Trading Card Art Project

Remember this from 2010?

Yes in 2010 Topps had a major giveaway of cards. Collectors that were lucky enough could get some very good and very old vintage cards or they could get some sucker of a card from the Junk Years. Personally I had gotten a handful of cards (7) from that giveaway. They issued these code cards in all the packs of baseball product that year.

I still need a few of these to complete my set:
TMC: 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20

To unlock whatever card you won you had to go to Topps website enter the code on the card and find out what card you unlocked. You could trade cards with other collectors. You needed a credit card to have the cards shipped to you in the long run.

But I'm not here to talk about all that. I have mentioned these insert code cards in the past: Topps 2010 Million Card Giveaway Code Cards, 2010 Topps Baseball Million Card Giveaway, Million Card Giveaway Bust. The title of this post says "Art Project". Huh?

Look at a few of these cards:

Do you see it?
The Pattern?
The Design?
The card design for this first huge giveaway (via their website) Topps focuses on a single card that is part of a larger display. The first time I saw these cards I thought the concept was cool. Once I had more than just one of these cards, and I had a card that matched the border of another card the idea for this art project developed. I'm not sure how big I'm going to make the thing but I figure I need SEVERAL of each of the cards. For some of them I already have 2 or 3 extras that I can use.

The project is to make a huge collage using all these cards, following the cards that border each card. I will of course have to GASP! cut up these cards. That is why I need multiples of these. I still need a single copy of each for my PC but many of the extras will be used for this.

Once I see the full pattern with ALL the different cards I can decide on how big to make the thing. In just doing some rough matching up of some of the cards I do have they weren't exact with their design, some of the cards seem to be duplicated. That could be just an illusion since it is an "infinite" design. I'm not sure if anybody else has tried to do this with these. Maybe, maybe not. I haven't seen anything online that mentions this project or one like it.

So I still need a bunch more duplicates of these cards. Donations to the project would be appreciated. I would prefer not to have to buy all of them. I have bought a few dupes for the project but on a matter of the spirit of the hobby I don't want to HAVE to buy all the cards for this. I'm sure there are some collectors out there that have a ton of these who were planning on dumping them anyway or not sure how to get rid of all the ones they have.

I'm not sure when I would even get around to building for the project. I need the building blocks or bricks for it first.

Topps has done a few similar giveaways with similar designs, except they only show one card. I won't be doing an art project for these other sets but I do need many of the cards to complete the sets.

2011 Diamond Giveaway cards.

I need a bunch of those:
TDG 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30

2012 Golden Giveaway Cards.

 

Image from The Trading Card Database

Image from Google search from Ebay Auction

I need all of these:
GGC 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30

Warehouse 13 Myka Sketch Card

One of my favorite TV shows will come to an end later this spring shortly after returning to the Sci-Fi channel (spelled with two "y"s and no "c") for a 5th and final season of only Six episodes. Warehouse 13 a well written adventure series often with witty tongue in cheek humor reminds many of the late 1980s show Friday The 13th: The Series (in recent years renamed "Friday's Curse" to avoid confusion with the horror movies of the same name). One of the characters on Warehouse 13 Myka Bering played by Canadian actress Joanne Kelly fast became one of my faves on the show. So...

Back in November of last year (Thursday 21 November, 2013 to be exact) I had a two card mailday. As many might know by now I keep track of my maildays on my TCC blog. I got this card by sniping on Ebay, in this case I really really wanted the card. I started watching it, and was nervous about it because it was getting some bids and creeping toward my comfortable maximum bid (as is the case with many sketch cards that often "start" at too high a price for me to even consider bidding). About a day or two before the end of the auction it had 6 bids and was at $15.50 many more bids and it would be out of my comfort zone. The Final night I watched it periodically for updates and in the last few minutes kept checking it and refreshing my browser then when it was down into the final minute I bid my max of $35 and for about 40 seconds I was worried another sniper would come by, the ones that use the sniping software and don't have to watch the auction at all because their program bids at the last second or two. Fortunately for me I had the winning bid. The 7th bid at $21.50. I thought the shipping had been set to $3.50 but it showed up as Free Shipping in "My Ebay". I was really glad I won the auction for this beautiful sketch of a beautiful woman.

The Artist Javier Gonzalez of Blackhilt Studios I think was also the seller under the Ebay handle Blackhilt Studios. The card was listed as an ACEO (Art Cards Editions and Originals) sketch card.

 2013 Blackhilt Studios Sketch Card by Javier Gonzalez

Joanne Kelly as Myka Bering (Warehouse 13)

(Front and Back)

Sexy Comic Villain Sketch Cards

Back on December 26th last year (2011) from Ebay I got two pencil sketched cards from the artist, Mark Spears. I got them for $6 (with $2 shipping) One is of Catwoman the other is Black Cat from SpiderMan. They are true original sketch cards and nothing is on the back. These were from the artist cards that are not associated with any series. These two are truly 1/1s since they are directly from the artist. Sketch cards from the big companies might not necessarily be truly 1/1s those could be photocopies of a sketch.

On the subject of sketch cards I am so annoyed at both the sellers for setting ridiculous prices and for the collectors for paying those prices. A nicely drawn picture on a card (pencil sketch or B&W inked, or Full Color) on Ebay usually start at a ridiculous price of anywhere from about $40 to $60 starting bid (or sometimes Buy it Now) price sometimes they even start at $100 or more. None of them are worth that much to me, and many of them are poorly drawn but still start at some stupid outrageous price.

Personally I try not to spend more than $20 on ANY trading card with $30 being my ceiling. I think the most I have ever spent on an individual card is $30 probably a vintage card or an autograph card.

 When I saw these two cards my first thought was how well drawn they were then when I saw they had really cheap (compared to the average sketch card price on FEEBAY) I had to grab them up. One was only 99¢ (Catwoman) the other (Black Cat) was $4.99.

Catwoman Sketch Card by Mark Spears 2011

Black Cat Sketch Card by Mark Spears 2011

On the Black Cat card I get a kick out of Spidey peaking his head in the doorway. I like Mark's work and will look for stuff from him in the future.