REVIEW - 2012 Gypsy Queen

Welcome to my second product review here. I skipped Heritage* since the design is the same as 1963 and there were only a few inserts to mess with. That means Gypsy Queen is next up on the docket.
*For the record, I really dig the 1963 design so I think Heritage is a winner this year. My only gripes are peripherally design-related (Rookie Stars variations? No thanks.)

So far, I've only opened a blaster and a rack pack, so I don't have an example of everything in-hand, but I've seen enough pics online to have a good understanding of the designs.

Starting with the base design, it's definitely more ornate than last year. They've added some of the flourishes from last year's inserts onto the base here. All of the info has been moved to the bottom. The Gypsy Queen 'logo' is bigger but somehow blends in a little more. That's probably due to the gold neutrals on gray. There may be a little less real estate for photos, but the shots seem to be closer and more intimate, so that's an upgrade in my eyes. Comparing this year's to last year's really makes the 2011 design look pretty drab and dull. Off to a good start with the base set.

Unfortunately, the SPs this year are photo variations instead of just high-numbers at the end of the set. Right now, the problem is you only know you have an SP if you happen to pull two of the same card number but different images, like I did up there with Ian Kennedy. I'm sure eventually it'll be common knowledge which is standard and which is short-printed, but it's kind of annoying at the moment.  Not only that, there are now 50 less players with a card than there should be.

A couple of parallels here are the Framed Paper. There are also a blue version and a retail-only brown version, like the Ripken here. Also a black 1/1 version for some reason. It's up in the air whether these are any nicer than last year's copper/bronze and green. There are also a lot of on-card autos which look really nice on this card stock and design. The white fade on these is the least noticeable on any auto card I've seen lately.

Minis this year come in regular (gray), black, green, and sepia. The black look really nice with the leather brown flourishes. The sepias also work better than the 2011 version.

The Hallmark Heroes insert features all-time greats while Future Stars returns with up-and-coming players with bright futures. Both have blue borders, which is kind of a strange choice. Also, the logo situation on both bugs me. For the Hallmark Heroes, that shade of gold on the logo is way too light compared to the darker gold around the photo frame and the text on top. And on the Future Stars cards, not having the GQ logo centered at the bottom is really distracting since everything else is symmetrical but that.

The homerun insert this year is called Moonshots. (Hey, that sounds familiar...) The purple border is surprising and works pretty well. I like the asymmetry, especially compared to the centered-ness of every single other card in GQ. The Glove Stories design is really plain and boring. There's just not a lot going on with the photo frame, especially compared to every single other card in GQ. Maybe its the fact that leather color is too similar to the gold used for that frame. Something closer to the gold on the GQ logo here would work a little better. And what's with the cropping on this image of Mays? Why they felt it necessary to show the outfield wall and keep him so small is beyond me.

The last insert is Sliding Stars, which is kind of like this year's Sticky Fingers in that it focuses on a part of the game that doesn't get a lot of attention on cards. Also, they're both the only horizontal design in both their respective sets. This is a pretty cool design that leaves a lot of space for some great photography. The elements that do enter into the frame don't impose too much, so there isn't much obstruction on display.

Last year, we saw the Gypsy Queen inserts. This time around, they've featured the Gypsy Kings, a mythical baseball squad. Again, they have auto variations, though I don't really get why they have fictional characters sign autographs. Oh well. It's a fun little bit of A&G without going overboard.

Rounding out the set are the hits like the Indian Head Penny and Relics that do a really nice job of adjusting the base design to incorporate the memorbilia. There are also the framed mini Relics and Autos that are exactly the same design as their full-size counterparts, only smaller.

All in all, the 2012 version of Gypsy Queen isn't all that different from the 2011 version. They seemed to have made some improvements here and there without really downgrading anything, so I'd consider that a success. It definitely feels less like a rehash of A&G like I was thinking last year.

Base cards: 4/5
Parallels: 4/5
Photography: 4/5
Hallmark Heroes: 3/5
Future Stars: 3.5/5
Moonshots: 4/5
Glove Stories: 2/5
Sliding Stars: 4.5/5
Gypsy Kings: 4/5
Indian Head Penny & Relic: 4/5
Minis: 4/5
OVERALL: 3.73/5

The Who's on first, Mike Watt's on second: 2012 Spirit Headliners

I have 3 main passions in life: sports, design and music. (If I had a fourth, it would probably be fast food... I've said too much.)

Since you're reading this blog, it should be pretty obvious where the first 2 merge. Baseball card design is exciting for me. Even as a kid I would scribble out new card designs with a box of Crayola thin-tipped markers and some 3x5 index cards. The black would always go out first so I'd have to make some bold color choices after that. I assume this is how the 1990 Topps and 1991 Donruss designs were mocked up.

As for the latter, there's no better synergy of design and music than the gig poster. From their humble beginnings as xeroxed flyers on colored paper stapled to everything in sight, gig posters are now beautifully artistic receipts for those rock shows you won't be able to replay in your head once the ringing in your ears is gone. Or, more accurately, they're works of art that help to visually explain the music, if not literally then figuratively.

My wife got me a few gig posters for Christmas (the Avett Brothers, Superchunk and the Decemberists) and it planted an idea in my head. 'Wouldn't it be cool if I could combine all 3 of my passions into a singular product?' Just as gig posters commemorate the date of sometimes transcendental rock shows, why not give transcendental baseball performances a similar treatment?

Hence the birth the Headliners insert set. There are a couple attributes to this set that are very unique and potentially revolutionary. First of all is the artists. Within the gig poster world, there are quite a few remarkable designers. Mikey Burton, Aesthetic Apparatus, A. Micah Smith, Rob Jones and the Heads of State are a few of the all-stars and some of my personal favorites. The idea would be to get 15 different artists on board and have each of them design an original screenprint commemorating one of 15 different notable baseball performances like Thome's 600th homerun, Jeter's 3,000th hit or Verlander and Liriano's no-hitters. Things that made 'headlines' during the 2011 MLB season.

The set would be one of the most unique in memory, with 15 different artists and their 15 different styles on 15 different designs for 15 different events while all being cohesive in concept. As popular as Dick Perez's Diamond Kings cards were in the 80s & 90s, they got pretty stale. This would inject some new life into the baseball card illustration platform.

For proof of concept, I went with the two designs you see above: Pujols' 3-homerun display in Game 3 of the World Series and Ervin Santana's no-hitter. While the designs are different, they each incorporate some of the elements you'll see in a lot of gig posters. Hallmarks such as 2- or 3-color inks, intentional mis-registration (ink overlap), halftone patterns, and grainy ink coverage. While you won't find those on every gig poster, they're definitely oft-occurring characteristics that scream 'gig poster.'

What I think puts this set over the top into awesome sauce is my next idea: a redemption parallel. That's right, two of the most loathed things in current card collecting world. But hear me out. For the parallel part, it's not just the same card with 5 different colored borders and shrinking print runs. There are only 2 versions: the standard card and the redemption card.

Most people hate redemptions because it takes forever before you get the actual card in-hand and a lot of times, it ends up being something different than what you were supposed to get. Those are two things you don't have to worry about with this set. The redemptions are for one of 150 screenprints of each design. Those will be delivered by each artist before the cards can even go to print. So basically, you get the card and redeem the code on back and get a 22x28 screenprint (/150) of the same design, signed by the artist.


What do you think? Good idea or great idea? Unique card designs, redemptions for full-size works of art, expanding the market for baseball card collectors. I'd love for Topps to steal this idea from me.
Well, maybe not steal. I'd be willing to trade the idea for a job with them.