In conjunction with my already extant desire to create custom cards and with a bit of inspiration from The Phillies Room's Chachi set (make sure to give it a look), I have, over the past two seasons, deigned to fill out a set of cards for every member of the Phillies from the current season, effectively supplementing the ones already in the main Topps line. To introduce this set, let's start off with #39, Darick Hall, who is making his MLB debut today batting cleanup.
Now, let's talk about the non-2018 stuff. Put simply, it never presents as well. The formatting is off, and you can't use the horizontal format. Additionally, I think the complete white border simply doesn't lend to as cool-looking of cards. That said, I still have plenty of newer and older material that is worth the time of day, such as this specimen:
Inciarte was a favorite player of mine around when he came up. An underrated type to be sure with solid all-around ability. He's fallen off quite a bit these last few years, which led to his stint in the Reds system last season. Personally, I think the Reds have great uniforms and it trickles down a bit to their Minors affiliates, particularly the Bats. The Reds color scheme and logo also presents well on the 2021s as well.
Obviously, something of note here is the name and position aren't in the right spot. This is simply how the custom designer does it, though honestly I've never liked the name location/size/etc. for the 2021 Topps design, so it's never much bothered me. Also, this is another card which I considered two photo orientations for, the other being shifted a bit more to the right.
Photo credit: Louisville Bats Twitter
I've been thinking recently what next to post on here for some time, and toyed with a few ideas, but I finally decided on bringing into the fray an idea I've considered for some time - presenting some of the custom cards I've created. Now, as a preface, yes I use the Topps.com one, and yes I know they don't want you using it with players and it's more just a novelty thing, but seeing as I'm not printing them and make no money (nor plan to) off of this page, I've decided I will show some of my projects. I've been working on these cards since I found out that Topps had a custom care maker, and have numerous cards scattered across a few laptops (which I really need to consolidate a bit more before my work ends up getting lost, but that's another story). Recently I've made a few 2022-style cards using the new 2022 option on the site, but the template that's actually worked the best for me over time has been the 2018 one. This is the only one that has remained available in horizontal for some time now, and the front design is mostly accurate to the real 2018 Topps set. I think the horizontal format works best for most good images you can find for a player, and is especially great for pitchers, as will be seen going forwards. Anyways, why not start off with one of these 2018 editions?
Our first specimen is Thad Ward, more or less because his 2018 edition is the only one I have on this laptop at the moment. This is actually one of two 2018 Wards I did, with the other being a lest zoomed-in edition. I've had a harder and harder time over the course of my card customizing figuring which zoom/position of the image for a card is best, so I've tended to make multiple of some of the cards I have made. Ward, unlike a lot of my specimens, does not appear centered on this card, but I felt this positioning looked real visually appealing, so I stuck with it.
I hope to iron out this format a bit going forward, but I'll leave this post here due to it already being a bit long with the explanation and all. I'm hoping to post a few more of these soon and better explain this project along the way. Also, in a final note, I hope to try and find the image I used for each card at the end of my custom posts so as to give some credit to the images I used for each card. I can't guarantee this, as some images are older and proba1bly harder to locate now, but I'll do what I can.
Photo credit: Gwinn Davis
