Card of the Day: Monty Sheldon Artball Painter 2015 Topps Custom Promo Card

The Official Sports Card Info OYO Minifigure Review

The slinky… the pet rock… Cabbage Patch Kids… Tickle-Me-Elmo.  All are top toys that parents fought to find so they could see their children’s faces light up on Christmas morning.  But now, there is a new toy preparing to hit the streets that everyone will need to have if they want to be deemed cool among their friends.  What I’m talking about of course is the official Andrew Chrisman – Sports Card Info Minifigure made by my friends over at OYO Sportstoys.

OYO Sportstoys is a fairly new company that has obtained licenses with Major League Baseball, MLBPA, and MiLB to produce minifigures of many popular players.  As of this writing, OYO Sportstoys makes minifigures covering every MLB team, and they recently started their MiLB line.  It looks like hockey and football won’t be far behind.  But one of the coolest things they have started to produce for fans are custom OYO minifigures.

There are three types of custom OYO minifigures that they offer.  If you would like your name, facial likeness, position, and number on a personalized MLB minifigure, they can easily do that.  This way you can prove to people that you actually played pro ball 🙂  The other two custom services go even further allowing you to have your own team/company name, logo, etc…  This is beyond cool!  I’m betting that anyone reading this remembers playing with LEGOs and wanting to be turned into their own minifigure.  Even the box gets customized to your liking, and resembles a baseball card.

Speaking of other building products such as LEGOs, OYO Sportstoys minifigures are completely compatible with other building toys.  This is one of the best things about their products.  You can easily integrate them with other popular building toys like LEGOs.  This way you don’t have to go out and purchase a whole new product line.  Tapping into MLB and MiLB is also an uncharted place no other minifigure manufacturer has gone.  LEGO has lightly touched on basketball, soccer, and hockey, but nothing like what OYO Sportstoys is doing.

Custom OYO minifigures make great promos for virtually anyone.  Marketing people need to take a good hard look at these.  How many times have you gone to a company event and walked with worthless promos that will most likely end up in the garbage, i.e. key chains, pencils, pens, and god knows what else.  How fun would it be to show up to a company event and see that you have your own minifigure?  Its just something different.  I hope to see these as stadium giveaways someday.

Minifigures in general are quite collectible, especially the custom ones and exclusives only available for a certain time.  It will be interesting to see how collectors respond when some of these custom OYO minifigures find their way onto the secondary market.  In many ways, these custom ones might be more in demand than anything containing an MLB or MiLB logo.  That’s just how collectors are.  I would like to see them publish a database that collectors could refer to in order to see how many of each type of custom OYO minifigure was produced.

These minifigures are much more advanced than anything we’ve seen from LEGO.  They have 11 points of articulation compared to the 7 we’re all use to.  Having this additional movement allows the minifigure to be posed in various positions we’re just no use to seeing.  It makes them look much more lifelike.  Each player comes with a cap, bat, ball, glove, and stand.  The stand contains a unique DNA number that doesn’t have a use quite yet, but I’m sure it won’t be long until we find out what you can do with it.  Most likely it will be used for some kind of online content.

This December will be Sports Card Info’s 5th anniversary.  Never in my life did I think that I would have my own action figure.  OYO Sportstoys has a really great thing going and I hope their success continues.

Card of the Day: St. Louis Cardinals Rally Squirrel Custom

Card of the Day: Isaiah Mustafa 2010 Sports Card Info Custom Card

Up until now, that guy from the Old Spice commercials didn’t have a card.

More Promo Pins From The ’10 LLWS

After work today I went back up to Williamsport because I heard there were some pin vendors setup at some of the local hotels.  I purchased a ton of new pins for my collection, and I don’t think I even spent $20.00.   I was able to pick-up a few new promos from the Wilson Trophy Company, DPH Custom Pins, and the grocery store Wegmans.  Check them out!

To get the Wegmans pin, all I had to do was eat two pieces of pizza and drink a soda.

Got Any Change?

No, Press Pass hasn’t gone the way of Pinnacle and started inserting coins in their cards.  I’ve had a few questions about these cards and so has Press Pass ever since they started to surface on eBay.  I can’t really knock these cards because the seller clearly states they are custom made and do not come from the factory containing the coin.  I would like to clearly state that PRESS PASS DOES NOT INCLUDE COINS WITH THEIR CARDS.  Someone either cut a hole in the middle and slipped it inside or they glued it on top.  A few people have been disappointed with their purchase mainly because they didn’t read the description all the way, and thats their fault.

Apparently collectors think this custom card maker does a better job than Pinnacle did back in the 90’s.  This Tony Stewart sold for $50.00.  Not too bad for a base card worth about as much as the quarter.

More SCI Custom Cards

I’ve been making more and more custom cards featuring the famous SCI blue square.  Some of these cards have been making their way into the secondary market through trades and I just wanted to share all of my creations with you.  If anyone has any suggestions for future cards, please let me know.

My Crack At A Custom Card

Love’em or hate’em, custom cards are a big part of The Hobby and there seems to be quite a little market for them.  The other day I came across this seller who seems to be selling a ton of homemade college cards for basketball and football players/coaches.  Custom cards are great as long as the seller informs the potential bidders that the card is homemade.  I don’t like to see when scammers try to pass off a card they made as something made by a major manufacturer.  After see the success that eBay seller has had, I decided to try and make my own custom card.  I browsed through a bunch of photos I had taken and found a picture of the Joe Paterno statue that stands right outside of Beaver Stadium.  Since Paterno has very few cards, I decided to use that image for my own card.  I printed it on thick photo card stock and it would be great to use for an autograph if I ever met Paterno.

I even put the Sports Card Info blue square up in the corner.

The Problem With Sketch Cards

Besides the picture, what would you say is the most important aspect of a trading card?  How about the name of the player.  Sketch cards are usually found in entertainment products such as boxes of Star Wars cards, but this year Topps introduced sketch cards to sports fans in their 2008 Topps Updates & Highlights and Stadium Club brands.  I think some of them look really nice, and could be considered tiny pieces of art, but a lot of these sketch cards don’t have the players name on them anywhere.  This can get really confusing.  Collectors end up guessing who the player might be if the name or number isn’t visible.  Another problem I see occuring is that people are starting to manufacturer their own sketch cards for sale.  This is a problem because it can be hard to determine which are from Topps, and which are self-made.  Take a look at the cards below.

 

 

At a quick glance, they almost look like they are from the same company.  The top card is of Gary Carter from Stadium Club, and the bottom card is a custom sketch of Sam Bradford.  If companies want to insert sketch cards into their products thats fine, but I think they need to find a more distinctive way to separate their cards from custom cards.  Perhaps placing them in an uncirculated holder and inserting them as box toppers.  This is why its so important to read the product description.  

Digital Copies of Cards

Ok, with all the hype and talk about Brett Favre I thought I would see if anyone was trying to sell anything with Brett Favre in a Jets uniform.  Of coarse no major card company would have anything out yet, but there is one seller that has attempted a try at it.  They state in the description that the winning bidder will receive a digital copy of the card e-mailed to them once they receive their payment.  They card isn’t even physically real.  I can’t believe that this auction even has a bid on it.  At least they state its a custom card, but why would anyone buy it?  I hope we don’t see this happening more and more with other players.