Custom Cards and a Contest

The contest isn’t mine, it’s by “Hey, That’s Mine!”  Possibly the greatest custom card creator I’ve seen.  You still have a little bit of time left to enter.  Do so here.

I promise the prize you could win will be a lot better than anything I’ve created in my past.  Want some proof?

This is your base card

It’s a little dinged up and yellowed now, but I still like it.  Let’s show the back, then we can discuss.

How'd I do? Real stats: .309 AVG, 9 HR, 9 SB, 45 RBI, 141 H. Ooof.

Back in 1992 sometime, I will assume around the holidays, my brother and I were visiting our cousin and we decided to make our own card sets.  This actually happened a few times in our history, but I could only find cards from this year’s attempt.

As you can see, this set was supposed to be 100 cards large.  I believe I was going to distribute them in packs containing 5 cards and 1 contest card.  The contest was some sort of predictor thing where you would pick one of the listed players, and if they hit a homer that week you would win something.

Making these physical cards back then was a blast and easily one of my fondest card memories.  I think my company was called Double Star initially (hence the logo near the tm), but later turned into J.C.ards.  I knew my art was bad, but it didn’t matter.  Making fun of our own drawings was part of the fun.  I didn’t care that I had to explain that Ryno is diving into the outfield to make the catch.  See the motion lines?  See the 386 marker in the outfield?

I like my card design, although it doesn’t allow for a whole lot of picture room.  The back is passable for a sixth grader, I suppose.   Do you want to see more?  How about some subsets?

Caution: Extreme Awesomeness!

Text city! Must have been tired of drawing circles with dots to make heads.

First, we see a dual-sided/dual-player card.  A true Double Star card.  Cal is jumping to make the catch, Ozzie is diving.

You might want to zoom in on the Babe Ruth card.  Babe hit the ball so hard, it grew a face and the ability to yell.  You’ll also notice a recurring theme of no fielders.  The Legends subset is the only one that wasn’t inked (to give it that old timey feel, I guess?) and also doesn’t feature the double star on the front.

The Dave Justice card is another that needs a little clarification.  It’s a Player of the Game subset, this time (as if I actually drew any others) commemorating the ’91 World series.  Here we see a disembodied head and a floating half-armed David Justice drawing a “no” symbol over the Minnesota Twins’ cap (with the slash going the wrong way).  What, you couldn’t tell?

Then we have the Dawson (no pitcher or fielders again), and then our last subset.  The All-Stars.  Human heads.  Star bodies.  Genius.  Oh, and this was 1992, so of course I had gold parallels in my packs.  My Fred McGriff kind of looks like Jimmy Durante instead.

So, yeah.  Enter Big D’s contest over at Hey, That’s Mine.  You can win a GOOD custom card.