Mike DeNero's Neighborhood: Christmas 2009 & New Year's Day 2010

For this month’s installment(s) of Mike DeNero's Neighborhood, we thought you’d like to see what Bernie and Tony were up to on Christmas morning (see above) as well as how Leela will be pestering Mike on New Year’s Day (see below). Happy New Year!!

Mike DeNero's Neighborhood was created by superstar cartoonist Jim Hunt – check out his website at www.jimhunt.us. To view a synopsis of the comic strip, past months’ strips, and sketches of the four characters with whom you will soon become quite familiar (Bernie, Tony, Leela, and, of course, Mike), please visit our custom eBay page dedicated to Mike DeNero's Neighborhood by clicking here.

Keith's Key Kard Korner: January 2010

The 1952 Bowman Large #30 Slingin’ Sammy Baugh

Sammy Baugh’s 1952 Bowman football card represents his sport card “Swan Song” as the last card issued during the Washington Redskins quarterback’s playing days (1937-1952). The card, produced at the Bowman Gum Corporation in Philadelphia, produced a portrait that displays fantastically. The background’s hues mimic that of rainier cherry skin as the background’s orange and yellow tones transition through a brilliant range of hues.

The absence of a facemask in 1950s professional football allowed observers to have a good look at helmeted players faces. The card’s Native American logo depiction was more functionally important as a team identifier because it would be another twenty years before the Redskins placed the Native American logo on their helmet. Bowman makes use of a pennant-style namebox. The artistry, color, and design of the 1952 Bowman football cards have made them one of the most popular and desirable cards among any sport.

Not only do they not make cards like this anymore, they don’t make players like this anymore either. “Slingin’ Sam” – a name he earned not while playing football but while playing third base for the TCU baseball team – played quarterback, punter, and defensive back in the NFL. In fact, in 1943 he led the league in passing, punting, and interceptions. In one game against the Lions, Baugh threw for four touchdown passes and notched four interceptions in perhaps his greatest single-game performance ever. On another occasion, Baugh suffered a concussion while tackling Bears QB Sid Luckman. Can you imagine Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick putting QB Tom Brady on defense to blitz Donovan McNabb?

Baugh is worth celebrating because he was an integral part of forward pass development. He made the forward pass a formidable weapon rather than a tool of last resort. In the 1940s NFL, that was not so easy. The ball was rounder at the ends and fatter in the middle then, making it harder to throw. Resultantly, Baugh was not able to throw for a Brady-esque number of touchdowns.

Otherwise, where has this early football innovator made news or pop culture reference lately and how is he is remembered? First of all, with Jay-Z in a rap video. Yes, Baugh had the King Of Hip-Hop harkening back to hallowed antiquity. Earlier this decade, Mista S-Dot-Carter paid homage to Sammy Baugh by sporting Baugh’s maroon #33 Mitchell & Ness throwback jersey in his “Girls, Girls, Girls” video. A fan of both Jay-Z and early football myself, this act is what showed me that Jay-Z finally won the longtime beef with Nas convincingly.

Coincidentally, Baugh passed away exactly one year ago today from the time I write this column, and his passing was reported through all major sports media outlets. Baugh was the last surviving member of the Pro Football Hall Of Fame’s inaugural Class of 1963 and truly among the last of a bygone gridiron era. When naming the greatest football player of all-time, Slingin’ Sammy Baugh’s name is usually in the conversation. When naming the most beautiful football cards of all-time, Baugh’s 1952 Bowman rendition is in the conversation too.

Bob Lemke's Cool Custom Cards: January 2010

The 1955 Topps All-America Football Billy Clyde Puckett

By Bob Lemke

This is another in a semi-regular series of blog postings about my custom card creations. For more than six years now, I have been creating "cards that never were" in the formats of some of favorites from the 1950s as well as some of the card hobby's most popular designs of the last century. I have now completed something like 125 different cards in a dozen or more designs, but the format that started it all was the 1955 Topps All-American Football set, a childhood favorite.

As much as possible when creating fantasy cards, I stick to the real world of actual ballplayers and classic designs. Early on, though, in my "update" to the All-American set, I stepped outside the box to create a football card for Billy Clyde Puckett.

Billy Clyde is a fictional football hero who starred for the TCU Horned Frogs and the New York Giants in several novels by Dan Jenkins: Semi-Tough, Life Its Ownself, Rude Behavior and You Gotta Play Hurt. He also pops up in cameos in some of Jenkins' other works.

If you've ever read Dan Jenkins, you understand why I made a Puckett card. If you haven't, you really should start. Jenkins' books are simply among the funniest I have ever encountered. I began reading him in college and have never stopped. I've read of them two or three times. They are laugh-out-loud funny, decidedly politically incorrect and whether he's writing about football, golf (e.g., Dead Solid Perfect), or the worlds of big "bidness" or magazine journalism, his characters, insights into human foibles and, especially to me, his turns of phrase, made him one of my all-time favorite authors. I see that he has also authored, co-authored or edited quite a number of non-fiction books as well, including biographies of several football stars.

Anyway, back to my Billy Clyde card. Recognize him? That's actually Burt Reynolds in a photo from his football days at Florida State. Since Burt played Billy Clyde in the movie version of Semi-Tough, he seemed like the natural choice to embody Puckett on my card. Reynolds is also included among my '55-style cards on an FSU card of his own. You can see that, and many of my other creations, in my Photobucket albums at www.tinyurl.com/customcards.

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Bob Lemke is a collector of bubblegum cards in the 1950s-1960s, Bob Lemke's hobby today is creating cards of current and former “players” in those "golden age" styles. He currently edits the vintage sections of the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards and maintains a hobby blog at www.www.boblemke.blogspot.com.

Our Consignment Program: We offer our consignors affordable and fair consignment rates and the ability to sell their sportscards, ticket stubs and memorabilia through one, two, and/or three channels: our eBay store, our eBay auctions, and our website.

Contact us today to discuss your collection. You can call us at (571) 213-4713 or e-mail us at MDsportscards@gmail.com. We look forward to speaking with you.

2009 Year In Review & Thank You

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Year In Review (2009) & Thank You

By Mike DeNero

We’d like to end 2009 one a high note by thanking everyone who helped make 2009 our most successful year ever (bad economy and all!), providing you with a brief preview of our next e-Newsletter, and displaying a collage of some of our favorite items that we sold to collectors this year.

Thank You!

First, we’d like to thank all of our customers, especially those who originally found us through our eBay store and who have since become regulars to our website, www.MDsportscards.com. Second, we’d like to thank Lilly Star Design for designing all aspects of our custom eBay store (including our custom comic strip and library pages) and for providing the finishing touches on our website and blog. Third, we’d like to thank our wonderful guest columnists, Keith Weinhold (Keith’s Key Kard Korner) and K. Aaron Cohen (Confessions of a Vintage Cardboard Junkie). Their tireless work (for ZERO pay, I might add) and attention to detail has helped make our e-Newsletter and blog more intelligent and fun! Fourth, we thank the legendary Bob Lemke for allowing us to use his awesome custom cards (and typically, his accompanying blog entries) for our monthly feature, Bob Lemke's Cool Custom Cards.

And finally (last, but certainly not least), we’d like to thank our brilliant, wonderful, artistic, and multi-talented cartoonist, Jim Hunt, who not only creates our monthly comic strip, Mike DeNero’s Neighborhood, but he also designed our silly food/drink product advertisements (e.g., Cap'n Mike's Cereal above) and each of the custom column headers that appear in our e-Newsletter (e.g., Mike DeNero's Pontifications above)! I wish I could have provided him the type of introduction that Bruce Springsteen lavishes upon Clarence (the "Big Man") Clemons at his concerts, but I'm no Boss and Jim Hunt doesn't need such an intro -- the brilliance of his work speaks for itself.

Preview of Next Month’s e-Newsletter

In next month’s e-Newsletter, we will reveal a new (additional) product line as well as a new monthly columnist. We don’t want to spoil the surprise … so we won’t! You’ll just have to wait until next month’s e-Newsletter …

2009 In Review

We wanted to end 2009 by providing a very brief review of some of the beautiful sportscards (and ticket stubs) that collectors purchased from us throughout the year. While we originally intended this to be a “Top 10 List” – one displaying each card as well as accompanying self-indulgent commentary -- it quickly became apparent to us that it would be nearly impossible to boil down our year to ten sportscards. Plus, since this is a visual hobby more than anything else, we’d let the images, rather than me, tell the story. So, without further adieu, here are some of our favorite “sold sportscards” (and ticket stubs) from 2009 …

Mike DeNero's Neighborhood: December 2009

Mike DeNero's Neighborhood was created by superstar cartoonist Jim Hunt – check out his website at www.jimhunt.us. To view a synopsis of the comic strip, past months’ strips, and sketches of the four characters with whom you will soon become quite familiar (Bernie, Tony, Leela, and, of course, Mike), please visit our custom eBay page dedicated to Mike DeNero's Neighborhood by clicking here.