Joakim Soria hasn’t been on the mound this year but the History of Joakim Soria project lives on. This installment is 2008 Topps. Topps went back to the classic white border after the 2007 Topps black border cards. The card is very playful with the lettering at the top in the multi-colored circles. The border is large and takes a ton of room away from the picture on the card. The signature is a nice touch that I always liked but this card design ranks pretty low on my list of Topps’ designs.
1951 Topps is significant to my History of Joakim Soria project for a couple reasons. First, it is the very first year Topps put out a card… there is no 1950 Topps. They weren’t exactly the as other Topps years either. They had rounded corners and were shorter than the regular 3.5 inch baseball card that would soon become common. It had different baseball results so they could be played like a card game. I chose “Ball” for Joakim Soria because it was one of the first cards I found to use for a template.
Secondly, it is the LAST History of Joakim Soria card. My last post was 2012 Topps and soon after I got the motivation to finish off my complete set! I’m pretty excited about it. I spent about a year and a half (off and on of course) re-creating the Topps cards and have finally finished all 61 years. I think it may be a set like no other. I will continue to post these throughout the season as I still have several left to put up on the site.
So its been a long while with activity on this website. I’d planned on keeping up my torrid pace by posting football cards during the baseball off-season but I quickly found that my love for football pales in comparison for my love of baseball. I lost interest quickly. February brings a couple things baseball back; pitcher and catchers report to spring training to officially get things started and Topps releases their new line of baseball cards.
With 2012 Topps the Royals got 11 base set players included so it was a little fodder to get me pumped up for the season. The design gets low grades from me. It isn’t horrible but I don’t have a lot to say about it that is good. It is bare-bones Topps. A lot of room for picture is always nice but it is straight out boring other than that. Topps cards almost always grow on me so in July I may rave about the 2012 set, I don’t know yet. Since Joakim Soria was once again not included in the series 1 set it gave me an opportunity to make my card first again, like last year.
I’m hoping this will ignite my fire for custom baseball cards again. It will happen… it is just a matter of time. It has been a crazy and traumatic off-season for me personally so I’m ready to start to concentrate on something I love again. There have not been many great days for me since the Royals last played a game so I’m very much looking forward to watching them again. So here is the 2012 Topps custom card of Joakim Soria. May this the beginning of a great season…
“The History of Joakim Soria” is back with another one of the cards from the bland years of Topps. In the late 1990s and early 2000s it seemed Topps was in a bit of a rut. They weren’t cranking out bad designs, just a little bland and not very unique. You can see on this 1998 card the addition of transparent borders to try to liven the card up, what it does is make it busy and distracts from the picture, something I feel you never want to do. The name block has the team’s logo repeated several times in the background, another thing to make the card just look busy. I do like how the actual name of the player runs into the solid box possessing the team’s name though. My last comment; another solid gold border; yuck. Overall, not a good design by Topps.
Most of my re-creations of Topps cards are portrait cards. This one is a landscape card for a couple reasons: I want to represent certain years that did have sideways cards, not all of them did, I don’t think any base cards were sideways from 1972 – 1990. The second reason is some designs look nice in a landscape format. The last reason is simply I have pictures that won’t fit “up and down” on a card like this one.
I’ll just throw it out there right away; I think I nailed this one. It’s odd that the look of certain years of cards are hard to pin down but I got 1964 Topps here. As always it is pretty much always about the picture. I wanted a good high quality head shot of Soria and to crop it tight. I found a nice picture with a bit of a scowl on his face. I know this is a very basic design but I still think it is one of the better re-creations that I have done. I might have to throw in a few Custom Card of the Day’s in the 1964 format since I like it so much and see if it translates well with other teams.
The design of 1964 is very simple and plain. The one distinct thing about it is that the players head breaks the border of the top of the picture. This helps give the card just enough life to keep it from being boring. In 1964 there were obviously no Royals cards so what I usually do is take a Dodgers card to get my color pallet. The Dodgers have been around forever and they have a similar color pallet as the Royals would have had.
As the baseball season clock runs out there is sure to be fewer and fewer posts on this site but I plan to try to keep it rolling with projects like these. The History of Joakim Soria has now covered about 30 years so I am over halfway done posting. Today’s victim is 1978 Topps. Like 1971 Topps it is one of the very first cards I ever re-created.
I like the design. It is simple and appealing. It has likely one of the largest areas for uninterrupted picture of any year of Topps. It seems plain in many ways but still looks good. I really like the position in the baseball too, it is a nice touch.
I think that 1987 Topps has a lot of fanfare. I’m not really sure but I think a lot of people like it. It is very distinctive with it’s wood border and nice clean design. I think I am in the minority saying that I don’t like this set. I think it looks cheap and generic. It is iconic for the Bonds rookie and the classic Bo Jackson card but overall I think it is a miss by Topps.
For the wood border I had no choice but to use a nice clean jpg file and put my graphics around it as I did with 1990 Topps and will be doing with 1968 Topps when I get to it. The font on this card is sloppy. Both mine and the real one. The font I used is Marker Felt and it is close; I don’t think it is right but it is very close. On the bright side this was a very easy card to re-create. It is simple but doesn’t really impress me very much.
1994 Topps is sort of a forgotten set that is actually not too bad. I have always wanted to incorporate the home plate shape into a card some how and this set sort of did it. The picture comes to a point at the bottom that makes it look a little like home plate. I like the script font as well. The problem with script fonts is that they can be difficult to read. This font is no exception. It is not matched exact but thanks to fellow custom card-er Harvey Berkman, I was able to get pretty darn close. This font is Vladamir Script and is close enough if you are trying to re-create this set. The rest of the card is a lot of unnecessary flash; many gradients that don’t add dimension, they just add color.
Now to the picture. I have wanted to do this picture for a while. If you have been to a Royals game and got the pleasure to watch Joakim Soria enter a game you know why the picture is cool. Kauffman Stadium blasts “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N Roses and all the scoreboards around the stadium show flames. The crowd naturally gets into the moment and it creates a very cool environment not seen too often for a team consistently low in the standings.
The picture is not the best, normally the pictures I choose are a little cleaner than this one but it was all I could find. If you click on it you can see the pixelization but I had to use it anyway. The set fits well with the picture too. When I started the “History of Joakim Soria” project, this is the kind of card I had in mind.
So this is 2002 Topps. I just posted 2000 Topps yesterday and commented about the forgettable designs from this era. This card is really no exception. Once again it isn’t a bad design. I really like the banners, something about them seems to scream “national pasttime.” The word “Topps” appears twice on the face of the card just like the 2000 set; which is annoying and unnecessary. The gold border is overkill, not as bad as 1999 Topps but still a little much.
The picture border has an inner glow of black on it. This is similar to the 2003 set that was blue and had the inset picture. This is a pain when re-creating the cards but I will admit that it does add depth to the picture which is nice. Too many cards look flat. What makes this card badass is the picture of Joakim that I found for the set. I don’t know where I got it but it is a sweet picture. So often a picture can make or break a card. This one makes the card look much better.
2000 Topps isn’t a bad looking set. It isn’t a classic or anything but it is simple and non-offensive. The transparency boxes at the bottom do little but take up space but they had a nice subtle color scheme to them and added just enough flair to the cards to keep them from getting boring. This set is in the middle of several very forgettable sets for Topps. The sets weren’t necessarily bad they just kind of washed in my mind. I you asked me what 2000 Topps looked like I couldn’t place it right away.
The gold foil wasn’t overkill and the cards had both the position and the team logo. Interestingly enough they decided not to spell out the team’s name even though they had lots of room. They even had enough room for the word “Topps” to appear twice on each card’s face. Either way 2000 Topps is a solid middle of the road design.
A Hair Off Square 