Minor League Mail-day 2017

Something many people either forget or overlook, is how awesome and weird minor league baseball cards can be. Take the 2017 Albuquerque Isotopes set, all the cards have the players with mostly dogs, and a few cats I think. The Isotopes are the Rockies Triple-A team so I added Ryan Hanigan and Anthony Bemboom to my Rockies minor league card collection. I really hope Hanigan gets a Rockies card in 2017 Update, but if he doesn't, this is the next best thing. Sadly, Anthony Bemboom probably won't get a Rockies call-up, but he is in the lead for best Rockies MiLB name.

Custom Card: 1996 Upper Deck SP - Ryan Hanigan w/ Parallels

I love doing customs, especially when I am happy with the result, and I am very happy with this one. Instead of modifying an old scan, I built this from scratch, obviously using 1996 SP baseball, one of my favorite designs of all time, with a few tweeks. Foil is nearly impossible to duplicate digitally, so that is gone giving it more of a 2007 SP Rookie Edition feel. Also gone is the gold foil border, replaced with a black border, trimmed with gold. Another foil element was the SP logo, which I redid adding the gold faux-foil border as well. The last thing that bothered me was the team name. I replaced the all caps team name with something more normal, and added the full position instead of the abbreviation.