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Custom HOFer Auto Project!!
I would like to show off and discuss a project I have been dreaming about for years. It is finally happening and I am beyond excited. It is a long read and hopefully worth your time.
For a while now I have been accumulating a ton of HOFer autographs on every medium from cards to Perez-Steele postcards, HOF placards and multi-signed pieces. I currently have over 1,000 total HOFer autos of almost 200 different players. One thing I despise about card companies is when they take perfectly good autographed items (such as a Perez-Steele or Yellow HOF placard), chop them up, and put them into a “Cut Signature” card with minimum design elements. It seems like such a shame and a waste to ruin a piece that is already great. Now don’t get me wrong, the idea of a cut signature card is fine, but I think it should be a way to enhance an already dull presentation of a HOFer signature. Where I think this can be done the best is by using signatures from index cards. A little history lesson, as acquiring autographs became popular starting with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, many people began writing to their favorite players and requesting their signature on an index card to be returned in the SASE provided. It was fairly easy to find out where to mail the request and that information was shared among autograph hounds. Sometimes players would write elaborate responses, but most of the time it was a simple auto with perhaps an inscription like “Best Wishes” or a personalization “To Tommy, Good Luck.” Almost every HOFer can be found on this medium and for the most part are consistent. I have hundreds of these bought in huge lots from the auction houses and they were always neat, but kind of boring. What could I do to pep them up? What about creating a unique custom set? What about combining the look and feel of a beloved set from my childhood with autos of players that I could not get on that set? Hmmmm….my mind was flowing with the possibilities. I began asking several of the amazingly talented guys who create custom cards to give me their thoughts on my ideas. Several guys sent me mockups and design layouts, but nothing really jumped out at me and the cost was prohibitive. Now I am not a complete cheapskate and I am willing to pay for quality work, but keep in mind my ideas for this “set” was to have 100+ customs created and the total cost being quoted to me was enough to buy a Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Jackie Robinson so naturally I was hesitant. Why would I spend so much to just change an auto I already have instead of using that money to buy new stuff? I really wrestled with this. I also wanted to find a guy who I could really collaborate with during the process. A person who could take all of my thoughts and be the creative genius to make it a reality and have the know how to build a card that would last and not completely ruin the autograph within the card. So I finally found Mr. Jeffrey. I will let him decide if he wants to reveal himself on this thread, but let me just say that he was amazing to work with and I could not be more proud of the work and effort he put into this. More about him later. One set that I have always loved was the 1983 Donruss HOF Heroes set. It is a 44 card set with some truly great names in it. If you are unfamiliar with it, the artwork on the cards is done by renowned sports artist Dick Perez. I have long been surprised that it is such a small set. They look like this. http://sportscardalbum.com/c/4ichv1l2x450.jpg Only 25 cards of the set can be possibly signed and I have been working to get them all. I have a thread about my progress towards that here. http://www.blowoutcards.com/forums/b...o-project.html Since I love the classic look of this set I tought about expanding it to include any and all HOFers. But the only way to have autographed versions was to make a cut signature card. Jeffrey and I went through several iterations on the card design getting it to look as much like the original design. Two other elements remained; the auto and the player pictures. First the pictures. As I said before the original HOF Heroes set only has 43 players (there are two cards of Mickey Mantle in the set). And I love the artwork of Dick Perez so….wait!! What if I combine the artwork of the Perez-Steele Postcard set with the HOF Heroes set design? Brilliant!! There are already cards for every HOFer in the Perez-Steele Collection. So that was where I would get my player pictures from. Now to the signature window. Most players signed the index cards horizontally so creating a vertical card was out of the question. Sorry Jarod. We went with a horizontal window that was large and consistent regardless of the size of the actual auto. Awesome!! Now that we had a design, I sent Jeffrey the first batch of 20 idex cards for him to begin his magic. He sent me proofs for every card after he carefully adjusted each auto to fit ideally in the window. Once approved, he went onto the building process. Without further ado, here is the first batch all together… http://sportscardalbum.com/c/u70qs9o7.jpg I will certainly post each card individually once I get them in hand later this week. Here are a couple of the proofs to show the design up close. http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p...f.jpg~original http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p...f.jpg~original Here is a look at one of the backs to give you an idea on them as well. http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p...f.jpg~original Again, I cannot tell you how thrilled to have this project working. I have a several more batches to send to Jeffrey to make. I can see the set being well over 100 players. I want to send tremendous thanks to Jeffrey for his amazing craftsmanship and patience with me through the design process. I also want to thank my card buddy Jarod for encouraging me and being a sounding board as well. I hope you like them and I would love to hear what you think. Thanks for reading. |
I love it. Beautiful cards.
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Nice!! :)
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A great and unique project, you should be very proud.
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I love em! The design is top notch. Congratulations!
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As a huge fan of the 83D HOF Heroes set, this made me salivate a little. I might have missed it, as I was busy taking in all the scans, but what size are they? Normal 2.5x3.5" card size, or larger?
Outstanding idea, that is a great way to take a ho-hum 3x5 and really spruce it up! EDIT: I took a look at your thread on Blowout and thought I'd mention that technically, Roy Campanella is possible as well. He was doing the machine assisted signings towards the end of his life. It's doubtful many exist since most people opted for higher end items, as the price was around $200 each. At that time that was an unheard of price for a show graph. I have been told that they do exist though. I remember as a broke high school kid trying very hard to save enough to send that card in but fell about 50 bucks short before the deadline to have items in. To this day it's the only card I still need signed of the possible cards. |
I don't usually care for custom cards because I don't like cutting nice index cads, but those are some of the nicest I have seen. They do a very nice job of presenting the autograph.
Congrats |
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Well done. I too have been playing around with displays of signed T206 cards, but in my case I wanted to do it just digitally. I just came up with this, with a little help from the Instagram photo editor. It makes collecting a lot more personal and fun to design things with your collection!
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Good point about the Campy. I have ever seen one of them signed. They are all regular card size, but I might have to make some a little larger in the future to accommodate some of the longer autos I have. We'll see. |
Oh Paul- I'd just cut up those T206's and mount them on contemporary cards
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Moyni-
Those are amazing! I too love the '83 design and those creations could not be more perfect! |
thanks for the plug Moyni, and the rest of you for the kind words. I am glad to hear you're as excited about the project as I am.
Michael, it certainly has been fun to work on this design, and I look forward to working on the rest of your collection and making it something you can be even more proud of. If any other net54 members are interested in having some customs made, please feel free to contact me by PM. -jeffrey |
Custom Project
I really like the idea and I love the cards;they look great! I really don't like the majority of the cuts that are coming out from the card companies since they love to not show the entire auto and/or the card is just plain ugly. Personally don't like the sticker auto's as well.
Would really like to see them all up close and personal...:D |
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Neat project. I like the look of everything being that uniform design. Will make a fantastic display. Good luck!
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Those are beautiful....incredible way to display the cut auto!
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It amazes me how some of these custom cut signature cards come out. Really cool.
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Beautiful cards!! I'm doing a few with Jeffrey here coming up. Can I vote for you to get a better Whitey Ford cut though and re-do the card for your collection? :)
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What do you not like about it? |
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Great idea with spectacular looking results. Hope to see more of your progress as you progress! witster
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Nicely done. What's funny is that the card companies have all of this technology at their hands and cannot produce a cut auto nearly as nice as these.
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