Another Fletch Card

While sifting through my personal card collection I was reminded of Star's 1985 All-Star subset that was sponsored by Miller Lite (there's also a version that uses the same player photo just with a gold border and a Crunch 'n Munch logo).  I thought the Lite version would be awesome for a Fletch card.  Even though I've made a number of Fletch cards I went back for one more.

Since I started making these custom cards I've done a three Fletch basketball cards starting with a 1985 Topps baseball inspired design.  There was also the behind-the-scenes shot of Chevy and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar that I plugged into a 1986 Fleer basketball inspired design.  After that was the 1985 Star Co. design with the purple Lakers border.

Not only did I think it would be a humorous addition because of the beer sponsor, but it also gave me a chance to do a custom card back. 

At this point I've just resigned myself to the fact that I'll never be done making custom Chevy Chase cards.

Vision Quest

I really, really like the movie Vision Quest.  It's one of those movies where if I'm staring at my VHS collection wanting to watch a movie but nothing is really jumping out to me I could always watch Vision Quest.

I would call Vision Quest a quintessential 80's movie, complete with training montage and kick ass soundtrack.  Any time I watch it I really feel inspired by Matthew Modine's portrayal of Louden Swain.  It's not only for the character's determination but also Louden seems like a genuinely good person, an all-american kid who is still naive and yet to be hardened by pressures and experiences that come with adulthood.

When I started messing around with making cards Louden Swain was one of the very first cards I did.  It was natural because I love the movie so much and since it came out in 1985 which was the first template I recreated for custom cards.  Upon a recent viewing I was inspired to revisit my admiration for the movie and add a Brian Shute card.  At first I was just going to add a card to the Louden I'd already made in the '85 Topps baseball design but I decided to do go a different direction and make two new cards.

I went with a Star Co. basketball inspired design.  For me it has a classic trading card frame and it's also a bit of a cheat since Star used the same exact template for their cards from 1983 through 1986, they would just switch the color of the card's frame for the different NBA teams.  The Star design allowed me to add the the weight class where the player's position would normally go.  That's an important detail of the movie with Louden pushing himself to his physical brink in an effort to test his mettle against the reigning state champ in the toughest weight division.

Fun facts: The actor who played Brian Shute, Frank Jasper, had wrestled but leading up to the movie was doing body building, was closer in 190 lbs ... Jasper literally had to out wrestle the other guy  vying for the part of Shute ...

Spies Like Us

I know it may seem like I’m a mission to make trading cards from Chevy Chase’s complete movie library.  That is not the intention.  I’m not saying it won’t eventually come to pass, it’s just not the intention.  I guess I never knew what a big Chevy slappy I actually am.

The inspiration for a Spies Like Us card set came from a Throwback Thursday post Vanessa Angel shared on her Instagram feed recently.  It was a clip of the scene in the movie where Chevy, Dan Aykroyd, and Donna Dixon first stumble upon the Russian rocket crew and are spying on Vanessa as she steps out of her tent for a scantily clad stretch.  If you got a chance to read my last post that scene is one of those that I vividly remember seeing as a kid and just thinking “wowwwww”.  Back before the internet movie scenes like that were as good as it got for a young boy.

I wanted to make a card of that scene specifically, but I figured why stop at a card?  Why not a mini-set?  That meant I had to go back and rewatch the movie.  That’s one of the best parts of the cards I make; getting to rediscover movies I love but maybe haven’t seen in a number of years.  Spies Like Us, in my opinion, stands the test of time.  You really can’t put Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd together and not get an entertaining comedy.

For the cards I initially thought of a 1985 Fleer baseball inspired design.  While I was sourcing images for the cards I came across a scan of some German lobby cards from the movie.

German lobby card

Lobby cards are like mini posters (typically 11” x 14”) that promote a movie.  They were printed on card stock and were typically in sets of eight with each one displaying a different key movie scene and usually displayed in the lobby of a theater, or distributed to moviegoers.  Lobby cards are rarely if ever produced for movies these days.

When I saw the lobby cards it shifted my thinking from the 1985 Fleer baseball to a mash-up of the lobby card design and the 1985 Star Co. basketball design which I felt would work better since they already shared some design similarities.

At 20 cards this set is about a quarter of the number of cards usually used by Topps for a movie card set.  With that being said, it’s not nearly as scene-by-scene comprehensive as an 80+ card set would be but I feel like I included some of the more memorable scenes of the movie in sequence.  One of the funnest parts of this labor of love, as with my other larger mini-sets (oxymoron much?) was not just watching the movie but studying it for the correct verbiage that I felt a any big fan of the movie would appreciate. 

Teen Wolf

I've had a lot of fun recently making cards using the old Star Co. NBA design.

For the non-trading card geeks out there, Topps stopped producing NBA cards after the 1981-82 season.  This left a basketball card void seeing as how Topps was the only brand making cards for the NBA.  Star Co. stepped in producing NBA cards starting in 1983.  Star cards were made in much more limited quantities than the other traditional major sports card brands.  They also took a different distribution route.  They were sold in clear poly bags by team or subset instead of in boxes of wax packs.  They were available mainly through independent dealers, some hobby shops and sports stadiums.  They were produced from 1983 through the 1985-86 season when Fleer obtained the license to produce NBA cards.  If you think of some of the all-time greats that entered the league in that span of years I bet Topps wishes they had a mulligan on the decision to discontinue their NBA product.

As a kid I loved baseball first as a fan/collector, but my love soon shifted to playing and collecting basketball. It helped that the time frame coincided with the Detroit Pistons' steady rise to eventual championship glory.  As far as collecting goes, Star Co. cards for me had been a unicorn.  I heard about them and occasionally seen them in Beckett magazine, but never owned any or knew anyone who did.  That changed in 1993 -around this time of the year in fact- when I went into a local card shop and right there in the display case was both the Isiah Thomas 1984 All-Star checklist and his regular AS card.  My mom had given me a $20 to buy a single pack of the Classic NCAA basketball cards (I was hoping to get a Chris Webber U of M card). She was expecting a lot of change back.  The Isiah Thomas cards were marked at $10 each.  I literally panicked.  I mean, what if someone else got them while I waited to save up enough allowance? When would I ever see any again?? I had to have them, and the guy behind the counter even let me slide on the sales tax!  My mom, who was waiting in the car, was pissed. I knew she would be.  But, what was I supposed to do?  Through heavy panicked breaths I tried to explain the gravity my predicament, but she just didn't get it.  Thankfully she saw how much they meant to me and didn't make me take them back in.  I just got the silent treatment for a couple of days and I didn't complain about anything my mom asked me to do around the house. That to her was probably worth it because I never wanted to do the dishes and stuff like that.

If you're familiar with the Star Co. you know that the design didn't change, they just switched up the color from one year to the next. For me that adds a great deal of versatility in being able to use one design for anything from 1983 to 1986.  And I've used them quite a few times since creating the template.  I just love them.  The design to me is unmistakably vintage.

With these Teen Wolf cards I started with a Michael J. Fox basketball card.  Then I wanted to make a Chubby card and from there a fifteen card mini-set just snowballed.

I got lucky that I was able to find decent images to get all the scenes I wanted to have as part of this mini-set.

Small confession, I'm indifferent at best about Michael J. Fox.  I just find his characters always to be a little too high pitched and overly dramatic.  But, I recognize him as an absolute '80s icon.  I love Teen Wolf.  It's got a Werewolf, basketball, and a shirt with the phrase "dicknose" on it.  What's not to love?  So, it bums me out to know the MJF didn't think too much of the role, so little in fact that he declined the sequel.  That does nothing to endear Mr. Alex P. Keaton to me, but I digress.

I hope you the reader enjoy these custom cards as much as I did in creating them.