Old glossy card yellowing

I scan a lot of cards and one thing I notice, particularly about glossy cards from the 1980s and 1990s is that the cards can yellow badly, especially on the white borders.  Here's a recent card I scanned to show the effect.

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the front borders on the front and the background on the back were actually white when I bought this card. Of course I bought this card 24 years ago.  The back of this card isn't glossy so it hasn't actually yellowed. It's more turned into an off-white color. Photoshop Elements, among other things, does a great job of restoring old photographs. It also works on baseball cards.  Here's what this card looks like after using the "Remove Color Cast" tool.

Much better.  I'm scanning cards for my own use, mainly for posting on the blog.  If I were selling this card on eBay, I think it would be unethical to post the "cleaned up" version.

I also think it would be unethical to actually try to physically clean up the card for selling or for grading.

I typically do not use any Photoshop tricks on older cards, say cards prior to 1980. I wasn't collecting cards then, so I don't have any recollection of what the cards looked like when new. Besides that, the older a card is, the harder it is to clean up.

Roy Halladay Photoshop triplet

In Roy Halladay's long 16-year career, he only played for two teams, the Blue Jays and the Phillies. So Topps didn't have too many opportunities to Photoshop him into a different uniform. They not only didn't miss that chance, they did it twice.

I just pulled this 2010 Topps card from a repack.

But Roy played for the Phillies in 2010. I already had this card.

Even better, I had this card from the Topps Phillies Team Set.

On this card, they got his uniform number correct. Also, the card back has the same photo but cropped differently. Actually, the back photo is cropped differently on all three cards.

Man, I love finding stuff like this.

Weird Photoshop Twins

Welcome to my first post of the new year. It's just a quick one.

We've all seen what I call Photoshop twin cards. That's where Topps uses Uses a photo from one card and Photoshops the player into another uniform for another card. This is most often done when the player has changed teams and a photo is not available of the player with his new team. Topps has been doing this for many years, back when air brushing was the tool of choice.

I was scanning cards from a recent repack box when I found this card.

2012 Topps Opening Day #24 Bruce Morrow

Compare to this card I already had:

2012 Topps #304 Bruce Morrow

Clearly the same photo is used for both cards. And clearly, Morrow is shown in a Blue Jays uniform in both cards. What possible reason could Topps have had to Photoshop Morrow into a different Blue Jays uniform for one of these cards?  Any thoughts? My guess is that the Opening Day card is the original as the cap in the Topps card looks a bit off. And what is that orange (red?) cap on the Topps card?

This was going to be a short post but after I finished it, the very next card I scanned was this.

2012 Topps Opening Day #150 Jose Bautista

 Compare to this:

2012 Topps #100 Jose Bautista

One card is an anomaly, two cards is a conspiracy.

Topps Photoshoping Adventures

I like this year's Topps cards quite a lot. I think they are much better than 2010 Upper Deck. But Topps is up to their old Photoshopping ways again. I've only bought a few packs of Topps Opening Day. One of the first cards was this Curtis Granderson card. My first though was that I didn't remember him being with the Yankees last year. He ended up in New York after a three-way trade involving the Yankees, Tigers and Diamondbacks.Here's his regular Topps card as a Tiger.
Here's another example with John Lackey. He was a fre agent signed by the Red Sox (a cool $82 mil for 5 years) in December.

Last year he was with the Angels. They did a pretty good job with the Red Sox uniform. You can even see a little a Red Sox patch on his right sleeve.Does this sort of thing bother you? It doesn't bother me. Topps, after all, has a long tradition of doing this sort of thing but today they are much better at it. I think it's fun to find cards like this.

Cole Hamels vs Photoshop

More Topps recycling of photoshoped images. Here's Cole Hamels on his 2009 Topps 206 Bronze card.Here he is on his 2007 Topps Turkey Red card.
Cropped differently, colored a bit differently and a different background for sure, but otherwise, I think they are the same image.

I was going to do a big post on the 206 set, but, you know, I'm really kind of disappointed. There's been talk of the back of card smudges on other blogs. Let me list what I like and don't like about Topps 206 and leave it be at that:

What I don't like:

1. Many of the cards look washed out. This set is supposed to be celebrating the 100th anniversary of the original T206 set. I own one of those original cards and even though its's 100 years old, it is not washed out.

2. The smudges. It was a good idea for Topps 2004 Cracker Jack but it's poorly done here since every smudge is the same. Were some people really fooled by this thinking they had smudged the cards. That's what I'm reading on other blogs.

3. The Bronze cards are just a total waste of space and cardboard.

4. The horizontal cards. These are not working for me, especially on the mini cards

5. Sticker autos. Really.

6. The short prints. At least they feature a different picture. I'm glad I'm not a set collector.

7. Six Mickey Mantle checklist cards but only two poses. What, they couldn't find any more photos of Mantle?


What do I like about the set:

1. The framed mini autos. On-card autos they are.

2. The framed mini relics.

3. All of the cards feature baseball players (at least all of the one's I have).

4. The mini cards. Except the horizontal ones.

Photoshop Masterpieces

I love it when I find stuff like this. Doug Mientkiewicz played the 2005 season with the Mets. He had finished the 2004 season with the Red Sox. In 2005, I think the Topps set was probably issued very late in 2004, or early 2005, before 2005 Spring Training. But here is his 2005 Topps card as a Met. How did they get a picture of him in a Mets uniform? In the old days, the answer was airbrushing which always looked pretty crude. Today (even in 2005) we have Photoshop (or other programs like it).
Here is his 2005 Topps Opening Day card as a Red Sox.

It seems likely that the picture was originally of him in a Red Sox uniform which they Photoshopped for the Topps card. Now here is what puzzles me. Topps Opening Day would typically come out near the beginning of April. If they already altered a photo to make him look like a Met in an earlier release, why did they issue the Opening Day set with him as a Red Sox?