100th Custom Card Giveaway Results

A couple of weeks ago I celebrated the printing of my 100th custom card, and gave all you kind readers and collectors a chance to enter a duck race for a prize. The first six finishers of the race would win a copy of that 100th custom, featuring good ol' George Costanza.

I was happy to see that 12 people entered the giveaway within the entry period. That's a good flock of ducks!

Here's a list of the competitors, and a link to their blogs or other trading card–related social media sites if they have any:

Jay Wigley

Mark (The Chronicles of Fuji)

Greg (Night Owl Cards)

Mr. Nachos (Nachos Grande)

Mr. Crocodile (Crocodile Sports Cards)

Gavin (Baseball Card Breakdown)

Rod (Padrographs)

RJ Sahl (TCDB: rjsahl)

Matt (Cards Over Coffee)

Derek (TCDB: CollectorTBNL)

Golf Coach

POISON75 (S.R. '75 Cards)

Twelve competitors. Six prizes. That means you have a 50% chance of winning one of them!

If you haven't seen the duck race in action, or don't remember it from last time, here's how it works: 

Each entrant is represented by an animated rubber duck that is sitting at the starting line on an animated river. The starting gun fires, and all the ducks begin floating randomly along the river as the screen scrolls horizontally. Eventually the finish line appears, and the first duck to cross the line wins. 

 

Yesterday I ran the script and recorded the action. Want to see how it all turned out? 

 

Play the video, find your duck, and here we go. (You'll see a list of the top 6 finishers at the end of the video.)

Wow! Gavin, what kind of motor did you have in that duck? Crocodile, RJ Sahl, and Padrographs all had nice bursts of speed at the end there, too.

Anyhow, as shown at the very end of the video, here are the top 6 ducks:

(1) Baseball Card Breakdown

(2) Crocodile Sports Cards

(3) CollectorTBNL

(4) RJ Sahl

(5) Padrographs

(6) Golf Coach

Congratulations! All six of you will receive a copy of the George Costanza card. If you've never sent me your mailing address, or if it's changed recently, please do send it to me. You can find my contact information on the blog here, or you can message me through TCDB here.

Thanks again to all of you for participating. Hope you enjoyed the race!

A Smorgasbord! 1988 Chef Boyardee

From the 1970s through the 1990s, it seemed like you could find your favorite baseball stars on food product packaging everywhere you looked: supermarkets, corner stores, restaurants, and beyond. This past year, in an effort to capture a little more nostalgia, I set a goal to expand my own collection of these "food-issue" cards. In this series I'll show the specific examples I've acquired, and share a little bit of history about the food or beverage sponsor as well. 

Previous entries can be found here.

 

 

 

School is back in session. 

The first few weeks are always overwhelming—not only for you, but also for mom and dad. They do a lot to get you ready every morning. Then once you're out the door, they work even harder. And sometimes they work late. It's a marvel that mom gets a nice, home-cooked meal together as much as she does.

But on the occasions when she can't, you do get something out of it.

Chef Boyardee!

You know it's not the best for you, but it tastes good, and you consider it a silver lining to the hectic nature of the week. And tonight, the cloud is lined with even more silver: There's a baseball card offer on the back of the can!

You read the details more closely.

If you send in 10 proofs of purchase from Chef Boyardee products, plus $1.50 for postage, the company will send you a sheet of 24 baseball cards featuring all the stars of the day. 

 

You stop and think. The $1.50 for shipping isn't a big deal. You can earn that. But then you need 10 proofs of purchase from Chef Boyardee products. Ten?? Wow.

You don't want to wish busy days on mom and dad, but man, do you ever want those cards. So for the next month you pick your spots to ask for a can of Boyardee wisely, mention the card set, and exhibit as much patience as you can. You even convince a couple of your friends to clip proofs of purchase from the Boyardee cans at their homes and bring them to you, in exchange for a couple of baseball cards from your collection.

And finally, you have enough proofs of purchase and the $1.50. Everything goes into an envelope, and you wait.

Fast-forward to mid-November, and your package arrives. You tear it open excitedly, toss aside some filler paper, pull the panel of cards out, and . . .

. . . you're less than thrilled. 

All you see are the heads and shoulders of each player (sometimes just the heads!), and the logos have been removed from their caps. On top of that, some of the photographs are a little dark. Others are grainy. Maybe you notice all of those negatives a little bit more because the 24 players are right next to each other on one big panel. So you make a decision.

You're going to separate the cards, using the perforations provided.

After you carefully do that, you stack the cards up and flip through them. Still not great, but it does feel a little better somehow. You decide to keep a few, like the Mattingly and the Ozzie Smith. But some of the others? You wouldn't mind trading them. And you already might have a taker at school.

Your trade negotiation the next day is fruitful. Here are the two cards you'll be offering up:

It's trade time. You take a look at the stats on the back once more before handing the cards over.

Not bad. The text feels a little smaller and more sparse than the standard Topps card, though. It's just one more reason why you don't mind trading them away. That's especially true because you pick up these sweet cards in return:

 

Yeah, they've still got the airbrushed caps, but at least you see more of the uniforms, and the photo quality is better. On top of that, the card design is more fun, front and back. 

 

 

  

Besides, how many of your classmates have True Value cards in their collection? Feels like a fair trade.

You put them safely in the small zippered pocket of your backpack, and head home. The weather is pretty mild, and you haven't been on the baseball diamond lately. Your schedule for the rest of the day?

• Get home
• Put Madlock and Gibson in shoe box
• Do homework 
• Show homework to mom
• Ask if you can go to the baseball field before dinner
• If yes, get changed and go
• Be back before sundown

You only have about an hour before it gets dark, but it'll be worth it.

As for the Chef Boyardee brand, did you know that the guy on the logo was an actual chef? 

 

 

The company was founded in 1928 by an Italian immigrant named Hector Boiardi and his brothers. (The Americanized "Boyardee" was created to make pronunciation a little easier for customers.) 

 

Mr. Boiardi owned a restaurant back then, and he'd been jarring his delicious spaghetti sauce in re-used milk bottles. Eventually, demand for his food inspired him to create a packaged meal kit. Along with the sauce, it included dried spaghetti and Parmesan cheese. The kit helped countless families sustain themselves during the Great Depression. As if that weren't enough, the company supplied rations to the US Army during World War II.

 

I only knew the Boyardee brand for its fun ravioli and meatball/pasta products from the 1980s. But now I certainly have a greater appreciation for the man and the company.

 

How about you readers? Ever have a Chef Boyardee product when you were a kid? 

 

Do you have any of the baseball cards from this set in your collection?

 

Share in the comment section, and thanks for reading.

100th Custom Card (Plus a Giveaway)

If you're a blogger, artist, or any type of creative person, then you'll know about "the itch". 

 

That is, the creative itch. It's the need to tinker. To doodle. To goof around. To create something.

 

You can have so much fun with the process that time keeps going by without much notice. You finish one blog post or one project, and keep moving forward with the next one, and the one after that. If you add in all your other daily tasks and obligations, it's very easy to forget to look back on the catalog of stuff you've created over time.

Well, back in 2019 at Nine Pockets Headquarters, I created my very first custom card. It featured George Costanza on the 1956 Topps design, barreling into Bette Midler at home plate. (Clean play.)

 

Remarkably, it's now six years later. And after all that time I'm still having lots of fun coming up with new ideas for custom cards and seeing them through to fruition—and printing! It's always cool to have something that you've created in a tangible, physical form.

 

So, to mark the six-year milestone, I decided it was time to take a step back and look through all of my designs. The best way to do that? 

Set up a binder, of course.

 

 

 

It contains one copy of each card I've designed, including the commissioned projects I've done for fellow bloggers and trading card enthusiasts. It's fun to flip through the pages and reflect on how the ideas and designs have changed over the years—not to mention all the work that's been put in.

 

Being a collector myself, the next natural step was to count up the cards in the binder. I knew the total would be fairly close to 100, but I wondered just how close it would be.

 

To my surprise, I'd already surpassed it! 

 

If you include checklist cards and the commissioned cards, the number is 144. (Add some digital-only cards, and it's a bit higher.) Even if you remove those from the equation, the total still reaches over 100.

 

Fist pump.

But as exciting as the milestone is, I can't ignore the fact that I missed the chance to celebrate it in real time. So let's fix that.

 

First thing to do: 

Try to figure out which specific card design was the 100th.

For a while, I couldn't decide whether I should go with the 100th card I finished designing, or the 100th card that I actually printed out. Each of those options would produce a different result.

 

Eventually I figured I'd go with the 100th card that was printed. But looking through my order history reminded me that I always try to have a few different cards printed at the same time, to save on costs. I was able to narrow it down to one small batch of cards, but there's no way to know which card in that batch was the exact 100th to be printed and cut. (D'oh!)

 

In any case, here's the small batch:

 

And although there's no way of knowing which of these four cards was the actual 100th to roll off the printing presses, I decided to designate this one with the honor:

Choosing Mr. Costanza is fitting in a "full circle" kind of way. As I mentioned earlier, the very first custom I created also featured Georgie Boy. 

Second thing to do: 

How about holding a giveaway to help celebrate?

The first idea to cross my mind was to give away one copy of each custom card I've ever designed. And as fun as that would be, it's just waaay too big for my britches. I don't have nearly enough of a following to give away that many cards. Not even close. So, let's do this instead: 

 

We'll celebrate six years of designs by giving away one of the Costanza cards shown above to six different participants. 

The duck races that I've held for a couple of previous Nine Pockets giveaways seem to go over pretty well with readers, so I think I'll do that again. But this time, the top six finishers will be the six winners.

To enter the giveaway, just add a comment to this post. That's all you have to do. I'll keep the entry period open through next Sunday, September 21st. Then I'll close it out and get those ducks ready to race.

 

With this milestone now officially in the process of being celebrated, I'll turn it over to all of you creative folks out there:  

 

Have you hit any milestones lately, be it through blogging, creative work, card collecting, or anything else?

 

Share some good ones in the comment section. And here's to more milestones for all of us!

PS: Feel free to share this giveaway with some other trading card bloggers and collectors out there. I want to make sure we have at least six participants.

Trading Card Detective: Al T's Top Hand Bat

Here's a 1987 Fleer card featuring a rather unenthused and weary-looking Mike Fischlin. 

 

1987 Fleer #98, Mike Fischlin

Maybe he just finished a vigorous training session. (We'll give him the benefit of the doubt.)

After all, have a close look at the bat he's holding. It's painted blue, and looks like it could almost be aluminum. And what's with the text? 

 

 

It appears to be labeled "Al T's Top H..."

Well, I've done some research. The full name of this product is Al T's Top Hand Bat.

What is Al T's Top Hand Bat? 

A hollow aluminum bat with a sliding weight top hand, developed by Al Tetreault of the Switch Hitter Baseball School.

I found a different model for sale online. Look here:

So you see? Mr. Fischlin could have indeed just finished a session with some sort of training aid.

They're prevalent in sports—and have been for a very long time. Some of them work well. Others are much more gimmicky, and are likely to make you even more frustrated than you were before. Because of that, some athletes are reluctant to try them, opting instead to stick with tried and true drills and some good ol' self motivation.

 

To quote Roy McAvoy from the film Tin Cup: training aids are "paraphernalia for lost and desperate souls." 

But I suppose when you're trying to stick around in the major leagues, you'll try whatever gadget or training device will help keep your batting average above the Mendoza line.

 

So could Mr. Fischlin have been a proponent of Al T's Top Hand Bat, or have been sponsored by it? And if so, did he consciously make sure to get the logo into the photo as a way to endorse the product?

It wouldn't be out of the question. Plenty of players make sure to show equipment trademarks or logos when they pose for baseball cards. And Fischlin is from California, where the Top Hand Bat company was located.

 

Regardless, by the time the 1987 Fleer card shown above was released, Mike Fischlin had signed as a free agent with the Atlanta Braves, and his career had all but come to a close.

He did stick around the majors for 10 years, however, playing partial seasons at shortstop, second base, and third base. He suited up for the Astros, Indians, Yankees, and Braves.

Here are his career totals:

941 AB, 109 R, 207 H, 29 2B, 6 3B, 3 HR, 68 RBI, 24 SB, .220/.291/.273

Fischlin's best season was 1982 in Cleveland, where he set career highs in games played (112), runs (34), hits (74), doubles (12), batting average (.268) on-base percentage (.351), and slugging percentage (.319)

More than respectable. Perhaps the Top Hand Bat played a small part in his success.

Now a question for you readers and athletes out there: 

Have you ever tried a training aid or gadget specific to the sport you played? Did it help?

Share in the comment section, and thanks for reading!