker singles. Today a common from that test issue is cataloged at $1,750, so that should provide a good gauge for the value of the 1957 paper proofs.

Given the unique nature of the 1957 high-number paper proofs, I'm not sure whether or not they will cataloged in the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards, but I was sure they were worth mentioning in this space.

Standard Catalog Update : 1960 Carling Beer Indians

We're closing in on completing the checklists for the 1950s-1960s Carling Beer Cleveland Indians premium pictures.

These 8-1/2" x 12", black-and-white, blank-back pictures appear to have been point-of-purchase giveaways between 1955-1961, with 10 or 11 pictures each year.

Regular catalog/blog contributor Larry Serota has greatly expanded the known 1960 checklist.
In the 2010 Standard Catalog we listed only three pictures: Joe Gordon, Bubba Phillips and Tito Francona.

Larry has added the following: John Temple, Gary Bell, John Romano, Vic Power, Jim Perry and Woodie Held.

The 1960 Carlings carry a number in the bottom-right corner that consists of the prefix DBL347 and a letter from A-H, and K-L. Carling apparently didn't use the I or J letters in most years.

Larry's additi0ns leave us only one player short of a complete checklist, whomever appears as picture DBL347B.

The catalog values most of the Carling premium pictures at $60 in NM for commons, and $90-125 for most stars and Hall of Famers.

A Forrest Gump football card

As I've mentioned here in the past, my series of 1955 All-American style custom football card creations has not all been serious attempts to honor the greats and even not-so-greats who have actually played college football.

A half-dozen or so of the nearly 120 cards I've created in the past six years or so pay tribute to college football players whose gridiron exploits were entirely in the realm of fiction or entertainment.

Certainly the most popular of these pop culture figures is Forrest Gump. It was some time after I had begun my 1955-style cards that I realized, as I watched a re-run of the movie, that there was a college football element to the story of that fictional savant simpleton. 'Bama, no less! In deference to the legions of Tide fans, I'll refrain from further comment on where Gump fits into the continuum of Alabama alumns.

Once I knew I wanted to create a Forrest Gump football card, I set about assembling the pieces I'd need . . . basically a picture and biographical details.

I was unprepared for how difficult it became to find a suitable photo. A Google search of Tom Hanks and Forrest Gump failed to turn up any in-uniform pictures that would be suitable for reproduction. I spent some time scouring eBay and a few other sites for movie press kits or stills, but those I did find did not include a football picture.

In desperation, one night I set my digital camera on a tripod in front of the TV and began playing back a recorded copy of the movie. When I got to suitable spots in the movie, I hit the pause button and moved back and forth through the scenes, frame-by-frame, until I found what I was looking for. I shot the photo off my screen in extremely high-res and was very happy with the quality once it was reduced to ink-on-paper on the front of my card.

In reading the back of my card you may notice some variance with the details as presented in the movie. That's because I decided to go to the source, and work from the original 1986 novel by Winston Groom.

Because the book is written entirely in first-person dialect, it is not an easy read, but it was worth the effort and as the base document for my card back, I believe it was the right way to go.

Standard Catalog Update : Armour coins (3)

This is the third of a three-part series of postings concerning 1955 Armour coin variations brought to our attention by specialist collector Phil Garrou.

Please take a minute to read or re-read the first two installments for all the background so we don't need to repeat it. I'll wait here . . .

O.K., this variation epitomizes the type of letter/word variations that I have come to feel are too arcane for the typical user of the Standard Catalog, though I do recognize that chronicling the minutiae of such variations is of interest to a small number of specialists. My feeling is that if we get bogged down in printing each tiny variation that results from printing errors in every card set the catalog would have to be twice as big and twice as expensive. And, as Garrou correctly points out, the easy availability of cards (coins, etc.) and their images on the internet means that more variations have been discovered in the last 10 years than in the century previous.

As you can see, the Haddix coin on the left has a fairly narrow gap between LOUIS and CARDINALS, compared to the coin on the right. Garrou has indicated that the narrow-gap version is significantly scarcer than the wide-gap piece.

These coins also perfectly illustrate the differences in "bust tilt" that are commonly found on the 1955 Armours. Note that on the coin at left, the bill of the cap points between the A and R of HARVEY, while on the right-hand coin, the bill points to the H. Trying to put a description of these variations into the catalog listing for the 1955 Armour coins could easily double or triple the amount of space used and I am not convinced this is a productive use of the limited pages available.

What are your thoughts?

Standard Catalog Update : Armour coins (2)

This is the second installment about a trio of newly reported 1955 Armour coin variations. If you haven't already done so, please bring up the March 27 posting about the Jim Finigan variations. It will provide the necessary background information.

The coin we're presenting today is another variation that could go either way in terms of whether or not it wil make the final cut for listed variations in the next Standard Catalog.

Specialty collector Phil Garrou reports that the 1955 Armour coin of Duke Snider can be found in two back versions: 1) comma after the 19 in the birthdate; no decimal point in front of the 1954 batting average, and, 2) no comma after the 19; with decimal point in front of 341.

This a curious situation because each version of the coin has one error, and so far no coin has been seen with both elements correct. It strains logic to believe that if the coins' creators made a conscious decision to correct one error or the other, they would have intentionally created a new error.

That is, if someone noticed there was no comma after the 19, it is unlikely they would have added it, but deleted the decimal point. Or, if the missing dot was noticed and corrected, why would the comma have been removed?

The point on which the decision to list or not list this variation rests is whether or not the omission of the decimal point and addition of the comma were simple errors in the preparation of the back typography, or whether the decimal point and/or comma simply wore off over the course of producing the coins. Garrou reports that his studies of the Snider coin indicate about half are found with the dot and no comma, and half with the comma but no decimal point.

Comma, no decimal No comma, with decimal

What I'm looking for here is whether or not coins can be found with partial or diminishing comma and/or decimal point, which would indicate the variation was caused by deterioration of the mold over the production run. In such a case, I would not be inclined to list this as a variation. If however, it turns out that the decimal point and comma are an either/or proposition, it may be worthy on consideration for cataloging as an error/corrected situation. Let me know what you find.

Standard Catalog Update : 1955 Armour coins (1)

Collector Phil Garrou is one of the most advanced collectors of the silver-dollar size plastic coins that were inserted into Armour hot dog packages in 1955, 1959 and 1960.

The Armour coins are a special kind of baseball player collectible in that collecting them can be as easy or as challenging as each collector desires. The basic collection consists of 24 players in 1955, and 20 each in 1959 and 1960. A nice mix of superstars, Hall of Famers, regional favorites and journeyman ballplayers comprise the checklists.

Obviously, the basic set consists of one coin of each player in any given year. While there are a few degrees of player scarcity within each year's set, with the exception of Bud Daley in 1960, who is unaccountably scarce, the 64-piece set could easily be assembled in a year's time at a cost of between $12-15 apiece for commons, $30-50 for Hall of Famers, and $75-100 for the Mantles (Daley can bring from $750-900).

The coins are made of injection molded plastic, in about six or eight basic colors, so theoretically the collector could choose to build his set in all-red or all-blue coins, perhaps, or in a rainbow of the available hues. (It has not been conclusively proven that each player in each year can be found in each of the "primary" colors.)

Anybody pursuing Armour coins, however, soon discovers that there are, in fact, an endless variety of color variations. A green Armour coin can actually be light green, dark green, lime green or translucent green. Coins can be found in gold, silver, black and in mixtures with two colors swirled together. Whether these color variations were intentionally created or were the haphazard result of mixing the pigments for the plastic is unknown, but they create a virtually unlimited palette that can keep a collector searching for a lifetime. Long-time catalog contributor Larry Serota, for instance, collects only the 1955 and 1960 Mickey Mantle coins, but he does so in every available color.

Besides the color varieties, the process by which the coins were modeled created a huge number of variations, particularly in 1955. Many of the 1955 coins feature typography that was changed during the course of production. Most notably, Mantle's coin was originally issued with his name misspelled Mantel on front. Once that was corrected, the back was also changed at some point to create versions that read: "bats L or R" or "bats L - R". Johnny Antonelli's coin can be found with his team given on back as "New York Giants" or as "N.Y. Giants". Similar intentional design changes exist for half a dozen of the 1955 coins and for the 1960 Hank Aaron ("BRAVES" or "MILWAUKEE BRAVES").

Besides those variations, specialized collectors have come to recognize that all of the 1955 coins, and at least one (Drysdale) of the 1960 coins, are found with subtle differences in the typography, related to the spacing between words or letters. Additionally, each of the 1955s can be found with the player portrait in two or even three alignments relative to the typography around the edge. Collectors call these "bust tilt" variations. The peak of a player's cap bill might point between the last two letters of his name on one coin, but point past the final letter on another. This was likely caused by the fact that the plaster models from which the coin molds were made probably comprised a matrix of several different elements such as the player name, team, name, stars and bust. In the process of fixing the errors or creating multiple molds for the production run, these elements were not aligned exactly the same each time.

For decades, most of these variations went unnoticed because no one was looking for them, and generally there were not enough specimens of any particular coin at hand at the same time to make comparisons. As Phil points out, however, the rise of the internet, and particularly eBay, allowed collectors to view dozens of coins at any one time, hundreds per week, and sharp-eyed specialists began to spot the differences.

For a period of years beginning in the late 1990s, the Standard Catalog dutifully recorded each verified variation among the Armours. However, the seemingly endless stream of portrait alignment and letter/word-spacing variations now makes that impractical for the book's general audience. Some lines will have to be drawn.

Before a decision is made one which variations will be presented in future editions, we'd like to gather input on a trio of newly reported 1955 variations that Garrou has brought to our attention.

The first involves the back of the Jim Finigan coin. According to Garrou, about 50% each of the coins can be found with his birthplace city correctly spelled "QUINCY" or misspelled "OUINCY". At first glance, this would seem like a no-brainer for a catalogable variation. My concern, however, is that rather than being an actual spelling error that was later corrected, the tail of the Q may simply have worn off of the mold . . . after all, it wasn't very prominent in the first place.

Look at the pictures above -- or better yet, look at any '55 Finigan coins you may have -- and let me know what you think. You can post a comment here, or send me information and scans to scbcguy@yahoo.com.

Check back on the blog in the next few days to see the other variations that Garrou has uncovered.

Standard Catalog Update : 1962 Salada discoveries

Besides being my collaborator on the creation of a 1955 Topps-style Richie Ashburn card presented in an earlier posting, Fred McKie is one of the hobby's most knowledgeable collectors of the 1962 Salada -Junket coins.

Fred has reported three new variations to the set, and a theory about the creation of the rarest of the Salada variations.

Newly cataloged are variations of coins #9 Jim Lemon, #36 Harmon Killebrew and #46a Ryne Duren (red shirt buttons).

The most visually compelling of the trio is the Killebrew variation. In the common version, the player name and position to the left of the portrait, and the coin number and team nickname to the right are printed at an angle roughly coincident with the slope of the Killer's shoulders.

The variation that McKie has reported shows those typographic elements to be printed on horizontal planes, with the "n" of Harmon, the "w" of Killebrew and the "B" of 1B nearly touching the portrait. This variation is so rare, McKie reports, that none of the advanced Salada collectors with whom he is contact owns one or has ever seen one.

The newly reported Duren coin is a variation of a variation. The coin was first issued, as were several other Saladas, with red buttons on the jersey. This was later corrected to show white buttons.

The red-button Duren, however, is found with two distinct placemements of the player name and position to the right of the portrait. On the rare version, the name and "P" are placed at a distance from Duren's left ear, very near the blue plastic rim. The common coin shows those elements much closer to the portrait, with the "D" of Duren almost touching the ear. The coin number and team nickname to the left of the portrait is unchanged between the variations.

Similarly, the variation discovered for the Lemon coin affects only the name and position lettering. The common version has those elements closer to the portrait, and lower, with the bottom of "Jim" lining up somewhat below the player's left ear.

The rarer coin has the name and "OF" centered between the portrait and rim, with the bottom of "Jim" aligned with the center of the ear.

McKie believes these newly reported variations, as well as the other rarities in '62 Salada -- #48a Dick Williams (name on right), #53b Jackie Brandt (Orioles) and #113a Ed Bailey (partial left shoulder) -- represent a very early printing of the Salada coins. "It had to almost be a test run due to the scarcity of the rare coins," McKie said. "They may have looked at the test printing and made changes from that, then went ahead with the main printing" of "180" backs. The "200" backs came even later when the Mets and Colt .45s were added.

At this point, only the Killebrew coin will likely be added to the 1962 set checklist in a future edition of the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards. The catalog introduction to the set states, "Many of the players in the 180 series can be found with variations in the placement of the front typography relative to the colored portrait. Though these variations seem to affect a tiny percentage of some players' 180 coins, they are in most cases too difficult to distinguish except by direct comparison between specimens and are of interest only to the most dedicated Salada collectors."

1960 Kaline variation . . . is it "catalogable"?

As the title of this posting indicates, I am undecided as to whether this new variation of 1960 Topps #50, Al Kaline, will be listed in the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards.

Besides being somewhat jaded by all of the newly reported variations in this internet age of enhanced collector communications, I'm leery of loading down the long-established master checklists of vintage card sets with frankly insignificant variations caused by mistakes, anomalies and vagaries of the printing process.



Rob Thompson, an Illinois collector who maintains the Detroit Tigers Cards and Stuff blog at www.detroittigerscards.blogspot.com/ gets credit for this discovery, and is well qualified to explain it. Quoting from his blog:



There are little red marks in the upper left corner that I know from my experience in printing are a flaw from the pre-press cutting a mask for the red background. Back in the old days you would cut a window out of a vinyl mask for each image to appear on the printed piece. On anything that formed a corner, if you extended the mask too far out your X-acto blade would leave a tiny cut line like the one seen in the pic above. Now it's all done on the Mac. No cut marks. The process used to be called four-color stripping (four colors because that's how many inks are used, and stripping because in the real old days you used to strip the emulsion off the film before you burned printing plates), and yours truly was a stripper for many years.

In his e-mail to me, Rob added, "I worked in pre-press for close to 20 years, so I know this would be something that would have to be fixed (by putting a piece of red tape over the lines on the mask before burning the plates) and have new plates made to correct.


The picture that Rob posted on his blog is the one at top-left, with "cut marks" that extend horizontally and vertically to the top-left edges of the card. The picture at bottom-left is from one of the '60T Kalines I found on eBay when checking to see whether the variation is common, scarce or unique. That picture appears to show a partially corrected version, with only a remnant of the horizontal cut mark showing. This is another reason I am hesitant to list the variation. If the card came only two ways, with and without cut marks, I'd be more favorably disposed. With at least one in-between stage seen so far, I'm less sure I want to list it. Doing so would seem to require at least three listings for 1960 Topps Al Kaline #50: a) full vertical and horizontal cut marks, b) remnant horizontal cut mark, and c) no cut marks.

If you have strong feeling in any direction, post a comment or e-mail me.

My eBay search, by the way, seemed to show that offered examples of the card were about evenly divided between cut marked and no cut marks versions. Whether that ration holds up will largely determine whether one or the other of this variation achieves and market value premium.







I

My 2nd Charlie Grimm custom card [crickets]

I know this isn't as exciting as a new Honus Wagner or Mickey Mantle or Charley Pride custom card, but as I said a couple of weeks ago, I'm going to be spending more of my hobby time working on projects that have personal appeal to me.
Last weekend, that translated to finishing a 1955 Topps-style custom card for Charlie Grimm. I'd already done a 1956-style Grimm and wanted to boost Jolly Cholly's Topps-style card count.
Because he was under contract to Bowman, appearing in their 1953 and 1955 sets, Grimm didn't have a Topps card until 1960, as Cubs manager.
Grimm was one of my favorite Braves when I was a kid. He always seemed to have a smile on his face, even when the Braves were coming in second in the N.L. to the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1955 and 1956. As an adult collector, he remained a favorite of mine, signing autographs through the mail for me on a couple of occasions.
There really not too much to say about my '55 Grimm. The portrait is a studio photo I found on the internet and colorized. The action photo is from the 1955 Johnston Cookies Braves. Sharp-eyed Braves' collectors among you might note that on the Johnston card, Grimm is facing his right. I flopped the photo to give my card better composition. I was able to do so because the "M" on the Braves' cap shows up the same in regular or mirror image, and, fortunately, when the photo of the skipper was taken at the Bradenton, Fla., spring training site, Grimm was wearing a wartm-up jacket that hid the tomahawk/script logo on his jersey.
Another lucky coincidence, appealing to my normal desire to be as accurate as I can when copying vintage card formats, is that unlike a lot of the teams in 1955 Topps, the Braves in the set can be found on every color background: blue, green, red and yellow, so I could take my pick. Right from the start, I knew I wanted to use the 1955 red background, which I believe is unique among the Braves to Mel Roach.
So, having completed the 1955 Grimm and Richie Ashburn cards in recent weeks, I'm going to shift gears for a while.
Once the NFL draft is over, I'm going to do a 1955 All-American of Tim Tebow and a 1952 Bowman-style of Dexter McCluster.
I'll be sure to share them with you when they're ready.

S.F. Giants 1972 Japanese pitching prospects

I've always had an interest in early Asian players in the U.S. minor leagues, so the picture here caught my attention when it appeared on eBay. I put in a token bid, but because the seller had not marketed the photo very well -- he didn't use Japanese in the auction title -- I was able to buy it very reasonably.

I originally thought it might make a great custom card, but I doubt that it will ever make it that far up my to-do list.

The picture is an 11" x 8-1/2" glossy wirephoto from United Press International. Dated Feb. 21, 1972, the picture shows Giants coach Ozzie Virgil (left) in spring training at Casa Grande, Ariz., with a pair of pitching prospects brought to spring training from Japan's major leagues.

In 1964 the Giants had been the first major league team to field a native Japanese player, pitcher Masanori Murakami, who had a 5-1 record in 1964-65 and appeared on a 1965 Topps rookie card. Like many pro teams on the West Coast since the 1930s, the Giants were always on the lookout for a Japanese player who could not only help the team, but also draw fans from the large number of Japanese immigrants and their descendents.

At the center of the photo is Toru Hamaura. The 20-year-0ld Hamaura came to the Giants in mid-January, 1972, in a trade with the Lotte Orions of Japan's Pacific League for Frank Johnson, a utility player for San Francisco from 1966-1971. The deal was billed as the first international trade in Major League history. Some observers felt it was more of a publicity stunt to drum up interest in the "Friendship Series" player between Lotte and San Francisco March 24-26 in Honolulu. Johnson evidently played the 1972 season in Japan, then returned to the Pacific Coast League, playing through 1975.

Hamaura never played in the U.S. majors. In the Giants farm system he played two seasons -- 1972-1973 -- at Class A Fresno, winning 10 games each season, and compiling a 20-15 record and 3.43 ERA. He returned to pro ball in Japan.

The player on the right was veteran Central League pitcher Shigeyuki Takahashi, age 26. Rookie of the Year in the C.L. in 1964 with the Taiyo Whales, Takahashi had been a 21-game winner in 1968, with a 2.40 ERA.

Takahashi played only one year in the U.S., 1972 with the Giants AAA farm club at Phoenix. He was used almost exclusively as a reliever, with a 1-3 record and 4.80 ERA in 37 games.

I imagine that if I spent a few more hours on the internet, I could find more about the careers in Japan of Hamaura and Takahashi, but life's too short.

I've put the original photo back up for sale on eBay (key words Giants Japanese). I've scanned it so I can use it for a future card project if time ever permits. If you have need of a somewhat enhanced black-and-white 8x10 print of the picture, I can print it up for you for a small charge -- though postage to Japan would be high -- or I'd be happy to send you a scan if you e-mail me at scbcguy@yahoo.com.

Newest custom card was co-operative project

My most recent custom card creation was more of a co-operative effort than any of my previous projects.


It all started when a long-time hobby colleague, Fred McKie of East-central Pennsylvania, contacted me after he had won a Topps Archives' auction for an original "flexichrome" that Topps had evidently created for use on a 1955 Richie Ashburn card that was never printed, perhaps originally having been intended as one of the four "missing" cards in the '55T high-number series. Cards #175, 186, 203 and 209 were never printed. It is usually believed that these were to have been cards for players that were zealousy protected by Bowman, which exercised exclusive rights to their cards. Ashburn certainly could have fit into that scenario. Ashburn made his "rookie card" debut in 1949 Bowman, and appeared in every Bowman set through their finale in 1955. Along the way he also appeared in 1951 Topps (Blue Backs), 1952, and 1954 Topps.


We know Topps had intended to use Ashburn in its 1953 set, because artwork was created, though it was never made into a card until 50 years later when I used that artwork to create my own 1953-style Ashburn card.


Fred McKie is a die-hard Phillies fan and collector, and for many years was a frequent contributor of Philadelphis regionally issued cards and player memorabilia to the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards. When he saw my '53-style Ashburn, he inquired about availability and I sent him one.

When he purchased the 1955 flexichrome, Fred inquired about I'd be interested in doing a 1955 Topps-style card for him. A flexichriome, by the way, is how Topps colorized most of its 1952-1956) baseball card issues. It is a thin black-and-white photographic print to which color was painstaking hand painted. The finished artwork could then be made into the necessary color printing negatives. It's too bad that internet images are so small and low-res. Up close and personal, the Ashburn portrait is stunning, right down to blazing hazel eyes.

Because I had not yet made the decision to cut back on my blogging in favor of putting more time into my custom cards, I quoted Fred a price for the commission that would have made it hard for me refuse.


He demurred, but dang it, he had his hooks in me. for the next severak weeks I kept having flashed about how that portrait would look on the fading blue background that Topps used for virtually all of its 1955 Phillies. I was also somewhat rankled that my first attempt at a 1955 Topps baseball card creation had not turned out so well. In fact, I don't think it has ever been publically viewed . . . and likely never will be. About the same time, I decided that I wanted to do a 1955 Charlie Grimm manager's card, since I found a great portrait photo on the internet. I figured it would greatly ease the workload if I had a temple for the 1955 cards, so I proposed to Fred that we go ahead and do the Ashburn.


I had him send me the portrait scan, and asked him to work up the biography for the back. He accomplished that in short order, and even did the math to fill the stats boxes.


Fred chose #175 for the card number, since not only is it one of the missing 1955s, it was also the number of hits Ashburn had in 1954.


He also sent along a color image of Ashburn at bat. At first glance I thought it would work fine for the smaller "action" picture on the front, but it turned out the wide stance in the photo created some composition problems. If you study original 1955 fronts, you'll notice that with only two or three exceptions, the action photos are cap-to-toe images, filling the horizontal space to one side of the portrait or other.



The problem with the batting photo was that if we used it cap-to-toe, it was too wide, with the vertical bat obscuring too much of the team logo. A few of the "real" '55s have a small piece of the action photo either in front of or behind the logo, but in most cases the two elements do not intersect. If I moved the action picture towards the portrait in order to get the bat mostly off of the Phillies logo, too much of it intruded on the portrait, which was also something that was rarely seen in the originals.


I slept on the design for a couple of nights, and when I returned to it, I found I could live with it. I e-mailed Fred and told him of my quandry, and he responded with a trio of alternatives that were much more vertically oriented. He offered batting, throwing and leaping/fielding poses. I colorized the batting and leaping poses, plugged them into the front design and sent them to Fred for review. It turned out that we were in synch, both favoring the fielding pose as an homage to a Hall of Famer whose fielding skills were largely overlooked in the era because of a trio of New York centerfielders (Willie, Mickey and the Duke).


With that decision made, the card was quickly wrapped up. I decided that a 1955-style card should have a shiny front, so I printed the fronts on glossy photo paper. My first attempt to pair that in a sandwich with the matte back and a cardstock center proved too thick and I ruined the first sheet trying to cut it. I opted for a thinner center stock and got the look and feel I wanted.


As per our agreement, I sent Fred half of my six-card production, and he is now able to fill that hole in Richie Ashburn's Topps baseball card legacy. I got an addition to my custom card opus that I am very proud of. Now it's on to the 1955 Charlie Grimm!

More silly stuff from my 1955 Topps-style set

By the time I was 20 or 25 cards into my custom set of 1955 Topps-style college football cards, I was looking to shake things up a bit.

The result was a "card that never was" of a "player that never was."

Until he got so stridently liberal (or maybe since I got more conservative) I was a fan of Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury comic strip. He was making a name for himself as a cartoonist in the pages of the Yale Daily News at the same time I was growing my hair, giving aid and comfort to the enemy, killing brain cells and generally wasting my college years.

I think I was reading one of the coffee table books of his early strips when it hit me that one of his best-loved characters, Zonker, had played college football for Walden. One thing led to another and the card presented here was the result. Yes, my original is in black-and-white.

I spent nearly an entire afternoon in the library paging through various Doonesbury compendiums (compendia?) to find not only the images for my card, but the "biographical" details for the write-up on back.

If you're familiar with the original 1955 Topps All-American card set, you know that the college logo used on Notre Dame players' cards is a "skyline" drawing of one of the campus's landmark buildings. From the moment I decided to do a Zonker Harris card, I knew I wanted to parody that logo. Finding a picture of Zonker in uniform wasn't nearly as difficult as finding the proper image of Walden College's skyline.

While it is decidedly different in both intent and execution from the other 125+ cards in my '55-style set, the Zonker Harris card remains among my personal top-10 favorites.

My favorite player on a favorite format

As a kid my favorite player was Milwaukee Braves' back-up first baseman George Crowe.

As is often the case, pinning down why he was my favorite is largely conjectural. It may have stemmed from seeing Crowe up close and personal at my first big league game, when we got to use my uncle's box tickets at County Stadium that were just a few rows behind the Braves' dugout on the first base side.

It may be that Crowe wore glasses, one of the few major leaguers to do so at a time when I was struggling to come to terms with being the first "four eyes" in my kindergarten class.

In any event, as an adult collector I have always been a sucker for Crowe's cards. And, since I've begun making my own custom cards, I'm now able to fill in some of the gaps in Crowe's baseball card legacy.

Crowe never appeared on a Bowman card. He was in 1952 Topps (an expensive high-number series card) and 1953 Topps, but not 1954 or 1955. He was back with Topps for a final year as a Brave in 1956, before showing up in 1957 with the Reds.

Crowe's only 1955 baseball card was in the Johnson Cookies regional issue shown here. Truth be told, the '55 Johnston card of Crowe is one of my all-time favorite baseball cards, so it's no wonder I stole that image to use when I made this 1955 Bowman "Color TV" card.

The background for the front of my 1955 Bowman-style card was taken from Jim Wilson's card in that set. I'm not sure why, but I always felt that Wilson's photo in the 1955 Bowman set was a photo that had been taken at night; it may be the dark stands in the background or the strange green color of the grass. I think Jim Brosnan's card in the same set has a similar feel.

In any event, my first effort at recreating a 1955 Bowman-style card was very satisfying for me. I don't really have any plans to do another at this point, but there were a lot of big stars in '55 that didn't get onto a Bowman card, so someday I may try another. Stan Musial? Roberto Clemente rookie?

Newest card creation: 1954 Topps-style Charley Pride

You might have noticed that I haven't been posting as frequently to the blog in the last few weeks. I've recently decided that I much prefer to spend my limited hobby time working on my custom card creations.

In the eight months or so that I've been blogging, my card output has really suffered and my to-do list of custom projects has been growing.

So . . . I'm going to be cutting back on the blogging and devoting more time to my card making.
I'll be sure to post all of my new cards here, so check back once in awhile if you're interested in that sort of thing.

Shown here is my first attempt to recreate the look of one of my all-time favorite Fifties card sets, the 1954 Topps issue.

I chose Charley Pride as the subject, but since there aren't a lot of pictures out there of Pride in his playing days, I had to recycle the photo I colorized for my earlier 1954 Bowman-style card. And, as you can see, the portrait is a close-up from the full-length pose.

The back was the really challenging part. Because Pride played for such low-level minor league teams in 1953, there were few official stats to report. I tried to channel what the Topps creators would have done in such a case, and the results are what they are.

I did have fun doing the cartoons. I scoured the backs of the 50-60 or so original 1954s that I have to find cartoons that could be converted to tell Pride's story. I'm pleased with the result.