"Not Me", Damn Right It Isn't Me!

Earlier this week Raz wrote about picking up a Felicia Day autograph from Cryptozoic’s 2012 The Guild release. I am a Day fan (She is at the top of my celebrity crush list) and have one of her autographs but I am always on the lookout to add more so after Raz wrote about his pickup I took a look on the Google machine and came across a most interesting custom card TTM autograph card that was ending soon with an opening bid of only $0.99 plus an insane $5.00 shipping (though if it was a cool card $5.99 for a Felicia Day autograph is a steal).

The down side is that it was not a cool card. It was a poorly copy and paste image and when it was printed it was washed out. The autograph is real but the character portrayed on the card is not Felicia Day as Codex from The Guild but instead a cosplayer dressed as Codex, which was pointed out by Felicia Day when she wrote “Not Me” with an arrow pointing at the character. The card eventually sold for the opening $0.99 bid.

I have included an image of Felicia Day as Codex and you can see the differences. While the cosplayer pictured on the custom card does look similar to Felicia Day when you compare the two you can see they are not the same person.

 

I actually found the cosplayer, her name is Ksenia Zaring and the image used for this card is on her DeviantArt page, not sure how the card designer missed this mistake.

You would think once the actress pointed out the person on the card was not her that the seller would not have posted the card to sell. I considered buying the card and maybe cutting out the autograph and making some sort of cut signature card but I wavered and decided in the end to not bid.

Missed Oppurtunity For Panini?

Have you ever had a situation when you pulled a card and you looked at it and thought “This is a missed opportunity”? As a graphic designer I tend to be picky about card designs and while I may pick up packs of various products just to see what they offer I will not buy any set I find flawed for my personal collection no matter who is on the card.

I recently pulled two Donruss Production Line jersey cards, a Russell Westbrook #8 die-cut and a Birdman #1 die-cut. When I pulled the Westbrook I thought the small floating “8” made the card unbalanced but when I pulled the Andersen I was just amazed that this card design was given the go-ahead. We are talking a jersey swatch that is not even dime sized; it is ¾” by ¼” in size. I like the production line idea highlighting various stats of the players but this insert could have been laid out in a different manor that would be more appealing.

 I thought that one of the most important changes was to go with a landscape layout, this layout would use a smaller player image but it would increase the real estate for the jersey swatch. Adjusting the placement of the text and added a die-cut window displaying the player's stat adds appeal to the overall design. I even used the background image to balance out the negative spacing on the card.

Possibilities?

Olympics
Originally uploaded by Jumper48

Does anyone else see a missed opportunity?

Outside of the Dream Team(s) we do not see many Olympians showing up in card sets. Jennie Finch started showing up in sets back in 2002 and since then has made appearances in Donruss, Fleer, Topps and Upper Deck sets. Another USA Softball player, Cat Osterman, was picked up by Donruss in 2008 and then made a splash in the 2009 Allen & Ginter set.

The Winter Olympics seem to be the redheaded stepchild of the collecting world though, and understandable so when you see that American Idol outdrew the Olympics on NBC…sad sad sad.

How cool would it be to pull an Olympic event-worn Lindsey Vonn ski suit relic or an autographed patch from a Shaun White event-worn jacket?

Jackie Deserves Better

JackieCut
Originally uploaded by Jumper48

Jeff at New Card Smell recently wrote up a story about cut autographs and gave his take on the subject. I got inquisitive and took a look at cut autos up for auction on eBay and was surprised to come across an abomination of a card <link>.

I am utterly surprised to see that someone at Upper Deck thought it would be a great idea to take a machete to this beautiful Jackie Robinson autograph and then stick it in to a card, number it to /7 and call it a day.

I guess there are collectors out there that have similar feelings about this card because it could not even garner the .99-cent opening bid. It truly is a sad day when a Jackie Robinson autograph can’t even sell of under a buck. To make things worse, or hilarious depending on how you see it, the seller turns around and takes this horrific card that could not even sell for $1 and puts it up for a Buy It Now of $1,599 with free shipping <link>.

The Lost Ball

Have you ever missed out on an amazing opportunity? Something that when you look back on it many years later you feel like kicking yourself for letting it go?

It was the winter of 1992 and I was with my girlfriend wandering around the downtown area of a small town near where we were living at the time. We were looking for antique stores; my ex had a thing about buying anything and everything that was antique. But what caught my eye was a storefront sports collectible shop. It was the kind of place that is small, dark and cramped. An older guy who had been in business for years at the same location owned it. He seemed to have a story about everything in the shop, but overall a nice guy.

After a short time wandering around the shop I noticed a small collection of baseballs tucked away in to a case. There seemed to be nothing special about the collection until the old guy grabbed out a ball that had rolled to the back of the case. He handed me what I thought was just an old discolored ball. I turned the ball in my hand and was nearly floored when I noticed that distinctive “B”. I was actually holding a Babe Ruth autographed ball, a piece of history in my hand.

The old guy was selling it on consignment and there was a COA, which now means as much as showing a piece of TP, but at the time was something of a comfort. It was selling for around $1650, which was within my price range, but damned if my ex didn’t step in and bring me down to Earth. I was given the ultimatum of leaving with her or the baseball. I look back now and kick myself for making the choice I had made (saying this half-jokingly). But, I do look back as an opportunity missed.