1995 Topps Indians Chiefs

Back in 1994, the Cleveland Indians were one of baseball's hottest teams. They would've probably represented the AL in the '94 World Series had it been played, and they actually won it in Topps' computer simulation of the remainder of the '94 season. 3 of their key cogs were Centerfielder Kenny Lofton, Leftfielder Albert Belle, and Second Baseman Carlos Baerga. Kenny was the fastest player in the Majors at the time (maybe second to Rickey Henderson), Belle had 50-Home Run power, and Baerga had power (19 HRs in '94) and could hit for Average (.314 Batting Average in '94). With these 3 guys in the lineup, the Indians made it to the Series in '95.

The last time Topps made random cards with a few of the teams' players on it was back in the '60's. Topps had the Leader cards in the '80's which sometimes had shots of a few players, but just with the teams' leaders listed on the back and no text. Topps finally gave us some combo cards in 2006, and have put some in just about every set since. I like combo cards. They can feature just about anyone, and you can make them for any team, and if you work them out right, you can make them for 2 guys at the same position, 2 players with excellent speed, 2 ace lefties, whatever you can think of. For this one, I had wanted to get a picture of Belle, Lofton, and Jim Thome from that era, but couldn't find one. This picture came up, and it more than sufficed.

The '95 Topps set is difficult to work with, but I was able to isolate every consonant and vowel by themselves, and have a file with them by themself with a white background, so that makes the process a lot easier. I will probably do that with the '10 Topps set as well. Most of the other Topps sets are easy to find similar fonts to. After cutting out the inside of the card, all I had to do was place the border over the photo, and then place the lettering over everything, and I was basically done.

I've made a few cool cards tonight. 1 is a final card of a Hall of Famer that I am really surprised nobody has made yet. I may be wrong, but I did a Google image search and couldn't find one. I also made a rookie card of one of my favorite Detroit Tigers who is now in a pretty powerful position in MLB. Those cards are #s 151 and 152 in my set, the first 2 cards in the 5th Series. I save each card as part of a custom set, and also save it with the Topps set it is a part of, so it is cool to look at some of the sets that have a good number of cards in them. I think 1999, 1990, 1994, and 1993 are some of the ones with the most cards. 1991 and 1996 might be close too.

Thanks for checking out the latest card in my custom set.
-Jeremy