Baseball Card Blogs » punkrockpaint

Star Wars: The Retro Baseball Card Set…

PunkRockPaint — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 19:22:00 +0000

I decided to milk one last card out of my decrepit laptop. I only had to restart the thing four times during the process of creating the card. What's remarkable is that in the last few months, for each project I have worked on my computer has crashed at least five times. This card is a little, early Christmas miracle:

PRP Star Wars - #43 '84 Rub Down

All I want for Christmas is a new computer...

Star Wars: The Retro Baseball Card Set…

PunkRockPaint — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 20:59:00 +0000

Easing my way back into this whole blogging thing with some low hanging fruit.

PRP Star Wars - #42 Admiral Conan Motti

Star Wars: The Retro Baseball Card Set…

PunkRockPaint — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 23:40:00 +0000

I am back from our Thanksgiving trip to Rhode Island. Since I've been neglecting blogwork lately, I decided to do YET another Star Wars card.

PRP Star Wars - #41 Bail Organa

I wonder which one I will run out of first, Star Wars characters or interesting baseball card designs?

Thorzul’s Nightmares on Cardboard

Doc — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 21:06:00 +0000

For two years straight, I did not enter Thorzul's Nightmares on Cardboard contest. Although it wasn't from a lack of trying or desire, it just so happens the spirits did not want me to enter. Not that I ever had much of a chance based on PunkRockPaint's winning entry this year, but I am still stuck with them damn cards.

I started on these cards two years ago, just after Halloween 2009. I was so impressed by the entries that year, that I thought I should give it a go. I'd already been making custom cards, and thought, why not enter?

A year later, Halloween was fast approaching. I was printing my cards and preparing to iron paraffin onto a custom made wrapper, when all hell broke lose. First, Thorzul, in his Pabst Blue Ribbon rage decided to in essence ban all 1975 Topps entries. Shit. Two, I ended up spending most of the month of October with my father in intensive care.

I was going to ignore Thorzul's "rules" because I thought he'd like the design, since I did pretty much cater to his favorites. Yet, that whole father in the hospital episode pulled me right out of collecting/blogging, and I've never really recovered from that.

Fast forward to Halloween 2011. I still have the cards. They are still sitting there wrapped in wax and waiting for the contest. Thorzul opens the entries and the one requirement is "NO TOPPS." Double shit.

I sent Thorzul an email practically begging to bend the rules. Nope, no-can-do. "Rules are rules." His classroom must be awfully close to the Governor's Mansion and all that bad mojo is corroding his wonderfully twisted mind.

In the end, I'm still sitting on a pack of custom cards that I haven't seen the light of day since late 2009. Triple shit.

Anyways, I'm sure I'll somehow be preemptively disqualified in 2012, so I'll just start showing those cards here. Behold the one and only wax pack of Terror Cards - '75 Whacks Pack Serial One in the world!

No more baseball cards…

PunkRockPaint — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:57:00 +0000

I am only making custom lunchboxes. (At least for today.)

Nightmares on Cardboard IV: Grand Prize Winner

Thorzul — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 20:15:00 +0000

Back when it was actually still October, I received a package in the mail from southern California. I haven't been the same since. Here is this year's winning entry from... PunkRockPaint!

First thing in the envelope... a mysterious box. It purports to contain an assortment of some of the greatest baseball cards ever created... and then lost. Will these be to baseball cards what London After Midnight is to film? And how much better would the experience be if John Larroquette were reading the text on the box?

Inside the box, a pack of 1986 Fleer. "Not rare at all," you say?

And before we get to the contents of the pack, we find a card of more recent vintage, a Fleer Classic Clippings card, complete with police reports form the Philadelphia Inquirer from 1985.

Oooh, serial numbered 0666/1985!
The copy tells the story of the cards you are about to see: "On a dark and stormy Halloween night, A small group of Unemployed zombies stormed the Fleer Corporate offices in Philadelphia. They took control of the design department for several hours, creating custom baseball cards. An extremely limited quantity of the cards were leaked to the public in wax packs."

It's time to sink our teeth into this pack. I'll let the cards tell the story from here on out.

#631 Don Baylor Super Star Special "Ouch!"

Meannesota Evil Twins Sticker / Roger Clemens Famous Frights

#636 Coleman & McGee Super Star Special "Carcass Ignitors"

Baltimore Poe Boys Sticker / Albert Pujols Famous Frights

Fleer All Star Team #1 Freddy Krueger

St. Louis Carcasses / Don Mossi Famous Frights

#284 Cal Raven, Jr.

Meatwaukee Chainsaw / Satchel Paige Famous Frights

#185 Frank Stein

Pittsburgh Zombie Pirates Sticker / Mickey Mantle Famous Frights

#396 Freaky Hatcher

#471 Spiked Owen

Boston Stranglers Sticker / Dmitri Young Famous Frights

Absolutely. Fucking. Amazing.

I had a few separate "Oh My God" moments, but I think it came down to the Poe Boys, Carcasses, and Stranglers stickers and the Don Mossi Famous Frights that made this entry the clear winner. I think this group even surpasses PRP's 2008 entry (although the Orlok is still my all-time favorite), and moves into a dead heat for Condition: Poor's 2009 submission. Great artistry, attention to detail (Just look at the MLB logo. I'll bet you missed it the first time through.), and a superior sense of humor. I think Mrs. Thorzul laughed the most at Freaky Hatcher, and I loved the thought of an undead/immortal Satchel Paige.

Let's show him what he's won.
First, PunkRockPaint will be getting a complete set of 2007 Topps Baseball cards. This factory set was found in a huge lot of cards I bought earlier this year. Seeing as I'd already built this set, I decided to make it part of the Grand Prize. I failed to find the rookie variations cards while collating the set, so I guess the previous owner kept those for himself. This set includes the Derek Jeter card without the Mantle/Bush "error," which has ironically become harder to find in its corrected form.

Assuming PRP already has the 2007 set (many of us do), I'm also including a couple of extras, the first of which is a 2008 Upper Deck Spectrum Joey Allen AUTO I recently pulled from one of the worst hobby boxes of all time. I had to check, since his genre wasn't exactly my thing, but Joey Allen was the lead guitarist of the legendary Cock Rock group, Warrant. Now, I realize that his name is PunkRockPaint, not CockRockPaint, but perhaps he can give this one a good home.

The final element of the prize is a DVD of PRP's choice. From right to left, he may choose from:
A. "Monsters and Madmen" Double Feature - The Brain That Wouldn't Die and Beast of Yucca Flats (two passable public domain features I already have in a box set)
B. FeardotCom, a film that mistakenly assumes that Stephen Dorff is in any way, shape, or form a leading man
C. A disc-only copy of Saw II that somehow made its way into the used copy of Saw III I bought last month

Congratulations, PunkRockPaint! And thank you to all who made this year's Nightmares on Cardboard a success. (And yes, I do realize we're technically closer to Thanksgiving now than Halloween. Next year will not be called Nightmares From a Horn O' Plenty.)

Star Wars: The Retro Baseball Card Set…

PunkRockPaint — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 02:05:00 +0000

In honor of Veterans Day, I made this card of the only pilot to fly, fight, and survive BOTH Death Star battles.

PRP Star Wars - #40 Wedge Antilles

He also kicked some ass at the Battle of Hoth. In fact, there is no record of Antilles death anywhere (at least as far as my research on Wookiepedia goes.) This one goes out to my Grandpa Pete. Happy Veterans Day! (a day late)

While I Have Been Away…

PunkRockPaint — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 00:12:00 +0000

I really should apologize for leaving you without my silly custom cards for so long... But I won't. I'll just show you one of the projects that I have been working on lately.

Completing my submission for the annual Halloween custom card making contest over at Thorzul Will Rule, took up a fair amount of time. It is now past Veterans Day, and he still hasn't announced a winner. I didn't receive an honorable mention, nor did I place third or second... So I'm thinking if he ever gets around to posting the winner, I stand a reasonable chance of finishing in the top spot. (He's a new dad, so I imagine he is just a little bit busy. Congrats on creating a new Brewers fan, from all of us at TBCB!)

It has been a while since I sent in my submission, and I really like seeing my work displayed for the public, so here is a little preview:

Front

Back

It was a minor news story back in '85. You might have missed it. Zombies took over the art department at Fleer on Halloween evening. Apparently, the zombies made some interesting changes to the baseball cards for 1986 that the living designers had been diligently preparing for the following spring. (Note: the "living" designers were only living until, of course, their brains were eaten.)

Word around the hobby campfire was that some of the Zombified cards made their way into wax packs in '86. I had not heard about them until shortly after the contest was announced. I was searching through a bargain bin at my local card shop looking for ideas, and I stumbled across the card shown above.

I decided at that moment I needed to find these so-called Zombified 1986 Fleer baseball cards to submit to the contest as my own work. It took several days of scavenging the internet, but I was able to purchase a complete pack of the Zombified cards on eBay for just under $90 (with FREE shipping from Romania!)

I'm not sure what the cards look like inside the sealed wax pack, but when they are revealed on Thorzul Will Rule, I will add a link here.

Star Wars: The Retro Baseball Card Set…

PunkRockPaint — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 01:51:00 +0000

Found a good oddball card for you today.

PRP Star Wars - #38 Sebulba

I knocked this one out while waiting patiently to find out who the winner of the Thorzul Will Rule - Nightmares on Cardboard Contest is... Fingers crossed.

Star Wars: The Retro Baseball Card Set…

PunkRockPaint — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:42:00 +0000

I felt the need to post something, so this is what you get. A bad "hit" from an awesome insert set. Of all the awesome possibilities in Red Squadron, I ended up with crappy Red Six. (I really wanted the Luke Skywalker- Red Five, or at least Wedge Antilles- Red Two.) Just my luck.

PRP Star Wars - #37 J.T. Porkins

You have to delve pretty deep into Wookiepedia to start finding characters I haven't made cards for yet. I'll try to "stay on target", and get some more custom cards made for y'all soon.