"Custom" football cards. Have any of you toyed with this idea?

[the 'stache]

It seems there were a lot of missed opportunities in the early days of football cards. While there were Ty Cobbs and Babe Ruths being printed and distributed in tobacco and candy packs, there were no Don Hutsons or Johnny McNallys. So many great football players never had any cards produced. The only Don Hutson card is a college football card. Packer cards

Bob Lemke has been designing custom cards for quite some time on his blog. A while ago, I had a short conversation with him, and I decided to try out my own hand at making custom cards in Photoshop. After doing my first card, and seeing some of the modern custom baseball cards that are being made by artists, I'm trying to decide if I should take this to the next level, and actually produce the cards, ie printing them out on high quality glossy paper for modern cards, and card stock for the older cards. We collect these cards for the love of the hobby, and not every card has to be worth a small fortune. Wouldn't it be cool if we could add some of these high quality cards to our collection, to fill in some of the "gaps" that exist, but shouldn't. Cards that you could display along with jerseys, and helmets, and balls. I've seen these custom cards sent out and signed by the athletes, or collectors will take these custom cards to shows, and have them signed. It makes for a unique collectible.

So, I'm wondering if any of you besides Mr. Lemke have done these before? I am going to have to figure out how to do the card reverse. It shouldn't be too hard. I'd just have to figure out which fonts are used, and find a texture to replicate the paper stock used on these old cards.

Here's my first shot at a custom. I attempted to recreate the 1955 All American Football set using a modern day player. It was actually pretty fun. Once I was able to create a template, it was pretty easy. Anyhow, here we go. On the top is a scan of a '55 Topps All American card of Otto Graham at Northwestern, and on the bottom is my custom of Aaron Rodgers at Cal. It was pretty easy to do.



Basically, this was a pretty easy production. I found a cool picture of Cal playing at the 1938 Rose Bowl. It was already black and white, so there was no need to grayscale the image. I then found a picture I liked of Aaron Rodgers, and extracted him from the picture. The different fonts were pretty easily found after a little researching was done. And I found a nice little clip art bear to incorporate into the team's logo. I created my file in Photoshop, putting the background, type, Rose Bowl and Aaron Rodgers images on different layers. The hardest part of making the card was the All American logo. I broke out my Wacom tablet and drew it by hand, then used the marquee tool to cut out the stripes. Pretty fun, overall. I tried my hand at a few different templates for more modern cards. The possibilities are endless. I'm looking to get a new scanner, and buy a high quality printer to make some cards. This would be a great way to add to my hobby.

What, if anything, have you guys done? Show me some of the cards you've made.