Stalegum Shop Grand Opening

If over the years you've liked my cards but have struggled with letting that be known to the outside world, I've got you covered.  Heck, even if you don't like my cards but have a rad shirt collection that has a roster spot open, I've got you too.

Introducing the official Stalegum of Doom shirt!  

https://pcbstalegumshop.myshopify.com/

This is a high quality print with a design styled after Def Leppard's "Women of Doom" shirt from the Hysteria album (as seen being worn by Joe Elliot in the "Pour Some Sugar on Me" video).  

I've always been drawn to awesome graphic art.  That Women of Doom shirt was pretty much the coolest thing I'd ever laid eyes on, but seeing as you couldn't get that kind of thing at K-Mart, I sadly never owned one as a kid.  I thought what better way to pay homage to that design than to remix it into my custom card universe.  I enlisted the talents of the uber talented Matthew Skiff and he knocked this out of the park for me.  Could not be happier with the final result.

This actually occurred back in the wacky days of Covid.  Back then I had more free time than I knew what to do with so my card stuff was my main focus.  Things got weird and I had to shift focus to going to work-work.  I closed up the online shop and these shirts just sat in a box.  

Fast forward and I'd been talking to the awesome creators of the Santos Sisters --the best comic in the universe-- and the idea was floated to feature Jackie Stalegum in an upcoming issue.  I'd been a fan of their comic since issue #1 and even collaborated with them on a Santos Sisters card back in 2023 that was given out during a comic store signing for the release of the 3rd installment of their book.   So now, my creation ... in my favorite comic?!?  Pinch me!  In addition, there was extra space that the guys generously offered to me.  What better way to get my Gen-X centric swag to the masses!?  The timing couldn't have been better with the release of Santos Sisters #9 hitting shelves coinciding with the fellas taking home the coveted 2025 Eisner Award for Best Continuing Series (and rightly so!).  We even made a limited edition limited edition Stalegum x Santos Sisters card that the guys handed out at the San Diego Comic Con done in the style of the Impel Marvel Universe Series 2 cards from 1991.

The shirt is available in white or black/white raglan baseball style in adult sizes S-3X.  

Each shirt will come with a Stalegum of Doom trading card, a 1.5" button and 3" prism sticker.

This is the first offering in my shop for now, but I'll be adding more items as time permits.

PCb. Collector's Binder

Growing up in the junk wax era it was imperative that once you amassed a decent card collection you needed a way to display and organize your cardboard treasures.  Sure, there's top loaders and screw-downs for the cards that would one day make you a millionaire,  but for for viewing your cards as a collection -and not to mention being able to take your cards on the go for those all important trading sessions with your friends- you needed a good sturdy binder!  

Well, now those of you that have amassed a decent collection of Phantom Cardboard trading cards there's a binder to view all those vintage inspired cards that never were!

This binder is modeled after those binders we all had.  What could be better for vintage inspired trading cards than a vintage inspired binder?  That kind of generic looking marbled design.  Mine were either brown or blue, but I also remember friends having dark red colored ones.  

The binder features a direct to vinyl printed design with padding throughout.  There's a Jackie Stalegum action pose on the front cover and the Jackie Stalegum logo and Phantom Cardboard text logo on the spine.  This is a 2" binder D-Ring binder, so plenty of space for 9-pocket card pages.

The binders will come with 10 9-pocket Ultra-Pro Platinum.  The Platinum pages are the best, heaviest gauge pages that Ultra-Pro offers.

Also included is an exclusive Casey Cardbinder trading card.  Casey joins Jackie Stalegum as the newest member of the Phantom lineup.

How will you organize your vintage inspired custom trading cards??

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A little more about Casey Cardbinder...

I wanted to give Jackie Stalegum a teammate.  I once more teamed up with Matthew Skiff to bring this phantom to life.  I gave Matthew my concept and he executed it masterfully.

Anyone that grew up in the '80s-'90s will instantly recognize the super-human inspiration for Casey's bat breaking exploits... the great Bo Jackson!  I also wanted to give Casey a skeleton ghoul type of look.  Growing up I always thought skeletons were the epitome of badassery.  So, I supplied Matthew with a couple images and he, pun intended, knocked it out of the park.  Basically, take this and this and coif it in Team PCb. duds. 

Stalegum SLU

If you collected sports cards during the "junk wax era" then the chances are that you probably had a few of Kenner's Starting Lineup figures on top of your dresser as well.  Like the cards from that era, these nearly actionless figures didn't exactly prove to be the sound investments us ten year olds might have hoped for.

I had a few myself.  I even tried to play with them even though you're pretty locked into the player's one pose.  The head could turn side-to-side and the arms could move up and down at the shoulder and that was apparently all of the articulation Kenner thought would make us mini-consumers happy.

Along with your SLU figure Kenner would also include a card in the toy's blister pack to collect (sometimes also a coin or folded up poster).

To pay homage to the 4" tall plastic sports heroes I teamed with the talented artist Dave Houle to create the brand's third Jackie Stalegum card.

The illustration is molded after the 1989 Don Mattingly figurine, while the card is representative of the cards that came in the inaugural baseball set in 1988.

I put together a little Phan Pack for this card.  It'll include:

• An autographed card by Dave Houle #'d/10 and in a 55 pt. Ultra Pro one touch case
• a standard version of the card
• a sticker pack as seen below

FUN FACT: Pat McInally, a former NFL player for the Bengals, came up with the idea for creating the figures.

Garbage Phantom Kids

My love for trading cards started with Garbage Pail Kids.  My introduction to the gross-out Cabbage Patch dolls parody came in 1986 the the series' third installment.  From the very first .25¢ pack I was completely hooked.  Flipping through a stack of vintage Garbage Pail Kids these is about as nostalgic as it can get for me.  What I've come to realize that I really didn't as a snot-nosed kid was that I genuinely love the artwork.  Guys like John Pound, Tom Bunk, James Warhola and Jay Lynch are legends of my childhood.

I think it's pretty darn cool that the GPK franchise was revived for a whole community of man-kids like myself to enjoy, plus any younger collectors that may stumble upon them.  There's also a great new crop of artists carrying on the Garbage Pail tradition.  I was lucky enough to link up with one of those artists to help in creating the PCb. brand's second trading card.

Back in the early part of the summer I brought a concept to Mark Pingitore to bring to life for a Jackie Stalegum Garbage Pail Kids inspired card.  Mark has signed a few of the Garbage Pail cards he's done for me over the years and I knew him to be extremely gracious with his fans.  Actually, I find all the artists to be that way for the most part.

What I asked of Mark was for this card to be a mixture of 3 main inspirations.  First was the Jackie Stalegum character, the second was the infamous 1989 Fleer Billy Ripken F*ck Face "error" card, and lastly was the Garbage Pail Kids' Series 5 Hot Rod (#205a) by John Pound.  I've always loved the artwork on that particular card and I'm drawn to the colors in the background.  In my mind that mashup had classic GPK written all over it.  A couple of ancillary details I asked for was for PCb. to be on the bat's knob like the Ripken card and to have Jackie's bubblegum bubble to be revealing part of a skull face.

I had a slight bit of trepidation when commissioning the piece because it was to be done in marker.  Unlike a digital rendering it's pretty much a one shot deal.  There's zero hyperbole when I say I could not be more pleased with the results.  It is better than I would have imagined, and Mark NAILED everything I asked for.  As soon as I stopped drooling all that was left was to make it into a trading card.  If you would have told me as a kid that I'd have a chance to have a brainchild of mine turned into Garbage Pail Kid art I would probably also assumed I lived in a giant mansion and was the star of television shows and professional sports teams.  I'll take the one out of the four.

• Jackie Stalegum 2a card (#'d/50)
• Jackie 2au Pingitore auto sealed in UV protected Ultra Pro one-touch (#'d/12)
• 2b Jim Mint sticker (#'d/50)
• Garbage Phantom Kids die-cut sticker combo
• 1.25" button

Jackie Stalegum Lives!

I’m a sucker for mascots, logos and graphic design in general.  There’s a few nostalgia clothing brands I follow online that I've really been influenced by with their character branding.  I wanted to do something like that with my card brand.  I wanted to establish a cool logo / mascot that could be instantly associated with Phantom Cardboard.

I came up with my first logo when I started to realize that making custom cards wasn't a passing fancy, but rather a passion to create and connect to childhood loves.  I love branding and wanted to make something symbolic of my cards.  My first attempt at this was a little cute ghost character.  It kinda looked like a cross between that video game character Kirby and the ghosts found in the Mario Bros. castles.  I sent that image to friends to get their takes on it.  The response was just okay, and I wanted something better than that.

I was originally going to spell it Fantom Cardboard

I went back to the drawing board and took a bit of a more literal approach.  A Phantom of the Opera style mask wearing a baseball hat was the new direction I took.

Version 1.0

Not too long after creating my logo I saw that Matthew Skiff had some openings for commissions.  Matthew is a prolific graphic designer and has done some of the coolest nostalgia pieces that you can find on the internet.  His stuff is epic and I’ve admired his talent for years, so I jumped at the chance to have him design something for the PCb. brand.  This was back in September of 2017.

Basically I was looking to have my basic concept polished and refined by Matthew’s skill.  He took and executed my ideas flawlessly, and was a pleasure to work with with each and every one of my little tweak requests.  Needless to say I couldn’t have been happier with the results.  He translated the vision I had perfectly.

He did an updated and cleaner version of my text logo and my Phantom head logo.  There’s the standard version of the logo and one blowing a bubblegum bubble paying homage to the “stale gum” we all loved in our wax packs. 

While he was at it I also had him expand the logo into a full mascot character.  He got that 100% how I requested too.  Thus Jackie Stalegum was born.  "Jackie" a tribute to Jackie Robinson with the last name being a homage to Topps’ pink brittle premium at the bottom of a wax pack.  I think Jackie has a fun Scooby-Doo villain vibe to him.  I got the idea to add a cape to the presentation from an old Batman card.

1966 Topps Batman B Series

Matthew ran a few color schemes past me.  The one I went with was the one that closely matched my vision mixed with his suggestion for the cape’s outer color.  The color’s a little more towards teal where I had it a dark green which came off a bit Christmasy.

This rookie card was always one thing I wanted to do with the design.  I also want to eventually use it clothing items but that’s something I’m really quite ignorant about so it’s on the back burner until I do a little more fact finding.  So, why did this card take two years?  Basically, I have not been able to take my attention away from the custom cards I make to devote time to creating this particular PCb. brand card.

Finally I just decided I’ve been sitting on this illustration for long enough and I wanted to make this a card.

my little slugger

I considered a number of different templates but decided to go with the one that started it all for me, the 1985 Topps baseball inspired design.  In 2015 I was just messing around with my daughter’s little league pictures trying to make her a custom baseball card.   That came out decent so I did it again this time with my other daughter’s cheerleading picture.  I don't have a formal graphic design background but I’ve always been a creative type and these cards give me a great outlet for that side of me.  From my daughters’ two cards it has snowballed into, hell, I don’t even know how many custom cards I’ve made to date.  As when I collected cards growing up, I never stopped to count, just always wanted more.  Trading cards have been a constant in my life as far back as I can remember.  They’re something I’m sure I’ll always have a love for because I can use them at markers to simpler times.  So many great memories for me can be tied to collecting cards.

At first I was just recycling the ‘85 design and using it to make cards of all the things I wish had been made into trading cards when I was growing up. The design was easily customizable.  I would sometimes leave the team name nameplate blank because I thought it would make for a cool autograph box when I sent my customs out in hopes of getting them signed by celeb types.  From there I would experiment with other designs wanting to match the year of what I was making a card for to a card design produced from the same year.  I just like tying those two things together.  It makes the cards more “real” to me.

Jackie’s card originally had "Phantom Cardboard" inside of the team name nameplate, but then it dawned on me that that rectangle kind of resembles a wax pack gum stick.  That is my favorite part of the card.  Well, that and of course Matthew’s gnarly design.

After making my daughter’s cards my sole reason for making my custom cards initially was to see if I could get them autographed through-the-mail.  It became a fun little nerdy hobby for me.  So I thought what about this Stalegum card coming full circle with that 1985 design and an autograph?  While corresponding back and forth with Matthew about another project I asked if he’d mind signing a few of these cards for me to offer in a Jackie Stalegum RC Phan Pack to which he graciously obliged.

Now I that I had the Phan Pack’s centerpiece I wanted to surround it by some rad Jackie Stalegum swag.

So, without further long-windedness here’s what’s included in the aforementioned Phan Pack:

• Jackie Stalegum autographed rookie card.  This card has a glossier “Tiffany” finish and is sealed in a 55 pt. Ultra Pro one-touch case.  The backside is signed by Matthew Skiff in Stalegum Pink and limited to 12 hand-numbered copies.
• Jackie Stalegum regular rookie card.  Standard vintage finish, limited to 50 hand-numbered copies.

• 1.5" vintage yellow pin
• 2.25" Trapper Keeper Jackie pin

• Holographic bubble sticker
• 2” mini sticker
• 2” mini magnet

• Stalegum Pink PCb. school store pencil 

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