Two More Batman Sketch Cards

My quest for a full nine pocket page of Batman sketch cards is coming along nicely. I've picked up six of which two are in transit in my direction. 

The first one is by an artist named Ellyn R. Accord. She was the artist who did one of the first two I posted. I tried again to find out more about her but details were 'sketchy'. </groan> The listing described this one as being in the 'pop art' batmania style of the 1960s. Whatever. It's pretty nice. And the cost was $6.50.

So this one I really like. It's by artist Dave Beaty who does some really awesome work. You can see more on his site. The cost was $8.50 which was a bargain compared to what he sells his other stuff for. He did cards for something I had no awareness of...Batman: The Legend trading card set by Cryptozoic Entertainment / DC Comics. Looks really sweet.

So these two had a total cost of $15 not including shipping. That brings me to $27.50 of my $75 target. Next week I'll have a couple more to post including one whose pedigree as a true 'sketch card' is currently under review.

#30DBCC 10 Day Recap

The #Twitter 30 Day BB Card Challenge 'thing' I mentioned previously is also being posted as blog entries by several folks and it works just as well there. Maybe better since blog posts don't have the 140 character restriction.

Anyway I thought I'd recap my first 10 days of my cards here. Why Not?

Here are the original guidelines as posted by Tony of the Off Hiatus blog. Tony got the idea from a music version of the same thing which I tried to follow but failed at.

Some participants have deviated from them to meet their own collecting interests and that makes it even more fun. In a few days when we get to 'A Fave Card from the 2000s' I'll be reeeeally challenged. For several of these I've had a hard time narrowing it down to one to post. For the next couple I'll have trouble coming up with even one. LOL

So here is what I've done so far:

Day One: Current Year Card with a cool photo...I loved the Adam Jones Topps Now card of his homer theft WBC catch. I bought this card but it hasn't arrived yet. I can't tell you who hit this thing or what country AJ was playing against but I thought the picture was awesome.

Day Two..a Multi Player card. I've always liked this '67 card with three Birds..

Day Three..A card from the 1st set I tried to complete. I remember the '62 set as a playground staple at St. Mary's School in Nutley, New Jersey.  We bought nickel packs with money we earned from collecting bottles, swapped doubles, flipped against the school wheelchair ramp, whatever it took. I think I had the whole set eventually. I picked the Mudcat Grant card because it's Mudcat Grant. No better reason needed.

Day Four...Rookie Card of a favorite player...Eddie Murray '78 Topps. Spectacular card.

Day Five...Certified Auto of a favorite player. Billy Pierce Certified Auto checks both boxes.  I have four different CA Billys. I like this one best. My scanner doesn't though.

Day Six... card I spent more that $10 to get...Looking back I believe I missed this challenge. It may be somewhere on Twitter as a reply but my Twitter skills are still Level 1. :::shrug:::

That was a very challenging challenge. I've spent more than $10 on a boatload of cards. I considered many many different ones, my Brooks Robinson rookie for example, but I thought I'd do a non-Oriole for this.

So here is the card I was planning to tweet...1958 Topps All Star Mickey Mantle. I don't recall what I actually spent but it wasn't cheap. This is a card I wanted for a looooong time. I love the '58 All Star design. And Mickey Mantle is simply a baseball icon. Took me forever to find a decent copy at a price i was willing to pay but I nabbed this one in 2012.

BTW...the Koufax card I posted up top was one I seriously considered for a couple different categories. I put it there for fun.


Day Seven...a card I bought in person and the story behind it...1967 Mark Belanger/Bill Dillman high number rookie. I called it my 'First White Whale and you can see the story in my post from four years ago. In a nutshell it was the card that finished my first 'grown-up' card project, collecting all the Orioles from 1954 onward.

Day Eight...A card that reminds me of a family member. This wasn't hard. Almost any card with a nice view of Yankee Stadium reminds me of my Dad and all the good times we had there. I picked the '59 Ford because that was the year of my first  ballgame with him. And Ford was a real favorite of his.

Day Nine...a favorite '50s card. Wow...which to choose? I went with a 1957 Topps Campanella. Can't go wrong with Campy. I considered about two dozen others though.

Day Ten...a favorite '60s card. Now this was crazy...Tony and I independently chose THE SAME CARD. Out of all the incredible cards from that decade of sweet sets we both decided to use the 1961 Topps Wes Covington. He posted hours before I did but I promise I hadn't seen it when I posted mine. It's a beauty for sure.

The #30DBCC is now up through Day 11 or 12 for some folks although everyone is on their own timetable. I'll do another recap once I make it through 20 days.

Gavin's Gifts

Hey look kids...Reggie Jackson's 1976 Hostess card. Well, OK..no it's not. It's a custom version designed by Gavin of the Baseball Card Breakdown blog. And it's pretty sweet. You custom card makers out there make me jealous of your skills.

The Jackson custom Gavin sent illustrates something I've come to think about more and more lately. As I've aged my feelings towards certain things have changed/mellowed. I used to 'hate' Ol Reggie. His A's clubs ripped thru the Orioles in a couple of playoff series in the early 70's during Oakland's dynasty run. And then after an up and down year with my Orioles he moved to the Yankees and became the 'straw that stirred the drink' or whatever that silliness was.

The end result was that I disliked the guy intensely. He joined Derek Sanderson, Joe Namath, the Dallas Cowboys and any and every New York Met on my 'enemies list.' Then I somehow grew up. Now I'm 64 and have sons who feel about all the Dallas teams as I once did about the Mets, Bruins and Jets. I just listen to them and shrug. They'll get over it.

Anyway, to get back to Gavin's envelope of goodness.... I believe this is the actual back of the '76 Hostess Jackson to which he has affixed his own 'sig'.

And for comparison this is the actual card as produced by Hostess:

Another of Gavin's creations was in the package. Check it out:

It's based obviously on the Topps Ripken rookie of 1982. But instead of Bob Bonner and Jeff Schneider Cal is flanked by his dad and brother. Gavin got ***ahem*** creative with Billy and the edit on both front and back is mine. Gavin had a lot more work to do to create the back of this one. You look at it and until you catch the text to the right of Billy Ripken's name you'd never guess it wasn't authentic. Nice work.

And a quick glance at each of the other cards Gavin supplied. Hometown Heroes Brooksie. 

A Topps Brooks card from 2003.

I actually stumbled across the picture Topps used for this one. Check it out:

Notice anything? Yup, Topps flipped the picture for the card. Look at Brooks' uni number on the card. And the 'Bird' on his cap. And his glove.

2016 Die Cut Brooks. At least I think it's a 2016. I didn't scan the back. Heck half the time I can't even read the backs of these things to figure out the year and set. I did mention that I'm 64, right?

Above is a Panini Cooperstown card of him. Below is the jim Palmer from the same set. I thought I had these. Nope. But I do now.

Jim Palmer's card from whatever the 2003 set or subset it is. Like the Brooks card above my scanner cut off some of the white border. Unlike the brooks card the photo isn't reversed.

And finally the only dupe in the package. This is from last year's Archives set. I really like this one. Brooks in the '53 style. One of Topps' better efforts I believe.

Thanks Gavin. I really appreciate the cards.

Five Years Of Five Tool....

...and a momentous birthday!

Five years ago today I began this blog. I'm pretty sure at the time I hadn't realized that April 2nd also marked Billy Pierce's birthday. And today would have been his 90th. He died in July of 2015. I'm glad I was able to correspond with him while he was still able. RIP Billy.

I'm involved in a Twitter 'thing' called the 30 Day Baseball Card Challenge and ironically today's task was to tweet a certified auto of a favorite player. I think I own five Certified sig cards, four Pierce's and the Bobby Locke I pulled from Heritage last month. So I tweeted the Pierce I liked the most. It's the 2002 shown above. Here are the other three:

Other stuff:

I'm a devoted reader of the UniWatch blog. I've seen it referred to on other blogs so I know I'm not alone in this. Today UniWatchers were asked to pick the 'perfect' baseball card. The guest author who did the lede had some criteria, not all of which would sync with mine, but that's the beauty of card and memorabilia collecting. If we all liked the same things it would be a dull day reading though everyone's blogs, no?

It's probably no surprise that my choice would be the 1978 Topps Eddie Murray rookie. I've posted it numerous times. It was the first card I posted, exactly five years ago today. Here it is again, just because. Funny thing...had I not gone looking for the Murray image I never would have realized that this was the date of my first post. The Circle of Life and all that.

And finally I'd like to say thanks to the folks that read and comment here. I know I post a lot of stuff that isn't everyone's 'cup of tea' as it were. But all I can do is follow my own interests and hope someone else enjoys it too.

Most of all I want to say that the absolute best thing about blogging is that I've made so many friends that I otherwise would have missed out on knowing. It's a great community and I'm glad to be a part of it.

BTW...Happy Opening Day!!

Batman Sketch Cards

Like a lot of things about the hobby sketch cards were new to me when I came back to collecting a few years ago. In fact I was clueless about them until the Kickstarter Mars Attacks re-boot that came out in 2015. I had no idea that such things existed. Or if I did they hadn't really registered with me.

But the Mars Attacks Occupation set advertised them and when I got mine as part of my 'buy-in' I thought they were a fun addition. I ended up filling one binder page with them. It was interesting to see the different approaches the various artists took.

At the time I began looking around at other sketch cards but I found that unless you are a fan of whatever pop culture phenomenon is featured the interest isn't there. I grew up reading some comics. Batman, Superman, Archie, and a few war-based comics like Sgt. Rock, etc. But comics were not an obsession like they were with a lot of my friends.

But I was a Batman fan. And I still am. Someone had a few inexpensive sketch cards on their blog a few weeks back and I got to thinking that maybe I should try to find a few sketch cards of the Dark Knight.

I low bid on these two and picked them each up for about the price of a '17 Topps hanger pack. Maybe I'll try to fill a page with low cost Batman cards.

Ellyn Acord is the artist of the one at the top. D B Ellis drew the one below. Two different interpretations of Batman. Both very nice. Neither artist has much of a net presence to speak of although I found an abandoned blog that Ellis maintained many years ago.

I have a few bids in on a couple of others. As I typed this I came up with a plan: fill a page with Batman sketch cards with a total budget of $75. I'm at $12.50 at this point. Game on.

WHA Hall of Fame cards

I've been on a Houston Aeros/WHA kick lately. I think it began with Shane posting a Gord Labossiere card on his Shoebox Legends blog. He ended up sending me a dupe of that card and in the meantime I've been chasing Aeros cards from 1970's sets.

I also came across the WHA Hall of Fame site. I had no idea such a thing existed. The museum has an online store and one of the items intrigued me. It was this small (10 card) set that included a couple of Aeros cards. One being the Mark and Marty Howe card shown. At $5 each the set is a bargain and I bought a couple.

Having the Howe clan play in Houston was a big deal at the time. As the card notes the father/sons combo was a pro sports first. Now that the minor league version of the Aeros has moved on there is very little hockey awareness in the city outside of a midtown hockey bar my sons and I frequent and maybe a Stanley Cup Finals watch party around town depending on who is playing.

Ron Grahame is the other Aeros card in the set. He followed Don 'Smokey' McLeod as an Avco World Cup winning goalie in Houston. I once got him to sign an Aeros' program at a 'Meet the Players' event. His success here wasn't a fluke. He played well in a stint with the Bruins after leaving Houston.

The set also included a card of the Avco World Cup, the WHA's championship trophy. I have a good friend who was working for Foley's, Houston major department store at the time. The morning or so after the Aeros won their first title he passed by the store's loading dock and there sat, all alone and unattended, the trophy. It was destined for an in-store promotion/celebration for fans that day. Meanwhile the huge shiny thing was bidding it's time about five feet from the busy downtown sidewalk traffic along Dallas Street. I always told him he should have just lifted it and put it in his car. What a souvenir that would have been! Hard to picture the Stanley Cup in that situation.

This promo from the WHA-HoF shows the whole set and saves me from scanning them all.

The other famous WHA trio is also pictured on a card. The Winnipeg Jets' "Hot Line" of Ulf Nilsson, Bobby Hull and Anders Hedberg is shown together on this one.

This past fall the Jets honored their WHA heritage with a night honoring that trio.

The WHA was a blast back in the day. I'm having fun putting together a checklist/wantlist of Aeros cards. It's great to have a project.

Two Hockey Greats

When Shane posted his "I treated myself" 1957 Parkhurst Jacques Plante on his Shoebox Legends blog three weeks ago I said to myself "Self, you need that card."

And I went out and found one. It's not quite as nice as Shane's copy appears to be but it's not bad at all. This is the only time I've ever seen Plante referred to as 'Jake'.

Plante of course is the first guy to routinely wear a goalie mask in the NHL. That began with an injury he suffered in 1959 at Madison Square Garden. I hadn't realized it was the result of a feud he had with Andy Bathgate. The story is written up here if you're interested. I was a young hockey fan having seen my first live NHL game about that time and I recall the huge deal that was made of Plante's mask in the New York media. 

There are some wonderful Parkie Plante cards. Check them out. I may have to pick up another one or two at some point.

I hate stepping on Shane's toes with a posting of a card he recently showed so I'll also add a scan of a card I had stuck away in a binder with hockey inserts and oddballs. It's a '76-'77 OPC Gordie Howe. I decided not long ago to try chasing Houston Aeros cards. I was happy to find that I already owned this one. The bad news is that I had already purchased another one since I hadn't found it in my hockey stars binder. Ouch.

Looks like being off-center is more the rule than the exception on these.

My Aeros collection is off to a nice start, btw. I got a COMC delivery today and last week I got a small oddball set from the WHA Hall of Fame. Once I update my wantlist I'll post it.