A Quartet of Modern Wonders

Now here's a little blog post I'd like to tell about four modern wonders you know so well...

The first three are members of my favorite group of musicians... the Beastie Boys.

Gregory over a Nine Pockets is another one of those talented custom card creators and recently he held a giveaway for some his creations:

The giveaway was simple.  Look over his 2019 and 2020 custom card galleries and be one of the first twenty commenters (as I am writing this post... fifteen people had responded) to respond.  You could choose up to three cards from his list (with the exception of his stained glass Sadaharu Oh and Mr. Bean Topps Giant cards).

1982 Topps #21

I instantly knew two of the cards I wanted.  The first one is the Beastie Boys card shown above that was inspired by the 1982 Topps Future Stars card design made famous by The Iron Man.  The other card was another Beastie Boys card:

This one was inspired by the 1984 Topps Highlights subset design and mentions their popular Hey Ladies single and one of Japan's most famous baseball players:  Sadaharu Oh.

With these two cards... my Beastie Boys collection has officially grown to six cards.

Before I move on to the third custom card I picked... I wanted to quickly shoutout one of my 6th period students.

She hooked me up with this Beastie Boys mug for my birthday.  Thanks KM!

The final card I requested was this 1976 Topps inspired card of Harry Callahan:

I chose this card, because I've been a Bay Area resident my entire life and I enjoy collecting cards representing it.  It fits perfectly into that collection as Clint Eastwood played a San Francisco Police Department inspector in the 1971 classic:  Dirty Harry.

Gregory's custom has expanded that collection to six cards as well.  Actually I have seven cards for this collection, but last card doesn't fit into a standard nine pocket page.

It's this gigantic box loader of The Golden Gate Bridge... which represents the fourth modern wonder I referred to in the title of this post:

2013 Topps A&G Wonders of the World Cabinet #WOW-11

This card was a COMC purchase I made back in June.  I've been wanting to add this card for a long time and I finally bit the bullet spent $3.50 of my credit to land it.  But this isn't a COMC haul post.  I'll save the rest of the cards I picked up for another day.  Getting back to Gregory...

Thank you for this very generous giveaway!  Let me know when that Sadaharu Oh stained glass custom is available for purchase, I'd love to first in line to buy one.

Yes... Gregory has a store where he sells these customs.  Check ch check check check it out here.

By the way... if you want to read more about the Beastie Boys and Harry Callahan customs shown above, just click on the links.  They'll take you to his awesome blog where he breaks down each of the customs he makes.

I'll go ahead and wrap things up with this Beastie Boys video:

An Open Letter to NYC is a song off of their To the 5 Boroughs album which honors New York City and all of its citizens.  Towards the beginning of the song... MCA raps...

Dear New York, I hope you're doing well...

I know a lot's happened and you've been through hell.

So we give thanks for providing a home...

through the gates at Ellis Island we passed in droves.

Later on Ad Rock spits these powerful lines...

Since 9/11, we're still livin'...

and lovin' life we've been given.

Ain't nothing gonna take that away from us...

We're lookin' pretty and gritty cause in the city we trust.

And rounding out the trio... Mike D comes in with these rhymes...

Dear New York, I know a lot has changed...

2 towers down, but you're still in the game.

Home to the many, rejecting no one...

Accepting peoples of all places... wherever they're from.

Moving forward, but never forgetting.  Have a great week.  Happy Monday and sayonara!