30 Day Baseball Card Challenge

Monday, October 15, 2018

A Clean Desk and A Beautiful Bip

Back in August, I reached out to Gavin over a Baseball Card Breakdown and asked him if he'd be interested in making a few Bip Roberts custom cut signature cards.  A few months earlier, I had purchased three index cards signed by Bip off of eBay with the hopes that I could somehow beg Gavin into doing me this huge favor.

It was by no means an easy assignment, since the signed index cards featured large signatures.  But like Derek Jeter, he came through in the clutch and delivered this:


I love that he chose to use a photograph of Bip while he was with the Oakland Athletics.  

As for the other two signed index cards... I asked Gavin to make one for himself... and one more for Rod over at Padrographs.  The idea was to have something that ties all three of our collections together.

In addition to this awesome Bip custom... Gavin also sent me a set of his amazing Sandlot customs:



These are fantastic!  And the card backs are just as nice...



But my favorite is the 1933 Goudey custom of Art LaFleur as The Babe:


But he wasn't finished there.  He also threw in this 1972 Topps In Action custom of Rickey Henderson:


I was blown away by this card.  It combines my birth year set, my second favorite player of all-time, and a well cropped action shot.  It doesn't get much better than that.

Thank you so much Gavin for taking the time out of your busy schedule to create such an amazing custom!

It's proudly displayed on my desk right between my Masanori Murakami rookie card and Minnesota Twins ticket stub featuring Kurt Suzuki:


I honestly can't think of a better way to kick off the week than a clean desk and a beautiful Bip Roberts custom card.

Happy Monday and sayonara!

10 comments:

arpsmith said...

Very nice! The cut auto is great but this Rickey fan thinks the star of the show is that 1972 custom.

Baltmoss68 said...

I love both the ides of custom cards and friends tying their collections together. Very cool

defgav said...

Glad you like! Hopefully Rod posts his Bip one of these days. I need to re-do the one I made for me, but I'll get to that soon.
I think it's cool the signatures are obviously from Bip's early days. (The only time he wore #2 in the majors was 1986). He definitely put a lot of care into it. Love the star, even if it did make it hard to fit in the border.

Ana Lu said...

Clean desk!? Don't know what it is =P

I see dust in that In Action card

GCA said...

When you said "A Beautiful Bip" I still thought someone had sent you fifty copies of some nice junk - er, overproduction era - card. Like it was a Bip-ping...

Peter K Steinberg said...

I love Monday's! It means Friday is coming!!

Sean said...

Beauty! I got Bip Roberts autograph in person at a game in 1990 in Montreal (on his 1990 Donruss card). His pre-game signatures for kids next to the dugout back then was pretty sparse compared to yours, basically just the letter "B" and "R" roughly scratched out. I still liked him a lot for signing it, he was the biggest name I got that day (Sandy Alomar Sr. was a coach and signed for me too, as did pitcher Greg Harris).

Jafronius said...

Nice Bip! But black and white Rickey's looking like he's taking offense to the high praise heaped upon the custom. :)

Fuji said...

arpsmith - yeah... that 72T custom is a beaut.

baltmoss68 - me too. there's not a lot of things for padres fans to celebrate these days. at least we can bond over bip roberts ;)

defgav - i didn't even think about looking up that number. thanks for taking on this project. it definitely stands out on my desk.

ana lu - me either. first time it's looked that clean in months.

gca - almost titled it "a beautiful bipping", but didn't want to blatantly deceive you guys.

peter k steinberg - man... i wish i was a glass is half full kind of guy. i'll be happy when it's 2pm on friday.

sean - nice. i've gotten hockey players, mma fighters, and celebrities... but don't think i've gotten any in-person baseball player autographs yet. oh wait. maybe some san jose giants. nobody as big as bip though

jafronius - lol. yeah... that rickey is righteous.

yoyo said...

Very Good Bip! But black and white Rickey's looking like he's taking offense to the high praise heaped upon the custom YoWhatsApp