Hobie Is A Pepper Pot

Another day, another box of baseball cards to look through.  Look at me.  I've been going through these things for a couple months now and I am starting to get bored.  I think most of this is due to the fact that I keep finding more and more monotony of 1990s junk.  Don't get me wrong, it's still fun to look through the boxes.  I have just hit a rut.  I've tried mixing it up but my plan of looking through each and every box is becoming daunting.  I have started to take a few days off here and there and with the holiday coming up, I will probably take some extended time off from searching.  Maybe it's that I am still not viewing these as mine but rather someone's collection that I am holding for them.  I don't know.

Well that was until tonight when I found something that set me off.  I found these...

 

I'm going to guess that at this point you know where I am going with this.  Here we have four cards that upon first glance, look to be from the 1950s considering the photos, uniforms, and black & white style.  I have never seen cards from this time that looked like these so I assumed they were some limited food printed set or something of that nature.

Well, they aren't.  In fact, they aren't even cards.  Actually that is not entirely true.  They were cards at one time.  That is, until someone with a need to change the images on their cards got a hold of some newspaper clippings or magazine photos, some Elmer's glue and a pair of scissors.  I can't imagine why someone that wasn't the creator would keep these as they are abominations at worst and novelty "Frankencards" at best.

So what were these at one time?  Here's a hint...

Yes, my friends.  Those were perfectly good 1954 Bowman cards.  1954 Bowman cards that at some point in their 56 year existence, fell into the hands of someone with more interest in arts & crafts rather than collecting.  Even if they were less than enthused with the player selection here, why choose to mutilate these cards?  Why not find other pieces of cardboard to paste your favorite player photos to?  Why not just put the pictures up in your bedroom, or on your Trapper Keeper?  Why not just put the cards in your bike spokes like the rest of the idiot kids in the 1950s and 1960s that didn't realize the gold they had at the time but now force their kids and grand kids to listen to stories about how they had Mantle, Mays, Williams, Maris, and Clemente and sentenced them all to death by bike tire friction?  Whoa...calm down.

As you can see by two of the four former cards, someone had tried to "rescue" them by peeling off the stuck on pictures.  It wasn't me, I swear.  You can also see that attempt didn't work out too well.  Rather than center the photos on the card, you can see that they took the liberty of adjusting the margins a bit...by cutting the edges off to match the clippings!

So I guess to sum up, I found a 1954 Bowman Hobie Landrith #220, a 1954 Bowman Frank Baumholtz #221, a 1954 Bowman Bill Bruton #224, and a 1954 Bowman Pete Catiglione #174 (Version B)...all with the fronts doctored, with news clippings pasted to them, chopped up and trimmed down to fit some sort of sick fantasy.  Or, maybe this was the first Custom Card creator.