'70's, '80's, and '90's are completed

So the last 2-3 weeks have been pretty crazy for me and my family. My wife had surgery around 10 days ago. The surgery was supposed to hopefully relieve the extra spinal fluid in her body that was causing bad pressure headaches and nausea. The surgery itself went well, but on Sunday she noticed that something was leaking from where her stitches were. We called up the hospital where she had the surgery (which is 2 hours away from us), and on Monday, they told us to come in. I left work early so I could drive her up, and when we got there, they decided to admit her. The did some tests, and decided to adjust some setting on the shunt she has inside of her, hoping it would cause the fluid to stop leaking so much, and give her spinal cord time to heal. As of right now, I guess it is just a waiting game and she will be in the hospital another day or so and they will observe her and make sure nothing is leaking and her pressure is normal. I was fortunately off of work on Tuesday and got them to let me take a vacation day today, but I had to come back home this evening so I could get back to work. Thank goodness for my wife's mom, who took our son to and from day care and has been watching him while we have been away.
With that being said, I did get a lot done card-wise with all of the time away from work and the house. Between the first hospital stay and the last hospital stay, I have finished the 1980-1981, and 1971-1978 Topps missing player checklists. Because I do my customs (and therefore checklists as well) in 'yearbook style', this means that along with all of the other missing player checklists that I have, that I have listed all of the missing Topps cards of players, coaches, and managers for anyone that appeared in a game in the '70's, '80's, and '90's. Kind of cool. I am working on the 1970 Topps missing player checklist, and one that one is done, I will have the entire '70's run of Topps sets done. It will actually give me every Topps set from 1970-2001. Just '69, '68, '67, '66, '65, and '64 after that (well, maybe '51 and '52 also). 8 sets. That could be do-able by the end of the year. Then comes a lot of fun, as I will do research for every set.
I want to keep this long post going by talking about what I am going to do to make sure I catch every card that has been made off of my list. There are a few places that I am going to go to find customs. My first source will probably be When Topps Had Balls. Gio does a great job on his site, he makes his cards in yearbook style, and they all are categorized by year, so I can just go year-by year on his site, and cross cards off of my list.
Second, I will probably check out the Custom card Facebook group. I can also search those by year. The only difficult thing is that many people post re-done cards (which I don't need), many are not done yearbook style, and sometimes cards have autographs on them, they have watermarks on them, or they don't have an autograph on a card where the original set has one. Still, a great place, and anyone who likes to make customs or look at them should join it.
I also found a site that I have on my phone, but it basically was a Pinterest site that had a link to a site with all kinds of Minnesota Twins custom cards. I should be able to knock out a bunch of Twins cards from my checklists.
Lastly, I will probably just google '19-whatever year Topps custom cards'. Sometimes you will run across a custom from a random site that slips through the cracks. I have found many unique customs that way, including an '89 Topps Traded John Olerud, an '84 Topps Gaylord Perry, an '80 Topps Lou Brock, and an '80 Topps Thurman Munson In Memorium card.
After all that is done, I will probably still keep tabs on the WTHB and FB pages and try to update new ones as I see them. And there will always be the actual making of custom cards and there will probably be a new Topps set out by then, and hopefully the Topps website will finally have the template to the 2019 set out. I am just on a checklist kick right now, and with all of this time away from my son, and now away from my wife, I have to find something to do so I won't go crazy, right?

I guess if you made it this far, congratulations. Here is your prize. During the first stay at the hospital, I got a hanging box of 2019 Donruss. I think Donruss will be the topic of my next post. There are a few things I don't care for with Donruss over the last few years, but heck, I think there is a lot more that I DO like about their cards, and I am sick of collectors bashing them. I will leave that for my next post. Anyways, I pulled this sweet looking Mike Trout Elite card from the box.

I can't remember exactly which year Donruss used this design for the Elite inserts, but it really looks great, and the shiny effects on it multiply the greatness by 100. There is a serial number on the front, so that's another 50 cool points, and aside from the lack of a logo, it is a pretty darn good-looking card. I personally think Trout is over-hyped and wish they would shut up about him on TV. Miguel Cabrera DID NOT steal an MVP award from Trout. Cabrera won the freaking Triple Crown, and was a valuable part of a playoff team for Detroit that year. Trout can steal bases and hit for power and average and did win his own MVP award, but the years he didn't, there were other players who really deserved it. Nobody says anything about it, but I saw something that showed that Frank Thomas has slightly better stats compared to Trout in their first 8 years. I'm not saying Trout won't be a Hall of Famer with 500+ Home Runs, but the Big Hurt declined, and did it fast. Hold your horses on saying that Trout is a once-in-a-lifetime player and just enjoy his career while he is still in his prime. You never know what could happen. I do think that if he continues like he has in the past few years that I will try to catch an Angels game at the Trop before he retires. 

I guess that is all I have got to say. The '70's, '80's, and '90's are completely done, and there are so many card missing of players in the '00's and beyond that if you want to make those checklists, feel free, and I will post them, but I am just letting them be. Hopefully my wife will heal up and everything will be fine, I can knock out a bunch of checklists and customs in the coming months, Topps will add the '19 set to their custom maker, and I will pull some sweet shiny Donruss cards in the future. I'm out.

Thanks for checking out my latest (long) post.

-Jeremy