HanRam & Nick the Stick Sketch Cards
Enough talking about being an artist. Time to be about being an artist. Or something.
Field of Cards asked me to do a Mick Markakis sketch card as part of our upcoming trade. Here that is:
Nick Markakis sketch card.
Trying to not be too hard on myself because it seems to make friends really uncomfortable, but I really shouldn’t have even inked the face at all (it was last second decision, added after I already colored it… oops). I think that weird spot on his forehead by teh eyebrow is rogue eraser junk, btw.
And here’s the Hanley, requested by Wicked Ortega:
Hanley Ramirez sketch card.
Still seeing things that aren’t quite right (you try drawing their f***ing logo that small!), but I’m a little happier with how HanRam turned out. Didn’t overdo the face ink so bad & managed to blend colors a little bit.
Anyway, hope they are to you guys’ liking. Picked up some fresh sketch cards, so I guess I can try again on Markakis if he isn’t good enough. Will send ‘em out… eventually. Seriously though, I’m ready to trade whenever you guys are and have most of your respective cards in order.
Oh, and congrats to the Wicked one on recently surpassing one year of card blogging excellence! Here’s to many more. 
Project S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: The Centerpiece
Yaharr, feel the heat.
Ah yes, Project S.T.AL.K.E.R., my excuse to be a perv. 
Seriously though, I picked up a cool card that is now the centerpiece of my Brooke Morales collection. Behold!
It's a sketch card! A really big one.
Pretty cool, huh? It is 4″x5″ and is encapsulated in a extra large top loader. I was surprised to get it for less than $20 shipped, but that $15-$20 range seems to be about the going rate for these when they actually come up for auction. I really like it, though I can’t help but think that, given the chance, I could do some cards on par with most of the Bench Warmer sketch cards that I’ve seen (and most of what I’ve seen is very good!).
Yes, I just made a statement of confidence in my abilities that might border on arrogance. And I meant every word of it.
What do you mean “Who am I and what did I do with the real Lonestarr?”
Seriously though, the portraity-type drawing is the one thing I think I might have something resembling legit talent in (check the portraiture stuff at my deviantART gallery to see what you think), so I’d love the chance to do Bench Warmer & maybe topps baseball sketch cards someday. Well, I’d love to do any kind of sketch cards for any company, but the Bench Warmer and baseball and stuff like that I think I could do well immediately. My other stuff could still use a lot of work (I’m still fairly new at this after a loooong hiatus, after all).
Wow, sidetracked much? Sorry about that. I’m gonna shut up now & get a little more sleep. Gotta be well-rested, there’s a sorta important game on later. Enjoy the hawtness and catch y’all later. Who Dat!
The back of the card at the top.
It’s the Super Bowl, man! We’re gonna need a lot more Zubaz!
Trading Roll Call!
I’ve been slacking off on the blog of late, as you may have noticed. My focus is waning, but I digress…
Now that I’m not broke again though, it’s time to get my head back in the game, if only enough to send out some cards. Here’s everyone I owe/want to send cards:
The Great Sports Name Hall of Fame
Play at the Plate- Contest Grand Prize
Collective Troll- Contest Booby Prize, maybe other stuffs.
Field of Cards- Not entirely sure, but I was asked to do a Markakis sketch card as part of the trade. That’s cool.
Sharp Since ‘92- You still want some A&G minis??
The Mojo Hand- Holliday Refractor!
drewscards- Pena trifecta completer and other stuff undetermined
I think that’s everyone, but if I forgot someone, let me know please.
In addition, I have received cards from Night Owl, Baseball Card Stuff, and Old School Breaks’ Group Break. I might get around to doin’ up proper posts on them one of these months.
Right now though, I just want go to sleep for about the next 16 hours… *sigh*
Oh, here’s a pic, cuz I can:
D-Wade Murad Mini
This is my sleeve. Notice the heart on it…
2008 Donruss Threads Baseball Box Break & Review
Get excited, it’s finally time to do a box breakdown. This is for 2008 Donruss Threads Baseball, if you didn’t catch the title of the post.
I’m sure there’s plenty of reviews & stuff out there already, so I’ll make the summary bit short & sweet.
24 packs per box
5 cards per pack
4 hits per box (at least two autos)
Threads is all legends and prospects with nothing in between (though being from 2008, some prospects have already made their MLB debuts), so if you ain’t down with that, I’ve got two words for ya: DON’T BUY.
Not being licensed by MLB, there aren’t supposed to be any MLB logos or team names anywhere on the cards, but the attempts to remove them from the photos are often half-hearted at best, though some are fully removed. Overall, lack of team names and weakly obscured logos don’t detract from things, though the fully removed ones are slightly jarring if you’re paying enough attention to notice.
As you can see, any partially obscured team names are left alone, and most hat/helmet logos are half-assedly dealt with at best.
The design is pretty decent I think, and I like how deep into the legend barrel they dug to pull out Frank Howard and some others, including Hall of Famers, that you unfortunately rarely see on cards nowadays. It definitely allows this set to tap into a bit of the epic fun factor of the topps Archives & All-Time Fan Favorites sets from the early aughts. It’s nice to see Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe too.
O hai
The short set is 100 cards, and there are 120 per box, of which about 14-15 will be inserts/parallels (more on that shortly). That leaves room for a few duplicates in every box, but you should still be able to complete the set. Not so fast my friend. I came up well short of the finish. I haven’t gotten around to collating it yet, but I think I came up at least five cards short of the complete set.
Aparicio & Trammell, just because...
Now then, the regular inserts and parallels. You are promised 10 per box, one each of the following: Diamond Kings, Century Stars, Century Legends, and Green Century Proofs. The other six are a random assortment of the above, as well as #ed base parallels, College Greats, Dynasty, Generations, and I guess Baseball Americana. With six being random, there’s a good chance you won’t pull everything. I didn’t get any Baseball Americana or Generations in my box, whereas Drew from drewscards pulled two Baseball Americana, but no Generations or Dynasty inserts. I pulled one of the latter.
Century Legends Duke Snider & Ernie Banks (Keeper!), and Century Stars Nolan Ryan
The Century Legends are designed to look classy, and the Century Stars are designed to look fun I guess. Both succeed.
Bob Feller base parallel #ed 15/100
My awesome base parallel pull.
Pulled three Diamond Kings. Nolan Ryan and Ernie Banks are #ed /250 because the Threads logo is shiny I guess. :d
There are a crap-ton of Diamond King parallels, starting at /250. Fuller is the regular base version, which isn’t numbered. They used the same picture for Mr. Cub’s Diamond King and Century Legend (The two Century stars I pulled share the same photo as the players’ respective base cards, as well). The photo recycling thing is annoying to start with, but within the same set? Pathetic. Come on, man! And for the love of pizza, quit using the same picture of Joe Morgan already!
How many freaking times has that same picture of Joe Morgan been used with various cropping and/or filtering since the beginning of the '00s now??
It’s a cool card & all, but that picture’s been used on seemingly every single Joe Morgan card made since 2000. Ask Field of Cards about that. Poor guy’s haunted by that image. He was even in attendance for my live box break on Jtv when I pulled this.
Halman Green Century Proof /250 & Molitor College Greats..
Halman came out of the pack in bad shape, with a dinged corner damage along the bottom edge. Disappointing, and the damage will continue…
Emilio Bonifacio /1874, Keaton Hayenga 1/100 (woohoo eBay 1/1!), and Ryan Patterson /775 sticker autos..
Bonifacio was pretty beat up right out the pack, and Hayenga wasn’t minty fresh either, which is unfortunate because it’s the first time I’ve ever pulled the first or last of a print run.
Now, you see I pulled three autos. There were two game-used cards, so that means I pulled an extra hit. Donruss was always cool like that. Getting more than promised seemed to be the rule rather than the exception for them. Here’s my other two hits:
Century Stars Dale Murphy jersey /100
My weak link of the box. Dale Murphy would be a really cool pull usually, and I guess he kinda still is, but considering how great the legend checklist is, this is probably one of the weakest possible legends you can get. And, this is the only legend hit I got. Oh wells.
Time for the grand finale!
Madison Bumgarner game-used something?... /100
Even at full size it’s kinda hard to see, but there are two parallel grooves in the swatch running the length of the swatch vertically. I dunno what the deal is, but the swatch is super thick too. It’s practically bursting from the window. Whatever the case, I’m calling this a patch… err, being Donruss, Prime Jersey (which is probably more accurate than calling most special swatches a “patch” anyway), until proven otherwise.
Now for grades.
Price: A This is a great product at under $50. It’s fun and there’s a fair chance at a great pull.
Condition: C I think only the three cards were noticeably damaged, but they were kind of important ones.
Pulls: B Bonifacio has made it to the majors already but not been great. Hayenga has potential. Patterson is going on 27 and hasn’t made the show yet, though he might be decent if he ever does. Murphy is cool but a weak legend. Bumgarner is easily the hit of the box. The regular inserts and the Bob Feller parallel are what bring it up from a C to a solid B.
Fun: A+ This was easily the most fun I’ve ever had busting a box of cards. I may get another box of Threads in the future.
Final Grade: Solid B It has it’s flaws, but it’s just a fun product. You’ll be close to the complete short set even if you do get too many dupes, the regular inserts are fantastic, there’s pretty decent big hit potential for the price, and it all looks pretty good, sticker autos aside. There is much to like here.
Thanks for reading. 
Until our next…
Three Cards
First, I’m not sure I ever got around to sending BigD my address (if I did, it totally slipped me wonky lil’ brain), so I don’t know how this even got here, but here’s an ‘09 Sweet Spot Shin-Soo Choo. Nice to give one of my most underdeveloped player collections a little love. I think this is only my fifth or sixth Choo. Now to get working on that Pablo Sandoval collection (I think I only have one, and it’s missing!).
I really like this picture for some reason...
A word of advice if you are going to send a single card in a plain white envelope: Only use the thinnest top loader. This was in I think just the next size up and still didn’t fit the sortything apparently, because one side of the envelope was all crunched up up to edge of the top loader. Cool card though. Only my second of the ‘09 set I think.
Next, I sent Shot Not Taken the Jason “Mayhem” Miller relic plus a a few guys for his PCs. Here’s what I received in return. Two very nice cards to kick off my newest player collection, Deron Williams!
Yeesh, dirty scanner is dirty. :/
The Bowman was just a nice bonus. This is the card I wanted for Mayhem. I was an Illini fan from about 11 or 12 years old through when Deron and Luther played there and made that run to the title game. Fun times.
Lurve this dual jersey card. The design is good, and white swatches are almost tolerable when offset by a swatch of another color.
Okay, I’m done blogging for today. I needs to sleep some more. Had been doing fairly well for awhile again until yesterday/today. I look forward to more trades with Ray and a first one with the BigD in the near future.
Dos vadania, comrades.
Still Here…
Just didn’t feel like signing in for awhile because it’s annoying. I picked up a few cards on the ol’ eBay in the few days I’ve been away, including my first Griffey game-used!
In other news, the only others news is that I’ve most just been drawing quite a bit and watching artcasts. Still without TV, which sucks because I’ve missed so much interesting crap in recent days (all the late night nincompoopery and the second episode of Human Target), but it’ll be taken care of soon enough. The artcasts are fun though, and I’m learning a lot. I even set up a channel on ustream to do my own sooner or later, since most artists seem to be there rather than Jtv.
In the last three days, I’ve drawn 9 new sketch, six of them have been inked. They are… the whole A-Team, Fred McGriff and a not quite realistic but still pretty good likeness apparently of Conan O’Brien cuz I’m with Coco, baby! Ahem, yes. The just drawn ones are Duke, Lady Jaye, and Shipwreck of GI Joe. I made a list of about 20 Joes I want to do cards of, though a few of the lesser-known ones on the list I might not get to due to lack of reference.
Anyway, here’s two more of the six previously finished cards for y’all, since I don’t have the NSFW one edited yet.
SPAAAAACE GHOOOOOST!
Not too bad I guess. I don’t enjoy coloring that much though, and I’m definitely not good at it yet. But I’m tryin’.
Cybersix sketch card
I dunno how I missed the greatness that is Cybersix back in the day. Still can’t get skin shading right to save my life. Must find the patience to try to blend colors like I did when I first started doing stuffs. I’m regressing like Joe Flacco. Dang… :/
Okay, I’m outta here. There’s more sketch cards to be done! I’ll see about getting those box break posts up over the weekend.
Seriously, signing in is so annoying…
It’s Sketch Card Time!
Heyo.
I was able to get out and do some more scanning last night, woo. And my timing was good, the other two Brooke Morales cards were waiting for me when I checked my mail on the way out, so they got scanned as well. I cut my hair too, so I’m not longer able to chew on my bangs. Yes, they were seriously long enough for me to chew on… >.>
Yes I cut my own hair too. Poor people gotta do things on they own sometimes. I’m apparently not too bad at it though, so why not. Can always buzz it down if it doesn’t take.
Anyway, I replied to Dinged Corners that I’d scan my latest sketch cards over the weekend. So here are three of them. These are three of the four guys they created so the SuperFriends wouldn’t be all white (didn’t finish El Dorado yet). If only they remembered to give them pants… Alas.
On… to the cards!
Apache Chief
The Chief came out fairly well, hands aside, but as with all three, it looks like there’s a bit more coloring I could do (I’m not going to let myself though). Coloring is such a pain, I always seem to forget some detail. :/
Black Vulcan
I totally botched Vulcan’s lips & his nose is sorta lopsided. Live & learn. I never could wrap my head around the whole throwing an actual lightning bolt thing, though I almost regret not going with that instead of the charged up hands now, not that they look too terrible.
Samurai
I thought this was my worst sketch of the three, but I freaking love how the coloring turned out. I’m reasonably sure that 侍 means samurai, though I’m far less confident that I wrote it acceptably. Still think it all looks pretty cool, heavy-handed penciling that I couldn’t quite erase all the way aside (hands & arms, the legs are intentional & weren’t erased at all). I have started working on my touch, but not till after I did this one. And this card didn’t want to come out my brain very well, so yeah…
That’s enough for now, more to come soon. An avenging spirit from the final frontier, my latest unhealthy obsession with a fictional character, and one that ain’t quite safe for work (it’ll be censored on teh blog, but not dA).
Oh, and Human Target was awesome in that ’90s syndicated action series way that I mark out so much for.
That’s all for now. Home dawg needs his sleep. Seeya. 
Until our next…
Trade With Marie
So I finally got around to sending card stuffs (most notably that Ticket to Stardom Pujols Ticket stub) to Marie in December, so she sent some cards back. As it turns out, that is how trading works.
Anyway, here are all the cards I didn’t have already:
Starting off strong with numbered Zambrano and Ichiro and an awesome Rogers Hornsby insert...
The Riot and a couple of sweet '08 Sweet Spot base cards. I think I like 'em even better than the '09s. David Ortiz... now that's a real athletes body right there. Cool to get him since it doesn't happen very often anymore.
The good baseball playing Hoffpaiur on old school SP-style. Much like refractors and holograms, one can never have too many die-cuts.
Finally, the hits:
Ryno with porn stache and Aramis Goodwin Champions jerseys. Awesome!
I actually got the same Aramis from my Secret Santa at almost the same time. I thought it might be karmic retribution for contemplating selling the Pujols after offering it to Marie, but there are at least four reasons that doesn’t make sense, none that are worth going into here. And although facial hair is a pain in the butt (for my lazy arse at least), cards depicting Ryne Sandberg with a ’stache never, ever go out of style. Love the ivy behind him too. That is so cool. About as perfect as a card of a Cub can get.
And that, was an awesome trade.
I’m gonna be so sad if Hawk goes into The Hall as an Expo, but if the Cubs don’t retire his number regardless, I’m totally jumping ship for a year-and-a-half like I did when they traded Maddux when I was little, I’m just sayin’.
I’m serious man, I’ll totally do it! >=/
