Last night I created my own template for the 1965 Topps cards. I absolutely love the Reds’ yellow-and-blue design from ’65, so I made a few classic and modern cards with the template.
UPDATE: One of the members of Facebook’s “Custom Baseball Cards” group asked me to create a card for his “2nd favorite Red,” Eric Davis. I love Eric the Red, too, so here’s that card:
The 1975 Topps set went kinda crazy with the color combinations. I made my own template for this set, and it was fun playing with the different color/photo combinations.
All of these cards use the color combinations Topps actually used in ’75. I’m working on another post that will feature some of these cards with color combinations I created myself.
Here’s a mix of some more football card designs turned into baseball card designs. The ’77 and ’78 sets were two of the ones I collected as a kid. Sadly, most of them were destroyed when our basement flooded.
The ’77 design is a classic, but the ’78 design is pretty bland, in my opinion. On the other hand, the ’77 design was a pain to recreate, but the ’78 design only took a few minutes.
I can just imagine how this photo day went…
Photographer: “OK, guys…just stand there with your hands on your knees!”
Frank: “Um…why?”
Photographer: “‘Cause that’s what you ballplayers do.”
Pete: “Well, actually…the proper stance is to…”
Photographer: “I SAID HANDS ON KNEES!!!”
Frank & Pete: “Yeah, OK. Whatever.”
There are 43 cards in my “ready to post” folder right now. This includes several brand new custom designs that I’m excited to share, and quite a few alternate versions of existing cards.
These are probably my favorite alternate designs from the group – four 1972 Reds variations.
Pete freakin’ Rose. What more could I say about the guy than what thousands of others have already said? For me, Rose was my first hero. He was the hardest working player on the field – a guy who took his talent and became a superstar through the sheer force of will.
When I was in first grade, I even got our school to host a “Pete Rose Day.” People wore their Reds hats and t-shirts…and not much else happened.
Years later, Pete Rose managed to add the dreaded asterisk next to all of his accomplishments on the field.
My baseball fandom will always be tied to Pete Rose in some form, though. He was the star of the team that first introduced me to the game. And no matter what has happened over the years, I’ll always have a bit of fondness for the guy. So, when I started making these cards, I knew I had to make some with Pete.
I decided to use my favorite card template (the 1977 Topps design) for these alternate Pete Rose cards.
Alternate Reds 