One card only - Gypsy gold from 2012

I had been feeling a little bit down recently but my mood was lifted last week when two fellow collectors contacted me separately on the same day to each show me a card and ask if I would like it. One of those people was Laura, the t-shirt designer who created the .394 t-shirt I am wearing in my bio pic to the right there (if you are looking at the web version of this rather than the mobile version!) 

Laura has created a few Padres-themed t-shirts, including a "Slam Diego" design, which I was wearing on Wednesday to watch the first game in the Padres' double-header against the Rockies, when Victor Caratini hit a grand slam! You can check out more of Laura's designs here.

Card Number 675: Topps Gypsy Queen gold frame parallel, 2012; #252

This card is numbered 252, like the base card, but there were actually only 100 cards given the 'gold frame' treatment.

I had wanted this card for a while because I wanted to talk about Topps re-using images on cards. I knew this card set used the image that had appeared on Tony's Topps card from 1988.

The Gypsy Queen version has been sharpened in photoshop, but the equipment in the dug-out and the people in the crowd are the same. 

I'd like to be able to claim that I spotted this all by myself, but actually it's because I saw the card designs next to each other in an image of an auction lot on eBay. I 'borrowed' that image as a reference and have kept it for several months waiting for the opportunity to use it.

That picture shows what the regular base card looks like. This is a 'gold frame' parallel, which means there is literally a gold card frame stuck on the front of the card in a decoupage style. It's hard to see on the scan but that gives the card added depth and makes a real nice effect.

Based on my research, I think the framed versions were included in the 'value packs' which contained 3 packs of Gypsy Queen cards and 3 framed parallels. The gold were the most common framed card. There were also blue-framed cards serially numbered to 599 cards, and black-framed cards that were released in a print run of one card each (known as 1/1s).

There were lots of variations in this set as well, so there are two variants of Tony's base card and two variants of the 'mini' version of his card. There don't seem to be any variants of the framed cards on Trading Card Database, but even so that adds up to a lot of different versions of this card for collectors to tray and track down. It's also a good illustration of the 'bloat' that has happened in terms of total cards released for a given player. 

The back of the card is sllightly dull in comparison. At least it wasn't complete gibberish like the cardback the previous year.

"He paced the NL..." is an odd phrase. Maybe the cardback writer felt "led" was a bit too boring a word to use on a boring cardback.

And now an added bonus. I said I had been feeling a bit despondent recently. When I opened the envelope and took the card out there was a little post-it note on it with a cheerful message. It really made my day!

I hope that however this blog post finds you, you find the time to look for rainbows when it rains.

Total: 675 cards

Saturday diversion - card art by Dave

I'm not showing an actual card today, because I wanted to post about a 'virtual' card that Dave sent me. Dave has a blog called Baseball Fans Only, and recently published an article about my Tony Gwynn collection. 

We also batted around a few ideas for a 'beginner's guide' to collecting baseball cards. It's a huge topic to try and summarise. (Maybe we need a 'beginner's guide to writing beginner's guides about collecting baseball cards'!) Dave gave me a co-author credit on that article although he did almost all the work.

One of Dave's other interests is creating 'virtual baseball cards', and he sent this to me a couple of days ago.

The BFO logo in the corner stands for Baseball Fans Only. This really reminds me of some of the recent Diamond Kings inserts because of the colour scheme. For example, the flashback card from 2019.

Obviously, the actual card from Panini is devoid of logos, which means Dave's card has a bit of an edge.

This isn't the first card-art I've received, of course. I had a Christmas card off Laura (of Laura's Clubhouse) with a doctored 1994 Topps card on it. This still makes me smile.

So that's a slight diversion for today. I'm very excited about the card I get to show you tomorrow!

Happy Christmas!

I was going to take a break from blogging over Christmas, but Laura, the talented first lady of the UK baseball card collector's Facebook group, sent me a very special, unique Christmas card that I decided to share with you today.

That's an adapted Topps card from 1994 - the year Tony achieved his .394 batting average. It made me happy, I hope it makes you happy too.

Enjoy the rest of your Christmas Day!

Saturday shout out - Hello Laura!

I want to give a shout out to Laura, who I've met through the Baseball Cards UK Facebook Group. Laura has her own YouTube channel, LJ's Clubhouse. She's also run some box breaks for group members.

Laura is a keen Yankees fan, and really likes Derek Jeter. (Who doesn't, really? When all is said and done, the man is a legend.) She is also the person who screenprinted me my .394 t-shirt, as worn on 9 May to commemorate Tony's birthday.

This photo was taken next to a park in Grangetown in Cardiff. Baseball was historically a really important game in Cardiff, as can be seen in this photo from 1953, when Grange Albion played Penylan at Roath Park Recreation Ground at the bottom of Penylan Hill.

The Roath Local History Society estimates a crowd of about 6,000 people turned up to watch the game.

Anyway, Laura is the person who made me the t-shirt as a bespoke print (See her other work here.) She is also the person who sent me the two Tony Gwynn Cards I'm going to profile today.

Card Number 98: DonRuss Diamond Kings, 2019, #37
I have a few Diamond Kings cards in my collection. I like this as a photorealistic painting, rather than a portrait.

Unlike other Diamond Kings releases, I can't see an artist's name on this. There's no information about the artist on the back, either.

There is an interesting factoid though, about how, as a kid, the Gwynn brothers practised their hitting using figs instead of a baseball.

Card Number 99: DonRuss Diamond Kings Flashback, 2019, #DKF-TG
This insert is from the same set.

It's a similar photorealistic painting with a nice border. This is a handsome card and shows that Panini era DonRuss cards can actually be very attractive.

The back is similarly clean and classy. The definition of a 'Crowning Moment' seems to be Tony's call up to the Bigs. What this misses out is that Tony wasn't the first choice call up from Hawaii that season. Alan Wiggins was called up a month before Tony because his batting average was quite a bit higher. Then Tony went on a streak and a month later, when another gap opened up in the roster because of injury, he had improved his average to .328.

So, a big shout out and thank you to Laura for these cards. Tomorrow we hit the century of cards on the blog!

Total: 99/394