11 Years Later: From Cupcakes at Canseco’s House to the Steroid Collection Series Two Reveal

Talk about a full-circle moment!   Eleven years ago tomorrow, I was embarking upon easily the craziest moment of my baseball card journey. I was pulling up to Jose Canseco's house with my family. We ended up spending the afternoon with him - we played cards (with cards I made him,) ate cupcakes they made us, played with his animals, and even traded gloves. Oh, and yes, he signed a mountain of stuff for me. I wrote about the experience, which got picked up by Beckett Magazine, and they put my childhood hero and me doing the bash on the cover!

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Creating Cards WITH Jose Canseco!

*Phone rings* Hello?  Hey, Tanner? This is Jose Canseco! How are you? *Nearly chokes ====================== If you've been following me for a while, you know that the two things I love most in this hobby are creating custom cards, and collecting Canseco cards.   When the opportunity came to where both of these things could possibly intersect, I was beside myself, and worked hard to make it happen.  Being able to collaborate with my favorite player and create a special set of his cards to become a part of the Jose Canseco collecting ecosphere that I love so much - a

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Body Parts in Baseball Cards

How far is too far when it comes to relics in baseball cards?  I've seen and done pretty much everything under the sun over the past few years of creating custom cards, but the following message I'm about to share with you just about blew everything else out of the water ... "Hey Tanner, Jose just allowed me to buy his teeth that he had pulled.  What do you think about making some cards with them?"  Welp, I didn't have that on my bingo card for the year!   The proposition was for me to take three of Jose's teeth, and

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Grail-Matched: The Investigation of a Game-Used Jersey and the Secrets it Holds

Over the past several years, I've been fortunate to have acquired a significant number of grail cards of Jose Canseco - most of them in multiples.  The one thing that has always escaped me was a game-used jersey.  They never seem to pop up, and when they do, they typically tend to not be the real-deal, or have super weak provenance. Jose Canseco game-used photo-matched jerseys are exceptionally rare. In fact, the last photo-match jersey I can remember of Jose coming up for auction was nearly a decade ago - a 1993 Texas Rangers gamer that ended up highly likely

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TOP CUSTOM CARDS OF 2025

2025 was an incredible year for creating special pieces for people's collections. Shown below are a handful of pieces I created that I had quick access to photos of. If you have commissioned me, from the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU for allowing my art to be in your collection. I hope it is seen as a centerpiece that you'll never want to let go of! For those who have simply commented on my work - I'm truly grateful for you as well! Stay tuned, folks! I've got some huge things lined up, and I'm super excited to share

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Jose Canseco Baseball Cards – Defining the Timeline Framework and Eras

A Production-Driven Framework for Career, Legacy, and Modern Collecting Jose Canseco’s baseball card timeline is unlike many other stars of his generation. His cardboard presence didn’t simply rise and fall with his playing career—it surged, fragmented, disappeared, and then re-emerged in a completely different hobby ecosystem. Because of that, lumping all Canseco cards into one pile misses what actually happened. This framework breaks Canseco’s card history into clearly defined eras based on production behavior, not nostalgia or arbitrary dates. Each era reflects how the hobby viewed him at the time—and how collectors should think about the cards today. Career Era

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Why 90s/00s Inserts Still Matter in Today’s Ultra-Premium Hobby (and why they may be the best)

If you really want to keep me busy for hours, just ask me to rank my top 10 favorite cards. I’ll agonize over it endlessly - mostly because my '90s-'00s playing-era gems and the ultra-modern monsters are constantly duking it out for those top spots. And sure, scrolling through the photos might make this feel like yet another love letter to Canseco collecting - which, in fairness, it absolutely is. But my hope is that this deeply resonates with anyone who collects across these two eras. Since Canseco is my collecting focus, his cards just happen to be the examples

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Sixty Years for One Pack Hit? The Wild Odds of 1991 Donruss Elite

Let's talk about 1991 Donruss! Mediocre. Lackluster.  Predictable.  That's what some collectors said about Donruss' first two series release.  It has been said that the production run was at its highest with the brand in '91, allegedly having printed 3,000,000 of each base card.   To make matters worse, the set was pretty much a barren wasteland.  But to me, they were spectacular. You would find this 10 year old boy in the back of mom and dad's car at a Christmas tree farm Christmas time of 1990, excited beyond belief, for he had with him, a few unopened packs of

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Capturing the True Essence of a Baseball Card

Capturing the true essence of a card through photographs can elevate certain cards from want list to grail status. For me, this is the ultimate example: 1998 E-X2001 Essential Credentials NOW & FUTURE parallels. These two had been on my want list for forever. The scanned pics at the bottom were on a collector's website, and I didn't think much of them. Until I saw a Ripken that was properly photographed. My jaw DROPPED. They went from my want list straight to my dream list. Seeing a properly photographed exemplar instantly elevated them in my mind to some of the

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A Grail of Grails – the 1998 Bowman Chrome Golden Anniversary Refractor

I know you've felt this before, too.   You secure a big card for your collection, and you wait. and wait. and wait.  You check the tracking more times than you care to admit. If the card seems stuck somewhere in transit, and there is finally movement again, it feels like a small victory.  But then you wonder ... if/when the card does come in, what if there is a problem with it?   All of that describes me perfectly this past week.  When the package finally arrived all the way from Tokyo via the original owner's grandson who pulled this from

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