A Nice Day For Some Artwork

I spent some time cleaning up around my card room last weekend and found some Project 70 art cards that I bought over last year that were worthy of a post. I picked up a few of these back at the start of the 2021,  but the Project 70 cards have not held my interest as much as the Project 2020 cards from two years ago. Some of the artists are the same between the two projects, with plenty of new artists mixed in, but it felt like there were a lot of similar card subjects.

If you are a Yankees collector or Fernando Tatis Jr., there are a lot of cards. Cardinals and Durham Bulls collector? Not so much?  

I did not check-in with the new designs on a daily basis, so maybe there are a few good cards that I am missing out on, but these were the four cards I ended up adding to my collection during the past year.  

First up is an Ozzie Smith card by Shoe Surgeon.  As you can guess, the Shoe Surgeon is a guy who customizes shoes. His rates are a little step, otherwise I would send him my canvas Nikes I wear to school and get some cool 4th Grader customization. Back to the card. I like the play on the movie "The Wizard of Oz" on this card. It's a no-brainer with Ozzie Smith, but I am honestly not that many card companies have made that connection over the years.  

The gold path and the Emerald City/St. Louis skyline mash-up are the best elements of this picture. Not sure about an emerald Arch, but I am willing to let it go for this card. The action shot of Ozzie in front is a nice touch as well. Are those flying monkeys around the Arch? The cloud picture on the right-side looks like the play where he cleared Lenny Harris. 

This happened in the early 1990s. Lenny Harris went into second base half-standing trying to take out Ozzie. Pretty impressive given the fact that Ozzie Smith was not a very big guy.  

I checked out the other cards that the Shoe Surgeon has made for Project 70. Seems talented, but I am sticking with just this Ozzie Smith. He would be one of the artists who went for a lot of really common and repeated subjects.  

Next.  

It appears that there were not many current Cardinals players included in the Project 70 set. I am not really surprised. Arenado has two cards, but one is a dual card with Red Sox third baseman Rafael Devers. I really like this card with him pictured as both a Cardinals and Rockies player with the Arch in the background. A Cardinals only card would have been better, but I don't really have much of a problem with the Rockies. All of their good players end up in the Cardinals, right?  There is a lot of purple here, but I like the overall concept of the card.  

Mimsbandz is another new artist for Project 70. He actually has some really good artwork and I might have to pick up a few of his other cards. There are a lot of really great 1980s players featured in his artwork. Yes, a few Hall of Famers, but also a lot of personalities from the decade along with great of the era types. There will definitely be some more Mimsbandz cards on my blog at some point in the future.  

The next two cards were both made by a favorite artist from the Project 2020 cards, Efdot.  

Beyond enjoying the artwork made by Efdot, he also picked some different players out for his Project 2020 cards. Yes, I think he made an Ohtani, Trout, and a few Yankees players, but also some players who probably do not get enough attention. Tim Anderson seems to be one of those players. Flashy and exciting, but he's also made the All-Star team and won a batting title. There is a lot going on at the top of this card with the black background and white doodles over the top.  Efdot always has a lot of "Easter Eggs" in his art work. It's fun to stare at these cards sometimes and see what you can find. A few old White Sox logos, an L train, a 2005, the fireworks pinwheels from the Comiskey Park scoreboard, etc.  

Efdot is also one of the few Topps artists who made cards of Negro League players for the set. Even as Major League Baseball has worked to claim the players and their stats as part of the past history of the game, it still feels like the great Negro League players are completely underrepresented with baseball cards. Love the art work here with the high leg kick.

The 1942 on the bottom of Satchel's shoe is for the year that the Kansas City Monarch defeated the Homestead Grays in the Negro League World Series. The Grays were led by Josh Gibson, the best power hitter, while the Monarchs were led by Paige, the best pitcher. The Grays apparently had Satchel's number and always got the best of him when the teams played.  

The highlight of the series took place in Game 2 when Paige entered the game in relief with two out in the seventh inning and the Monarchs leading 2-0. The first Grays batter tripled. After a mound visit from his manager, Paige walked the bases loaded to face Josh Gibson. There are different stories about how the at-bat progress, but they all end with Gibson striking out to end the inning. The Grays lost the game and were swept by the Monarchs. 

The Retail Card Aisles of Northern Michigan - Part 2

On the previous post, I shared a few of the cards that I picked up while visiting my in-laws in northern Michigan. The card aisles of the two large box stores in town, Meijer and Wal-Mart, both had more packs of cards than I have seen living outside of Raleigh during the past year and a half to two years.  

A quick refresher. 

 

The Meijer card aisle is on the left, Wally World on the right.  

For this post, I am just breaking the cards into brand rather than by location purchased.

First up is another pack of the Panini Chronicles cards. Again, I am still confused as to whether or not these cards all come from a single set or they are different sets packaged together. I don't care enough about Panini to research the answer and I fear it's a rip off of the 1998 Donruss Collections product.  

If you don't know that one, the card manufacturer Pinnacle re-released all of their Donruss and Leaf products at the end of that year, but they put some foil finish on the cards. In my opinion......

I have three highlights from this pack of cards. 

On the left is Akil Baddoo. I saw him with the Tigers this summer and enjoyed his style of play. I am looking forward to picking up some more of his cards this year. More Akil later in the post. 

In the middle is Clayton Kershaw. This is the same style card as AJ Puk and Gregory Polanco cards from the previous post. Again, the card has a nice finish on the surface and the thick card stock is always a plus. The Pete Alonso is another acetate card, but it's different from the three in the previous post. Are the acetate cards supposed to have variations like the Topps Tek cards?  I love acetate baseball cards, but the line pattern on this one is boring.  

Next up is a few cards from Topps Archives. I have really become torn on this product in recent years. Topps has gone completely overboard with reusing former designs in current products. At some point they are going to completely ruin the Topps Heritage product. However, for the moment I still really enjoy the autographs and a few of the inserts in this product. Topps does come up with some nice cards here.  

Topps did a really good job of picking out photos for the 1970s players. Not a Nolan Ryan fan, but good job putting him in an Angels uniform. Dick Allen and Mike Schmidt have great 1970s hair. The uniforms in the picture are an added bonus. The red version of the White Sox uniforms is underrated. I felt like the 1970s players had the best looking cards in this year's set.  

Next up is a pair of Movie Poster inserts. These are really neat.  

Most of the cards are team themed, like the A's card on the left. However, I do really like the Black Aces poster card.  The black and white photo with the red background really pops. The term "Black Aces" was coined by long-time Indians and Twins pitcher, Mudcat Grant. There are players who fit Grant's description left off of the card. One of those players was Grant himself.  Give credit where credit is due.  This would be a better card if Grant had been included.

Just my two cents.  

I did not land many Cardinals cards in my packs of Archives. My only two options were Lou Brock and Paul DeJong. I am sorry, but Paul DeJong is a no at the moment.  

Lou is an easy choice.  

My favorite Durham Bulls card....

I am going with this Evan Longoria insert, but let's talk about this card for a minute. This is card is the direction that Topps should take the Archives set.  This is a modernized version of a 1989 Topps Big card. They were a kid-friendly oddball set released that ran for several years. 

This is the original design.  

Topps always uses past oddball designs for insert sets in Archives. They should just make them the base set design for the entire product. Small change, but it would help to preserve the former flagship brand designs for future Topps Heritage sets. Again, just my opinion.  

Onto the last group of cards. These are out of the Update Series. I got two of these box toppers.  

I like the Satchel Paige card.  Big Papi.  Meh.  

I also ended up with two more Akil Baddoo rookie cards. Did I mention I hate when Topps overuses former designs?  I am going to ignore that for the 1986 Topps card on the left. That is a good looking baseball card.  

I also picked up a pair of Luis Patino rookie cards. He has been my go-to Durham Bulls player of sorts during the past year. However, the card on the right is a little ridiculous.  

Topps made Rookie Debut cards for a handful of players in the 2021 Update set. Read the small print there and you can see that Luis Patino actually made his Major League Debut in August of 2020. He was traded to the Rays in December of 2020, started the year in the Minors, and was called up by the Rays. I get the card on the left since Patino was both traded and called up to the Majors in the past year. I do not understand why he is getting a Debut card from a previous season.  

Favorite Cardinals cards.  

Ignore the previous comments about Topps reusing old designs here too.  The Molina has a Chrome finish, Arenado and Carlson are the regular card stock. I love the 1992 Topps cards. 

Favorite former Durham Bulls players in this set....

I am going with Blake Snell and Jake Cronenworth.  Easy choice.  

That's it for the card aisle.