1986 Topps Master Set Highlights

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I collect mega master sets. Today I want to highlight a few oddities from the 1986 Topps mega master set. Nineteen-eighty-six Topps may be my absolute favorite set from my childhood. It's the first set I collected, and while it doesn't boast the greatest checklist or really any standout rookies, it holds a special place in my heart. (I ranked it as the 11th-best set of the 1980s.)

What I've enjoyed as a collector over the last few years is that Topps has recognized 1986's base-card design as one of its most adaptable—it's been used in a number of recent sets, and not all of them baseball, or even sports, related (like 2009's American Heritage Heroes set).

The Ripken, Murray, and Mookie cards are from last year's Topps Archives set. I've included these cards in my mega master set because these three are all included in the original 1986 set. The Fernando Valenzuela card is from the box-bottom subset found on the bottom of wax boxes in 1986. If you're unfamiliar with this subset, it featured 16 of the game's biggest stars (including Dwight Gooden, Reggie Jackson, and Wade Boggs), using alternate photography and a red upper border. Attractive cards, in my opinion.

The Joe Carter is from one of the All-Time Fan Favorites set from the early 2000s. The Larry Bird is from the "Larry Bird Missing Years" insert set from 2006-07 Topps Basketball. The Paul Revere is from the 2009 American Heritage Heroes set, and the Al Nipper/Mike TV card is a Pat Riot original from his "Discarded" series. If you don't know anything about Pat Riot and his artistry, start here.

Why You Should Care About Bubblegum Art

Have you ever heard of Pat Riot? If you're a voracious reader of The Baseball Card Blog and have devoured all of its pages, then I'll assume you know who he is. But if you're new to the blog (welcome!), you have to check his work out. His re-faced cards are little masterpieces of pop-culture art.

It's been a while since we heard from him, but Riot's got a new show coming up in Los Angeles. Opening May 25th at the Known Gallery and titled "Out of Left Field," it promises a full gallery of baseball-card and bubblegum art.

What is bubblegum art? Well, it's kind of exactly what it sounds like: art made out of chewed bubblegum. I'll admit it, that sounds gross. I mean, I've been to the gum wall in Seattle, and while impressive, that much chewed gum is disgusting. And yet... check out these photos that Pat forwarded us...

But back to the main question: Why should you care? Besides Riot's work being classic pointillism, and besides it being created using an unexpected material, it's actually great.

I've been thinking a lot about sports art lately. Maybe it's because creating custom cards is fast becoming my favorite hobby, or maybe because The Baseball Card Blog's own Travis Peterson is featured in Beckett Sports Card Monthly in their June "Art" issue. But sports art walks a fine line between legitimate and that horrible, dreadful catch-all word so beloved by critics: irreverent.

If anything, creating sports artwork out of gum is definitely reverential. And if I were Riot, I wouldn't be surprised if the Baseball Reliquary came knocking when all is said and done. Actually, the more I think about it the more this pairing makes sense: they're both based in the Los Angeles metropolitan area; one creates reverential baseball art and the other collects and curates it; and they're both out of the mainstream.

Riot's show will also feature a lot of his re-faced baseball card work. You can read all about the show here.

Interview with Pat Riot, baseball-card artist

I think it was 1996 or 1997. I was a senior in high school and completely obsessed with the Pop Art sensibility of using old images in new ways. For me, it culminated in making about 200 copies of a blown-up 1930s clip art image of a toaster and posting them everywhere in my high school. (The janitors hated me. Not kidding.) 

Glasses, Shepard Fairey, 1997

Around that time I found out about Shepard Fairey. I became obsessed with Fairey's "Obey Giant" artwork, and when Fairey launched his online print store, I saved up the $22 and purchased a great poster he cribbed from the Russian avant garde cinema posters of the 1920s (see image at right). (That $22 poster, tack holes and all, now hangs in my living room.) 

There is relevance in my bringing this up. I was convinced then that Shepard Fairey was on the cusp of the next step in art. He was pulling seemingly random ideas – with their own individual meaning – out of pop culture and mashing them together in anti-establishment ways to create a new meaning: the tongue-in-cheek graffiti artist warning against the police state. That his work eventually found notoriety and mainstream acceptance at established art museums would not have surprised 17-year-old Ben.

So when Pat Riot contacted me about his custom cardwork series "Discard," I sat bolt upright. His work is in the same vein as old-school Shepard Fairey, and evokes the same feeling: that this is a next logical step for art. 

Riot's work turns the traditional hero worship inherent to baseball cards on its ear, forcing the viewer to question the very purpose of a sports card while poking fun at the covetous nature of the hobby. 

I don't mean to characterize Riot as an amateur; he is not. He is a working, professional artist. His body of work as a collage artist is impressive (I recommend his "Race War" series, colliding NASCAR with Civil War–era imagery). He's had solo shows in the Greater Los Angeles area, and his work sells.

Nor do I mean to characterize baseball-card art as a new thing. Clearly, it is not. From renegade Punk Rock Paint to sketch cards officially sanctioned by the card companies, I would say that we are currently in a baseball-card-art renaissance. 

The Baseball Card Blog caught up with Pat via email.

BBC Blog: What is your background?


Pat Riot: Having dropped out of art school, I am more interested in the do-it-yourself variety. Art categorized as "outsider art." Henry Darger's work ethic is a huge influence. And I like a lot of "street art." Space Invader is great. I like that he's playing a game with his art. I also love the absurdity of Surrealism.

BBC Blog: I think your baseball-card-based work is ingenious. How did you decide on baseball cards as a medium?

PR: It's always the simple things that seem so ingenious, right? I wish there was some big, smart moment when I made the discovery, but honestly, I was just messing around in my studio one day back in 2005. I had been cutting up a lot of old books and magazines for a collage and also had some old cards that I had lying around so I decided to give it a try...

BBC Blog: You refer to this series as "re-faced cards," which begs the question: Do you have a card in mind first, or a re-purposed face?

PR: A little bit of both. Usually I just sit down with my cards, scissors and a high stack of potential.

BBC Blog: Tell me about the cards.

PR: My story is all too familiar. My mom threw away my collection. It was pretty worthless, anyway. I buy most of them from the era when I remember collecting, the 70s and 80s. I found some amazing uncut sheets of cards on eBay that I've been working on. The '87 woodgrain! It looks seamless and awesome as a whole sheet. I DEFACED the Barry Bonds rookie card!

BBC Blog: Do you create pieces to exist individually, or are they meant to be viewed together as a whole?

PR: They stand alone as one-offs, but they carry a lot of punch as whole set. They look nice in a book, too!

BBC Blog: Are any cards sacred to you?

PR: No card is sacred. I'm actually ADDING value to these old (in most cases) cards. I'm giving them new relevance and view ability... [Though] I would never hurt a Mark Fidrych card. Or a Hank Aaron.

View more of Pat Riot's work in our Custom Cardwork gallery, and at his official website.


Check out more of The Baseball Card Blog interviews from the past five years here.