As noted at the top of my latest post, my small-but-legendarily-mighty August shipment from COMC has arrived, and with it, 24 new sketch cards have officially entered my collection. So I'm gonna show them off over the course of a five part series that will switch on & off with my unofficial Goodwin Champions PC posts and maybe a couple other things. We'll start it off with a bang with my haul of 2009 Topps baseball sketch cards!
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| Kenji Johjima by Jay Pangan III.. |
This amazing Kenji Johjima was the second cheapest card of the quartet, and my absolute favorite of the bunch. It's just a an amazing, highly detailed, full body pencil sketch by one of the very best in the business at drawing realistic, portraity sketch cards. I know there are some folks out there with particular fondness for collecting Japanese ballplayers and geared up catchers who will likely enjoy the heck out of this card. Looks like there's a play at the plate about to happen too.
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| Nick Markakis.. |
Nick Markakis is still getting it done! While always a durable, reliable, and all-around competent player, he's pretty much never been a standout performer. After a couple of rough seasons where lingering issues from old injuries didn't keep him out of the lineup, but likely significantly hampered his production, dude's having a borderline career year at age 34. He finally made his first all-star team in his 13th season, with a batting average hovering around .320 or better all year, and is currently leading the NL in hits & doubles. With a healthy and generously slow decline as he enters the twilight of his career, he has a very real shot at 3000 hits, having just passed 2200.
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| Brandon Webb.. |
I must admit, I'm terrible with artist's signatures and I've never been especially good at sniffing them out on my own, so I don't actually know who the rest of the artists are, even though 2/3 of them are at least legible. This Brandon Webb sketch is only one I can't begin to make out. The benefit of buying sketch cards on COMC is they tend to have the artist (and character or player) listed at a much higher rate than sellers on eBay, but no such luck with these.
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| Chris Young.. |
The last one I had to figure out the player on myself too. I think I was somehow able to hunt down the image this was likely based on in order to confirm that it was Chris Young & not, as I initially thought, Justin Upton. If I was that good and/or lucky with figuring out the signatures, I'd really be in business! I really like that each of these cards manages to have their own unique artistic voice under the very limiting circumstances of this type of set.
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| Backs.. |
Here are what the backs of these cards look like, for those interested. No major superstars here, and there don't seem to a whole lot from this set in general. It seems like Topps was weirdly coy about doling out photo reference of the top guys. Everybody in this bunch had their moments though. Webb was a legitimate ace who won a Cy Young & made three all-star teams before pretty much vanishing without a trace at 30. Johjima was outstanding in his first couple seasons with the Mariners & managed to post positive WAR even after his offensive production fell off a cliff after that. Young never quite put it all together, but had a few nice seasons early in his career, earned an all-star nod, & became a reliable power bat & above average defender at all three outfield positions off the bench after that. And as noted above, Markakis could very well sneak into the Hall of Fame discussion before it's all said & done.
That's wraps up another post. Hope you all enjoyed it, because outside of a buyback post, there most likely isn't going to be much more major sports action around here for the foreseeable future. So if you're still planning to check out what I'm posting in the coming weeks, I am especially thankful for you stopping by.
Until our next...
Those are awesome
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