College coaches are on my custom card radar . . . just not yet

From time-to-time readers of my blog/column and fans of my 1955 All-American style custom cards suggest that I should include coaches in my "update" set. Bear Bryant is among the most heavily lobbied-for choices.

I've also given that some consideration, and have even put aside some photos for possible use in such a subset. I just haven't made it enough of a priority to actually get started. When I do, you can bet I'll start with Bobby Bowden.

The FSU legend is on a list of "10 Legendary Coaches in College Football History," that is posted on the Best Universities website. I'm not sure that all 10 of the site's choices would make the cut for my checklist, but most are on my radar if that project ever gets underway.

Here's a link to that article: Top 10 College coaches .

French-Canadians' help needed

I'm in the final stages of creating a 1972 O-Pee-Chee style football card for Carl Weathers.

The assistance of any of our Northern neighbors fluent in Canadian French is earnestly solicited, since OPC back them had bilingual backs.

I'd like to have this translated to Canadian French: "Carl came to the Lions in 1971 after playing the previous season with the Oakland Raiders of the NFL. In the off seasons, Carl studies acting."

After poking around some on the (free) translation sites available on the internet, I am not confident that they would do the job is a manner that would not be laughable to French Canadians.

But please, don't try to stick in any dirty words, I think I can recognize most of those.

Please email your translations to me at scbcguy@yahoo.com.

Merci!

Variations reported in Mantle Punch-Outs

A report of yet another variation among the scarce 1967 Topps Punch-Outs has reached us, hopefully in time to make the 2012 edition of the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards.

The variation is, probably to the consternation of Mickey Mantle specialists, on the most expensive card in the set, i.e., the Mick.

Texas collector Al Richter, who specializes in Topps cards, including test issues and both cataloged and uncataloged variations, reports that the Mantle Punch-Out can be found with a background behind the portrait photo that is either "stadium (left)" or "sky (right)."

As with all of the Punch-Outs, the Mantle is also found with variations in the line-up on the card. We covered a few other recently discovered Punch-Out variations in the Dec. 17 posting.

Al is the only collector I have heard of that has completed the master set of '67 P-Os not only by "Captain" photo, but also by the two or more line-ups that can be found for each.

Final 1955 Hocus Focus found

Just in under the deadline for the 2012 edition of the Standard Catalog of Baseball is a confirmed report of the existence of the last two unchecklisted baseball subjects from the 1955 Topps Hocus Focus set.

Collector Jason Eggert recently bought a lot of nine '55T HF to aquire the Jackie Robinson card. Among the others that were "thrown in" on the purchase were the two cards that had been "missing" from the checklist all these years.

In researching his purchase, Jason found my blog posting from June 26, 2009, about Tom Akins' discovery of three other then-unknown '55T HFs: Mayo Smith, Wally Moon and Spook Jacobs. In that presentation, I speculated that since the checklist for the 1956 version of Hocus Focus, was the same as #3-18 and #22-23 of the 1955 set, that when 1955 cards #17 and #23 were finally confirmed, they would be Hal Smith and Mel Parnell, who are #15 and #18 in 1956.
That proved to be correct.

In case you're unfamiliar with the Hocus Focus sets, I'll provide a recap from that earlier posting.

HFs are very scarce cards, particularly in what collectors call "well-developed" condition. Hocus Focus cards were one of a genre of "spit-to-see" card novelties that Topps tinkered with in the 1940s and 1950s. Instructions called for wetting the front surface of the card and holding it to the light to develop the hidden picture. The quality of the resulting image resulted from the volume and evenness of application of the wetting agent, the exposure time and intensity of the light source, and probably other factors that neither Topps nor kids of that generation completely understood. I'm guessing that a quick dip in a tray of water probably was more effective at evoking a decent image than the spit-spray method employed by most kids on the sidewalk out front of the candy store.


There is a lot of confusion about how, and even when, the Hocus Focus cards were issued. There was a 252-card set issued in 1948 known as Magic Photos. They measure 7/8" x 1-1/2", but neither the name Magic Photos nor Topps appears on the cards. There are 19 baseball subjects in that issue.



The 1955 set may or may not be complete at 126 subjects, half the number of 1948 Magic Pictures cards, but no complete checklist exists. Besides the ballplayers, there are subsets of airplanes, world leaders, "Westerners," sports cars and other non-sport topics. These cards are 7/8" x 1-3/8," carry the name Hocus Focus on the back (but no mention of Topps) and, according to information seen on other forums, were probably issued in six-card strips in a nickel bubblegum pack. Besides the number at top on back, designating the card within the 23-subject baseball series, there is a number in the lower-right corner in a black circle indicating its position among the complete set.



The same format was repeated in (presumably) 1956 when a slightly larger -- 1" x 1-5/8" -- version was issued with 18 baseball players.

Jason is naturally interested in what the value might be of these discovery examples of Smith and Parnell. Unfortunately, Hocus Focus is not one of those ancillary Topps sets that has a competitive following among the PSA and SGC set registry crowds. There is only one 1955 set registered (and one card in the set) in the PSA universe, and none for SGC. This would mitigate against any bidding war for the discovery specimens of Smith and Parnell.

Postscript, Jan. 14: Well, I guess I was wrong about that! When they were put up for auction on eBay, closing Jan. 8, the Parnell and Smith cards sold for a total of just over $2,250!

A 1971-style Carl Weathers Raiders card

I just noticed that this will be my 101st posting for 2010. That's not as prolific as my 2009 output, which was 123 posts in just over half a year. However, with my "day job" and my work as a contributor to the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards, there never seems to be enough time to work on my custom cards or to share the results with you here.

As I mentioned the other day, I had the good fortune recently to find three different, eminently useable, photos of Carl Weathers in his early incarnation as a college and professional football player, after years of searching.

I'm happy to present the second of what will be three different Carl Weathers football cards, for reasons that I put forth in my Dec. 28 posting. This one also represents my breaking new ground in the use of classic card designs. This is my first 1971 Topps-style football custom creation. The end result is especially gratifying because there were some unusual challenges involved in getting the card from concept to reality.

As you can see, the card started with a black-and-white photo. I'm convinced that the picture was originally the work of the Topps photographer who shot the 10 Raiders photos that appeared in the 1971 set. All photos shared the same background, the same position of the sun, and, with one exception, the format of full-length action poses.

It doesn't seem likely that a Topps photographer, or any free-lancer hoping to sell card photos to Topps, would have been shooting in b/w at that time. If, in fact, the cards started out as black-and-white pix, the Topps airbrush artists would be green with envy over the ease with which I was able to colorize the picture with the Photoshop Elements graphics program that I use.

In any case, the picture I found on the internet was in black-and-white, and besides adding the color, I had to remove the red "watermark" from across the photo. That involved a bit of, as the " . . . for Dummies" book says, wrangling of pixels, but as I've mentioned before, this is my hobby and I don't mind at all putting in the time to get a picture the way I want it.

Because there is not a rigid consistency to the colors of the player name, team, position and cartoon figure among the 1971 Raiders cards, I was able to choose those that suited by personal preference.

The back of the card was really the hard part. As mentioned in my earlier piece, while there is a lot of information on the internet about Carl Weathers, the actor, there is precious little specific detail about Carl Weathers, the football player. Actual stats are especially difficult to come by from 40 years ago. The Raiders media guide for 1971 only says that Weathers was "active for" seven games in 1970 at linebacker and on special teams; there were no actual numbers provided.

Still, I opted to include an "INTERCEPTION RECORD" stat box at the bottom of my card, even though it was all zeroes. I did so largely because the paucity of information about Weathers' college days and first year as a pro was such that I just didn't have enough information to write two or three more sentences.

As it was, I had to come up with 147 words of copy for the player biography. In contrast, for my All-American style cards, the struggle is usually to limit a summary of the player's career, or even his life, to 80-90 words. Writing "long" for this card was definitely a change for me.

Also challenging was putting those words into print. The Topps graphic artists really outdid themselves on the backs of the '71s. I had to use eight different typefaces from four font "families" to come up with a reasonable replication of the Topps original. At that, a few of the fonts are not exact matches, but if I hadn't said anything here, I doubt anybody would notice.

Coming up with the cartoon on back was not as difficult as you might imagine. I correctly guessed that an O.J. Simpson card might have something along those lines, and I only had to look as far as his 1970 Topps rookie card to find what I needed.

With two of my three Carl Weathers cards now complete, I'm waiting for the mail to bring me a 1972 O-Pee-Chee card to use as a template for the third card. This will be my first attempt to recreate a Canadian card, and that brings with it a special challenge. OPC football cards in those years were bilingual, English and French. 

I suppose I'll probably use an internet translation site but I have some trepidation that such a program might have problems converting English football idiom into something that won't make a native French-speaker laugh.

Watch this space after the turn of the new year and we'll see.

More one-card "sets" for catalog

Sprinkled throughout the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards are dozens, perhpas more than 100, of what I call "one-card sets."

These are baseball cards and collectibles that are not part of a larger issue, but rather stand alone as the only example of their type.

Quite often these cards were issued locally or regionally for a one-time event, like a player's appearance at a sponoring business to meet the public and sign autographs, or to mark a player's endorsement of a business (perhaps even his own) or a product.

Some of these special issues feature the biggest names of their era, while others picture a hometown favorite. Some are rare, some are common.

When compiling the SCBC was my (more than) full-time job, I never missed the chance to add these specialty cards to the book's data base, thus ensuring the record of their existence for future generations of collectors. Today, with only very limited time to devote to the book, these cards often take a back seat to more mainstream issues that need listing or updating.

But with a little time on my hands before college football games start for the day, I thought I'd share a couple of recently reported one-card sets with you.

From Cincinnati Reds specialty collector Mark Reed, we have a card that was most likely issued between about 1971-76 by the Richmond Square Mall in Richmond, Ind., due east of Indianapolis near the Ohio state line.

In a format similar to other cards featuring Cincinnati Reds players of the time, the Don Gullett card is printed in black-and-white on semi-gloss stock in a size of 3-3/4" x 5-1/2". It was probably issued in conjunction with an autograph appearance by the Reds' pitcher at the mall. Because it appears to be contemporary with similar issues, we're going to arbitrarily assign this card a 1972 issue date for cataloging purposes.

The second single-card set was reported by another Reds' collector, Phil Hollandin, who specializes in the Big Red Machine teams.

He reliably dates it to 1974, when the person from whom he purchased the card acquired it in person at an autograph appearance by Joe Morgan at the bank northeast of Cincinnati.

The card is 3" x 5" in size, printed in black-and-white and blank-backed.

In both of these cases, it is not currently known whether these businesses also had other autograph guests for whom cards might have been issued.

1955-style Carl Weathers. Check.

Back on Sept. 1, I did a piece about how I got into making 1955 All-American style custom cards. In that article, I mentioned the nine players that were at the top of my wish list . . . players for whom I needed good photos in their college football uniforms to work up a card.

With the help of several readers I've been able to complete four of those projects. I've completed cards of Rocky Bleier (Notre Dame), childhood friend Jim Bond (Michigan State), Frank Thomas (Auburn), and now, Carl Weathers.

And, when it rains, it pours (sorry So. California). While doing a Google image search, I not only found the San Diego State photo that I used for this card. but also found two others photos of Weathers in football uniforms that will provide the basis for a couple of other tribute cards.

I found a photo of Weathers in an Oakland Raiders uniform that will be the basis for a 1971 Topps-style NFL card, and as a member of the CFL's Vancouver B.C. Lions, with which I'll make my first Canadian-style custom card, in the format of 1972 O-Pee-Chee.

There's lots of biographical data for Weathers on the internet (though precious little detail, especially stats, of his football career), so I'll confine my comments to just the personal note that I am a great admirer of him as an actor. I like his range, whether he's playing a heavy in a mid-1970s blackploitation film, or an action hero in his later movies.

You probably know him best as the bombastic boxer Apollo Creed in Rocky, Rocky II, Rocky III and Rocky IV, between 1976-1985.

Most recently, other than a currently running Miller Lite commercial, he played Coach Trainor in the 2009 TBS comedy series Brothers. I liked his work on that series, playing the irascible father to brothers played by Michael Strahan and Daryl Mitchell. Again, I admire the range it showed as an actor.

Watch this space in the next couple of days or a week for the unveiling of my two other Carl Weathers custom football cards.

Since publication of my wish list, I've been able to get photos of actors Woody Strode (UCLA) and Johnny Mack Brown (Alabama), but haven't tackled their cards yet. That leaves me still searching for quality photos of :

• Donald Driver, Alcorn State
  
• Jim Taylor, LSU
  
• Dean Cain, Princeton

If you can provide a useable photo, I'll send you three of the finished cards. You can e-mail me at scbcguy@yahoo.com.