HBK

In addition to being The Showstopper, Mr. Wrestlemania, a sexy boy and not your boy toy, Michael Shawn Hickenbottom was quite an accomplished high school football player.

Long before delivering Sweet Chin Music to Marty Jannetty through The Barbershop's window Shawn -preferring his middle name over his first- was the youngest of four kids born into a military family. After moving around a bit  Shawn’s family settled in San Antonio, TX where he attended Randolph High School located on the Randolph Air Force Base. Shawn excelled on the gridiron as an outside linebacker playing on both sides of the ball and was even made a team captain.

I ran across the a picture of Shawn in his high school football equipment and knew it would make for a great football card.  I read somewhere that HBK broke into wrestling in 1986 at the age of 20 so I figured that probably meant he graduated high school two years prior in 1984, so I used a 1984 Topps football inspired design.

Since the Randolph High Ro-Hawks (a compound of the words rocket and hawk) colors are silver and blue I used a the Detroit Lions color scheme from the 1984 set.  I was also fortunate enough to find a Ro-Hawks logo to complete this card.

Get a copy of this card here.

Up In Smoke

Here's another movie that is in my top five and that I've seen more times than I can count. Up In Smoke is, to me, just a brilliant comedy.  The story is okay, but it's the characters that make this movie classic.  Cheech and Chong themselves are gold, but then you have actors like Tom Skerritt (Strawberry), Stacey Keech (Sgt. Stedenko), and Christopher Joy (Curtis) who all totally own the scenes they're in. Just writing this makes me want to watch this movie.

I think the Curtis character needed his own spin-off movie

For this mini-set I chose a 1977 Topps Star Wars inspired design.  Up In Smoke was released in 1978.  I diverted from what I always aim to do with my cards which is match the year to the card design.  The reason I chose to do this with these cards are for one the design is so iconic and synonymous with the '70s, and I wanted the green border for reasons that I hope are obvious. I found a Star Wars-esque font for the movie title which really was a fun touch for these cards.

I started with just the Chong card that I made a while back. This is when my primary focus was making cards that I had a good chance at getting an autograph on and Tommy Chong is a good TTM signer, as well as having one of coolest signatures ever incorporating a joint into his John Hancock.

Keach was the perfect square foil for this film and Louisa Moritz was a total fox.

Now that I've been having fun expanding my single one-off cards into mini sets I've added 5 more cards to Chong's. The biggest problem I've been having with making these"mini-sets" is actually keeping them mini. Some times I'm thankful when I'm limited by the number of images out there because for a movie that I love as much as Up In Smoke it could have easily turned into full blown set that takes you from start to end instead of highlighting a few of the characters.  I would love to add a couple more cards to this set if I could find the right images.  Scenes like the Ajax girl, the battle of the bands and so on.  We'll see if any ever pop up.

This card here is one of my absolute favorites of my signed custom card collection.  I'd go so far as to call it a "prized possession".  I got two signed and gave one to a good friend of mine. He loves Up In Smoke every bit as much as I and is somewhat of a savant when it comes to quoting exact lines with all the proper voice inflections. 

Get your own set here.

Heaven Can Wait

On one of my many thrifting trips in search of dead media I came across the movie Heaven Can Wait.  I didn't own it nor had I ever seen it so I plunked down the .25 (probably) and became the proud owner of this VHS tape.

1978 Topps football

It took me awhile to get around to watching it.  I, like most VHS collectors I would assume, have hundreds of movies I've yet to watch.  It makes sense since they were the form of movie media for a couple of decades and can now can be picked up for as little as .10 if you catch a sale.  They can pile up fast ... in my basement.

The main character Joe Pendleton -played by Warren Beatty- is a backup quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams.  Sometimes I search for ideas for custom cards, and sometimes they come looking for me. As for the movie, it was a good story I would recommend checking it out.

Heaven Can Wait was released in 1978.  Luckily I had a 1978 Topps football inspired template ready to go thank to the Ron Simmons card I had already made. It was just a matter of finding a picture and matching the Rams colors and voilà.

Pick up a copy of this card here.

Major Bren Derlin

Well, happy 2018 to ya!

Here is a card I made as a supplement to the 1980 Topps Empire Strikes Back set seeing as there wasn't a card featuring John Ratzenberger as Major Bren Derlin.  Had Topps known what kind of success Mr. Ratzenberger would come to enjoy as the qoutable postal carrier Cliff Clavin on Cheers or all of his involvement with Disney's Pixar movies, I'm postive they would have worked on a card for the Rebel Alliance office even despite his brief screen time.

I was understandably pumped to see this card comeback with a clean signature.

Sinbad

I wanted to do this post before Christmas to coincide with people watching Jingle All The Way as a perennial holiday watch, but I had a lot going on so I didn't quite make it.

While looking for a photo for the Kevin Nash college basketball card I did I came across this photo above of David Adkins, better known as the comedian Sinbad.  Unbeknownst to me the 6'5" Sinbad played college basketball for the University of Denver.  I couldn't find too much on his college basketball career.  There's not a lot on his time as a Pioneer forward but I was able to find out that he was there from 1975 to 1978, and that average 4.5 points and about as many rebounds in the 50 games he appeared in.

I used the same same 1977-78 Topps basketball inspired design seeing as the year fit.

Own a copy of this card from the PCb online store.

Is That Goal Regulation Size, Or What!?

For the longest time I didn't make any cards featuring Adam Sandler despite all of his classic sports related movie roles.  I just didn't think there was a good chance at getting any of my cards signed.  That all changed because now I know a guy who knows a guy who can get me some Sandler sigs. Once that relationship was forged I went to work and churned out 7 Sandler joints as they say in hip-hop circles.

The one above is by far my favorite of the lot. Sandler has some fun movies, but I have to think Happy Gilmore is the best. It starts out right away on a hilarious note with Happy trying out -unsuccessfully for at least the tenth time- for the semi-pro (I'd presume) Waterbury Warriors. That whole scene is classic, and now has a card devoted to it.

Happy Gilmore was released in 1996 but, like I have with almost anything released after roughly 1990, I plugged it into a more vintage inspired design.  For this one I used a 1984 Topps hockey inspired design.  For the record, I f***ing love this design and have used it any time it has made sense to me to create a number of really fun cards. It screams 1980's card design to me. I love the rounded two-tone frame and the secondary picture.

I used the Warriors' team colors for the two-tone frame of course.  My favorite part might just be the "team prospect" text.  Every so often you'd see text like that reading something like "traded to the ..... ".  I always assumed it was a last minute thing when a guy would be traded but it was too late to re-do his card.  Since Happy never officially made the Warriors' roster, well, he's a team prospect.

Now, I'll just wait with bated breath for some Sandler autographs. If you'd like to own a copy of this card it's available in the PCb online store.

Game. Blouses. II

I'm not sure why making this card didn't occur to me to make this card when I made the Jr. High basketball Prince basketball card.  Nevertheless, here's a fun one inspired by that famous Dave Chappelle skit.

This card is in the style of the 1987-88 Fleer basketball.  I wanted to use a design that had a team name but not a logo, although coming up with a basketball logo for the "Blouses" might have yielded a hilarious result.  I liked that the team name calls for a two-tone so I can use two different shades of purple.  When it comes to prince you really can't have enough purple.

I've opened an online store that I'm going to be playing with and stocking in the weeks to come.  If you'd like to own a copy of this you can get one here.