Dedicated collector’s custom card hobby becomes option for everyone

It started as a hobby to bring cards that didn’t exist to life — and now it can help bring your legends’ cards into existence.

Tanner Jones is a dedicated Jose Canseco collector who lamented the fact that for years his retired but controversial slugger hadn’t been found on all of the new, creative cards being made — and often not with all of his MLB teams. So he started making cards of his own — and then one day a year ago the idea of his Custom Cuts kits was born.

“I have had so many people ask me ‘How do you do it?’ and I’ve seen the desirability of making your own creations go up significantly,” Jones said. “After thinking about it for a while, I thought to myself people are already acclimated to the thought of cut autos why not cut pictures as well? I played around with the template idea quite a while ago, and then back-burnered it until a few months ago.”

For now, there are just two types of kits available — and they allow buyers a start on making their own cards using their own images or documents, while some have used them to re-purpose components of damaged cards into new creations.

Old baseball cards become artwork for graphic design student

What to do with old common cards is a question and a challenge for many collectors, especially as they continue to pile up.

But for 19-year-old New York-based Blowout member Steven Verdile, aka Metsfan1121, the temptation to simply throw them away was thwarted when the graphic design student received an assignment in a 3D class earlier this year.

“We had to take items that we already had and aren’t typically used for art, and use them to create a 3D piece,” he wrote on a post on the forum. “I quickly thought about using my cards, and came up with an idea. I decided to make a baseball field, along with bleachers and a dugout, out of cards.”