by Matt | Jun 13, 2017 | Cards, Personal
Matt “Doc” Perry, Creative Idiot, Texas
I had seriously considered not publishing this at all. Part of me feels like it’s the trading card equivalent of magicians secrets. In the wrong hands, you could use these notes to create fake cards and to scam people out of real money.
That was a major concern, but I’m a creative person, and by nature I enjoy sharing with people. My enjoyment in creating something overrides my hesitations about people using this for nefarious purposes. Much like guns can be used for good, they can also be used for evil, and in much the same way so can knowledge. I don’t mean to make this sound ridiculously grandiose. It’s not. They’re little pieces of plastic and cardboard. However, in researching all this, I found a very purposeful and distinct “we don’t talk about this” among the card community, especially among people who create custom cards. No one wanted to discuss this. I couldn’t decide whether people were simply keeping it for themselves, or if in some altruistic way they thought they were preventing fraud in the card community. I don’t want to dismiss the later, but I also don’t agree with keeping secrets in what is essentially an art project.
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by Matt | May 25, 2017 | Cards
I really enjoy watching knuckleball pitchers in general. So when Steven Wright joined the Red Sox a couple years ago I was excited. I knew he was one of only a few pitchers actively throwing a knuckleball. Actually, I think at the moment it’s just two, Wright and R.A. Dickey. Regardless, the card industry took it’s sweet time making any Wright cards. He had a 2006 appearance in Bowman products (RC in Chrome, auto in Sterling and a base card in Bowman Heritage), but that was it. Three cards (and some parallels) in just that one year.
He was traded to the Sox in 2011, had appeared in several games, but was never on a card until last year. 2016 Heritage High Numbered was his first Red Sox card. Appearing in the All-Star game last year finally bumped him up into card checklist status and his first Sox/Topps autos appeared in Topps Tribute over the winter. Unfortunately for Steven, 2017 didn’t start off well and he just underwent knee surgery. His season is done, but the silver lining for card collectors is that his card prices are at an all time low. I was able to pick up four awesome autographs for less than $10 total.
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by Matt | May 22, 2017 | Cards
I don’t pretend to know how everyone else stores cards, I’m sure everyone has their own system. For me, since my primary goal is year-to-year team sets, I use binders and pages, and that seems to work out fine. It also means that binders get the majority of my attention. As a result, that also means I don’t put “hits” in said binders. I have “shoebox” style monster boxes instead. I’ve filled up three of them (the 3000 card variety) so far with random Red Sox cards… with little to no organization, unfortunately. I was putting some cards in one of the boxes and realized I was dealing with this…
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by Matt | Apr 21, 2017 | Cards
I’ve been having fun lately with my customs. It started as a way to create cards for sets that should have existed. Missing players, deeper rosters, that sort of thing. Not every set can have 700 cards, but my imaginary additions can fill in the gaps. Then it sort of evolved into this exercise of creativity whenever I was lacking it. My day job is that of a web designer, but I’m only actually “designing” a new site every few months. The rest of the time is the actual building of a site, adding content, manipulating text, changing code, adding links, that sort of thing. So, while editing CSS all day can be rewarding within a finished product, it doesn’t really get the creative juices flowing. There’s only so many times I can spec “Raleway, 15pt, #2A2A2A” before it gets redundant.
Every once in a while, I need to take a break and do something creative. I think it’s a good exercise for just about anyone. Even if it’s not creative, strictly speaking, everyone should find a little time to do something they enjoy.
So, once a month or so, I’ve been working on custom cards. I also realized I hadn’t shown any (except my Fire redesign) since the 2016 Olympics cards. Enjoy, and click the previews to enlarge!
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by Matt | Apr 12, 2017 | Cards
I’ve been on a bit of a Mookie Betts kick lately. Awesome player, seemingly genuine human being, and cornerstone of the Boston outfield for years to come (especially if contract extension rumors are true). I’m stockpiling as many Mookie cards as I can. I’ll never be able to afford those $500+ rookie autos, but I can gobble up as many others as I can find. These are just the recent additions to the collection.
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