The best player collection EVAH!

When I started this blog in 2007 (holy $%!* that’s a long time ago), my life was very different. I lived in South Jersey, played poker 3-4 times a week, interviewed athletes and wrote about sports nearly every day.

Nine years later, life is drastically different. I’m married a man who also collects baseball cards, which seemed impossible.

And now I’m a mom.

Many new parents post photos of their children on Facebook or Instagram, or they send out birth announcements. But a simple photo was not enough for us, not a family with a cardboard problem.

We made baseball cards to announce the birth of our son. We plan to make this a yearly tradition for all of his birthdays and potentially major milestones. I already have a special binder to place his cards, creating the most amazing player collection I will ever own.

Since mommy and daddy don’t root for the same team, we made two different cards: Yankees and Rangers. As long as it’s not the Red Sox or the Mets, I would be OK with any other choice. But, I can tell he’s already a smart kid and I believe he will be rooting for the team in the Bronx.

These cards were very easy to make. I didn’t get special treatment just because I work at Topps. Topps offers custom cards on its website with a number of different designs (check it out here). We chose the 2016 design because – naturally – he was born in 2016.

In 2014, we also created one for our wedding and used the 1968 design.

Best collection ever!

I like custom card makers

I wish I had the skills to make custom cards. More so than learning to use Photoshop, which I can get by on, I think my imagination and creativity have a lot to be desired.

So, I love checking out the different blog to see custom card creations. So many of you guys are really talented.

I just got around to posting this now, but Topher at Crackin' Wax created this Derek Jeter 1/1 card for me. I absolutely love it and will go into my collection. It's a physical card, by the way. The design is simple, yet elegant and I could never come up with something like this.

Over at The Mojo Beard, Beardy look at look at how fun 2010 Goudey could have been this year. Since Upper Deck no longer has baseball license, he created a few cards at request to give collectors a feel of what their favorite players would have looked like.

I really, really like this "Kouz for Sooz," (How cool would it be if one of his actual cards said that?)

When it comes to the guys out there who create custom cards, the fun thing is we never have to wonder what something would have looked like.

Forgive my ignorance, but who are all the custom card creators out there. I would like to give all of them their due.