2024 Series Custom Card Giveaway: Duck Race Winners

A couple of weeks ago I finally posted about the series of custom cards I designed in 2024. Better late than never, because it gave me the opportunity to create another giveaway. (And a duck race.) The first five finishers of the race would win a custom card of their choice from the 2024 series.

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 (TCDB: jaywigley)

Tom (Batting Out of Order)

jlcre2003 (TCDB: jlcre2003)

RJ Sahl (TCDB: rjsahl)

POISON75 (S.R. '75 Cards)

Rod (Padrographs)

Matt (Cards over Coffee) 

Matt (Diamond Jesters) 

Sean (Baseball Cards In Japan)

Red Cardboard (Red Cardboard)

Mark (The Chronicles of Fuji) 

Derek (TCDB: CollectorTBNL)

 

 

Twelve competitors. Five prizes. That means you have more than a 40% 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 5 finishers at the end of the video.)

Wow! That Batting Out of Order duck really turned on the jets at the end. And full credit to Fuji, who somehow managed to make it into the top 5 after blowing a tire around the 19-second mark.

Anyhow, as shown in the scroll-down list at the very end of the video, here are the top five ducks:

(1) Tom (Batting Out of Order)

(2) Rod (Padrographs)

(3) Red Cardboard

(4) Jay Wigley

(5) Mark (The Chronicles of Fuji)

Congratulations! All five of you will receive a custom card of your choice from the 2024 series. Here's the list again. Click on each card to see what they look like, and to read about them. Then make your selection.

Standard Set 

1956 Jerry Seinfeld

1956 Cosmo Kramer

Beastie Boys In Action

The Jimi Hendrix Experience

The Princess Bride

Mel Gibson Film Stars

Top Gear Future Stars

 

Sitcom Subset

The Golden Girls

Married with Children

Seinfeld 

 

If you're a winner, just let me know which card you'd like in the comment section.

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!

2025 Series Custom Cards: PRINTED (Plus a Giveaway)

Did you think all of the "2025 year in review" content out there on the internet was finally over?

 

Well, think again!

 

You're looking at a collage of the custom cards that I shared on the blog in 2025 (or thereabouts—some were actually created in 2024). Here's the list:

 

Standard Set 

1956 Jerry Seinfeld

1956 Cosmo Kramer

Beastie Boys In Action

The Jimi Hendrix Experience

The Princess Bride

Mel Gibson Film Stars

Top Gear Future Stars

 

Sitcom Subset

The Golden Girls

Married with Children

Seinfeld  

So, that makes 10 cards total, which is not quite up to the usual Nine Pockets numbers. However, I did create quite a few one-off customs for clients throughout the year, and I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out, so that's a plus.

 

Here's a closer look at a card front and a card back:

The Sitcom subset received special card backs that more closely resembled the style of the original set. Here's an example:

 

 

Those are always fun to do.

And as always, I'd like to get some of these cards into the hands of you fellow collectors. So let's do a giveaway.

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. If enough folks enter, I'll award a custom card from the list above to the top 5 finishers. (Feel free to share this giveaway with other bloggers and collectors who might enjoy it.) Winners will get to choose which custom card they'd like.

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, June 21st. Then I'll close it out and get those ducks ready to race. Results will be posted here on the blog on Sunday, June 28th.

  

Thanks so much to all you readers, fellow collectors, and fellow bloggers for spending some time here at Nine Pockets. You guys continue to provide great inspiration and entertainment, and I look forward to holding the giveaway and getting these custom cards out to the winners.

 

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!

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.

2023 Series Custom Cards: PRINTED (Plus a Giveaway)

The title above does not contain a typo.

 

This post is indeed about the custom cards that I created and printed in 2023. Normally I'd have showcased each of the 2023 cards here on the blog throughout that calendar year, and then had a summary and giveaway at the beginning of 2024. But here we are, four months into 2025, and I'm just now getting around to it. I guess you can say things have been busy in a good way.

And 2023 was a pretty good year for custom cards at Nine Pockets Headquarters. Let's look at the list:

 

1956 Elaine Benes

Thundercats Team

Mumm-Ra Team

Stevie Ray Vaughan In Action

Red Hot Chili Peppers

1973 George Costanza

1973 Elaine Benes

1973 Seinfeld Comedy Stars v1

1973 Seinfeld Comedy Stars v2 

New York Jets Superbowl III Champions

D-Generation X Future Stars

 

Classic Film Subset

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

The Breakfast Club

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

 

   

That makes 14 cards total, which is exactly the same number of customs I created the previous year. I'm happy with that.

 

Here's a closer look at a card front and a card back:

 

To keep the brand going, I used the same template that was used for the card backs from previous years, changing just the ink color. 

 

2019 = dark gray

2020 = indigo blue

2021 = maroon

2022 = green 

2023 = dark gray

 

I figured four colors was enough, so for 2023 I looped back to the dark gray color. (Spoiler alert: The 2024 custom cards continue the pattern, and they're indigo blue.)

Some of the cards, like the classic film subset, received special card backs that more closely resembled the style of the original set, like this one.

 

 

 

Those are always fun to do.

The 2023 cards are available for sale in my eBay store, but just as always, I'd like to get some of them into the hands of you fellow collectors, free of charge. So let's do a giveaway for the first five commenters.

Here's what to do:

(1) Find one card you'd like from 2023 list above. (Click on the links to visit the original blog post for each card.)

 

(2) Leave a comment that includes your card choice, plus one consolation choice just in case I'm very low on stock.

 

(3) If you haven't sent me your mailing address during a previous giveaway, or if your address has changed recently, please email me with that information. A link to my email address appears on my blogger profile page. You can also contact me on TCDB.

 

And that's all you have to do. 

 

Thanks so much to all you readers, fellow collectors, and fellow bloggers for spending some time here at Nine Pockets. You guys continue to provide great inspiration and entertainment, and I look forward to getting these custom cards out to you.

Winner of the Chili Peppers Custom Card Giveaway

Alright everyone, it's time for the results of the Red Hot Chili Peppers custom card duck race and giveaway!

 

Here's the list of contestants who entered within the one-week submission window, plus links to their associated blogs:

 

 

Mark (The Chronicles of Fuji)

Gavin (Baseball Card Breakdown)

Crocodile (Crocodile Sports Cards)

Matt (Diamond Jesters)

Jon (A Pennysleeve for your Thoughts, My Kind of Nonsense)

Wilson (Tenets of Wilson)

 

In the original Chili Peppers post from a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that if 10 or more people entered the contest, I'd not only give away a card to the winner, but also a card to the second- and third-place finishers.

Unfortunately, only six people entered, so that offer is off the table. But we'll still have a good time. And 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. 

 

This time it's a little more complicated, because if Matt or Jon win, they're going to defer the prize to one of the other contestants. I've explained this to the ducks in a way that ducks can understand, and they've assured me that there will be no tomfoolery going on. I trust they'll give us an honest race, because they're honest ducks and they race hard.

 

Anyhow, 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.

Wow! Jon motored out to an early lead and held it for a while. Then Fuji, Diamond Jesters, and Crocodile all made a late push, but what a burst of speed from Crocodile at the bottom! Congratulations, Sir.

 

Here's your prize:

 

 

I don't think I have your mailing address, so please contact me. You can find my email address on the blog here, or you can message me through TCDB here.

Congratulations again to Crocodile, and thank you all for participating!

A Red Hot Custom Card (And a Giveaway)

I suppose the title of this blog post could be a little cryptic.

But if you happened to have music or rock bands on your mind, you might have guessed where this was going.

 

It's the Red Hot Chili Peppers on a custom card!

 

Design-wise, the 1974 "rookie" template worked very well, as it provided plenty of room at the top for the band's full name. And the red color seemed the right fit, for obvious reasons. 

 

As for the personnel, I had to go with John Frusciante as the guitarist—although that takes nothing away from the other guitarists who've been part of the band, like Hillel Slovak or Dave Navarro.

Regardless, because the templates I use for these customs are usually taken from sports trading cards, something I try to do with these posts whenever I can is to tie sports into them. And in this case, there's a pretty cool sports tie-in.

 

Did you know that the Chili Peppers teamed up with tennis star Andre Agassi to make a Nike commercial back in 1991?

 

Check this out!

 

 

 

Man, that was such a fun time for American tennis.

And the fun kept going and going after that. Andre Agassi won his first major championship the following year (Wimbledon, 1992). He won 8 majors in all, the final one coming at the Australian Open in 2003. He collected 60 career ATP tour titles from 1987 through 2005.

 

As for the Chili Peppers, they've created 13 studio albums, starting with their self-titled release in 1984. Their most recent releases were in 2022. It's impressive to me that the band has written hit songs and maintained a certain amount of freshness across all those years.

My favorite Chili Pepper era spans the late-80s and early '90s. (Think Mother's Milk and Blood Sugar Sex Magik). I do like the Californication (1999) and Stadium Arcadium (2006) albums as well, but they just can't hold a candle to that earlier stuff.

I think it's because to me, the Chili Peppers are guys that should just never get old. And I know you can say that about almost any rock band that ever existed. We tend to remember rockers when they're young, and full of raw energy. But I don't know. Maybe that's not always the case. I mean, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards don't need to be young, right? I don't necessarily picture them as young guys when they come to mind. Anthony Kiedis, however? Somehow I always see him as that young punk up there on the top left of the card.

In any case, I'm glad to have some copies of this card in hand now, including a few extras. And here's a question for you that has a Chili Peppers–themed answer:

What am I going to do with one of those extra copies?

 

The answer:

 

Give it away, give it away, give it away, now!

 

(How many of you saw that one coming?)

 

Last year I tried the fun and goofy duck race to choose the winner of a giveaway, and that seemed to go over pretty well with readers. So I think I'll do that again. And just like last time, all you have to do to enter is leave a comment below. If you have a favorite Chili Peppers song, add that to your comment as well.

I'll start out by offering one custom Chili Peppers card to the winner of the duck race, but how about this? If at least 10 people enter the giveaway, I'll award a Chili Peppers custom card to the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place finisher.

Sound good? 

 

Alright. Get to it, then. Comment below. You have until next Sunday, January 12th, to enter. After that I'll close it up and get the ducks ready to race.

 

Thanks for reading, as always!

Winner of the Nine Pockets Wax Pack Giveaway

Alright everyone, it's time for the results of the Nine Pockets wax pack giveaway!

 

It was a pretty good turnout, with 14 of you entering the giveaway within the designated one-week period. Here's the list of contestants, plus links to their associated blogs or TCDB profiles:

 

 

Johnny (Johnny's Trading Spot)

Chris (The Collector)

Nachos Grande (Nachos Grande)

Jeff Laws (My Sports Obsession)

Elliptical Man (The View from the Third Floor)

Matt (Cards over Coffee)

Jon (A Pennysleeve for Your Thoughts, My Kind of Nonsense)

Tom (The Angels, In Order)

RJ Sahl (TCDB: rjsahl)

Mark Zentkovich (TCDB: mzentko)

Vrooomed (TCDB: vrooomed)

David (TCDB: BucCollector)

jlcre2003 (TCDB:jlcre2003)

Sportzcommish (TCDB: Sportzcommish)

 

After the sign-up window closed, I entered all the names into a special randomizer called the Duck Race. If you haven't seen it in action, 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.  

 

 

 

 

What a finish! 

 

Here's your prize, Mr. Grande:

 

 

 

I don't think I have your mailing address, which means we've never sent each other cards before. Could that be right?? In any case, please get in touch via email or TCDB and send me your info so I can mail the wax pack out to you.

 

Congratulations again to Nachos Grande, and thank you all for participating!

 

PS: Let me know in the comment section if you enjoyed the duck race as a method of choosing a giveaway winner. I wouldn't mind bringing it back for another run at some point in the future.

2022 Series Custom Cards: PRINTED (Plus a Giveaway)

Fun news from Nine Pockets Headquarters:

 

The 2022 custom cards have arrived!

I finished the year with a total of 15 unique custom cards on the official Nine Pockets checklist, which is a solid number for me. And that doesn't include the special sets: There was the 8-card rock band set, the 6-card Blazing Saddles set, and the Mets broadcasting team card, which had three related short prints. That brings the total to 33, which is a new high.

Here's a closer look at a card front and a card back:

 

 

 

 

 

To keep the brand going, I used the same template that was used for the card backs from previous years, changing just the ink color to distinguish this year from the others. (2019 dark gray, 2020 indigo blue, 2021 maroon, 2022 dark green.)

The special card sets received custom card backs that more closely resemble the style of the original set, like this example. 

 

 

 

Those are always fun to do.

The 2022 cards are available for sale in my eBay store, but just as always, I'd like to get some of them into the hands of you fellow collectors, free of charge. So let's do a giveaway for the first 10 commenters.

Here's what to do:

(1) Go to my custom card gallery and find two cards you'd like from the 2022 list. The only unavailable cards are the Adam Richmans and the Mets Booth short prints (orange, green, mint).

 

(2) Come back here and leave a comment that includes your two card choices, plus one consolation choice just in case every single commenter wants the same two cards and I start running out of stock.

 

(3) If you haven't sent me your mailing address during a previous giveaway, or if your address has changed recently, please email me with that information. A link to my email address appears on my blogger profile page. You can also contact me on TCDB.

 

And that's all you have to do. 

 

Thanks so much to all you readers, fellow collectors, and fellow bloggers for spending some time here at Nine Pockets. You guys continue to provide great inspiration and entertainment, and I look forward to getting these custom cards out to you.

A Prize Package from The Retro Network

As an '80s kid, I enjoy the occasional reminder of my youth. A cassette tape. A sporty yellow Walkman. A flashing "12:00" time stamp on the front of a VCR. An old Scholastic book. An issue of Highlights magazine. A rinky-dink battery-operated handheld video game of some sort. 

 

So when I came across a YouTube channel last year called The Retro Network that seemed to share all of these things and more, I started watching some videos and subscribed.

 

And when the channel ran a giveaway a couple of months ago, I figured I'd enter. It was easy enough. I just had to like the video, be a subscriber, and leave a comment that included a specific hashtag.

 

Well, as you can tell by the title of this blog post, I won the giveaway!

 

Have a look at the variety within the prize package that made it to my front door last month:

 

 

 

 

First up, a couple of branded stickers. Thrift Store Horde is a monthly series on the channel where the hosts—Jason, Kevin, and Adam—take turns showing off their recent hauls from local thrift stores, antique malls, and goodwill shops. It's always a combination of cool, wacky, funny, bizarre, and rare.

 

 

 

 

Next up, a collection of wax packs. But not just any wax packs. The giveaway was the culmination of a video series on the channel called "Grossest Cards Ever", and boy are these wax packs ever examples of that. Baseball's Grossouts, Trash Can Trolls, Grossville High, and so on. (Not shown in the photo is a more recent pack from a set called "Pukey-mon".) I haven't opened any of the packs yet, and I think I might keep the grossness sealed for a while.

 

 

 

And here are the two big stars of the wax pack portion of the prize: Original Garbage Pail Kids stickers! 3rd series and 6th series. I'm definitely keeping these sealed. They provide an instant dose of nostalgia for me.

 

 

 

Next up, more grossness. A brand-new copy of Monopoly—the Garbage Pail Kids version! I had no idea this existed.

 

 

 

Here's a shot of the back. Instead of keeping this for myself, I might be sending it to my young niece and nephew—as long as their mom and dad allow it. They've already got a dinosaur version of the game called Dino-opoly, as well as a fishing version called Fishin-opoly. Can they handle a third, gross version? Not sure. But if they do, I know they'll ask me to play it with them.

 

Next up is the big, awesome, totally rad, not gross portion of the prize package.

 

 

 

A Trapper Keeper! This is one of the reissues that have come out fairly recently, and it sure does bring back memories. In elementary school I had a Trapper Keeper with a red Lamborghini Countach on the front. I'd say the design on this new one is just about as cool.  

 

 

 

Here's a better look at the car from the back of the binder. I'm not sure how I'm going to utilize this yet, but I do have a small collection of Garbage Pail Kids stickers from my youth, and they're already in nine-pocket pages. Maybe I'll transfer them to this binder.

 

But first I'll have to clear out what's inside, because this brand-new Trapper Keeper wasn't empty. 

 

 

An original-style Trapper Keeper folder!

 

 

 

 

 With more surprises inside. That Superman comic is from the early '80s.

 

 

 

Followed by yet another folder with even more surprises. The Indiana Jones comic is also from the early '80s. As for Jackie Chan Adventures, that was an animated series that aired for a few years in the early 2000s. I enjoyed it—especially Jackie's uncle, who was referred to only as "Uncle".

And finally, there was one more surprise at the back of the Keeper.  

 

 

 

 

 

A Garfield book! I've already had some fun flipping through this one, and it might be headed over to my niece after I've finished. I think she might like the humor and the illustrations.

 

 

And that just about does it. Big thank you to Jason, Kevin, and Adam for running the giveaway. I'm overwhelmed by the generosity.

 

If any of you have enjoyed the nostalgic vibes you've found here, I hope you'll stop by TRN TV and give them some support.

 

In the meantime, what's your favorite portion of the prize package? Share in the comment section, and thank you for reading, as always.