Folk's  Cards

4 May 2013 - Today marked the 25th anniversary of Valencia Basket ascending to the first division league, which was celebrated with our team wearing jerseys with the same design as back then and by honouring the players of that legendary team.

We won our game against Valladolid and after the game I picked up a few autographs for the Valencia Custom set, as well as on a custom card for Ryan Humphrey and a 2004-05 Xavier game schedule that features Justin Doellman.

Also attending the game was local hero Victor Claver, who currently plays with the Portland Trail Blazers. He came back to town a few days ago for the summer after not qualifying for the NBA Playoffs. We chatted a little while about how things had gone for him in the NBA this season and he kindly signed two custom cards as well.

Lastly a fellow fan had gone to see our former player Nik Caner-Medley, who currently plays with Maccabi Tel Aviv in Israel. As a favor she very kindly had two of my cards signed.

30 April 2013 - By a local basketball fan I was requested to make a team set of custom cards for Israeli team Maccabi Tel Aviv. It proved to be quite a challenging project, firstly because of the size of set - 14 cards in the set plus a few others not included in the Maccabi set - but also because of the lack of decent photo material. 

In the end however the set came out very well and I may even use the design as a template for future projects.

Read more in the newly created 'Contracted work'-page.

21 April 2013 - Valencia Basket played against Lagun Aro, the team from San Sebastian that is going through a pretty rough patch as they currently rank penultimate. In first half our team was better but we didn't quite make a gap, it was only in the second half that the team sharpened up and eventually took the W by 28 points.

Before the game there was a signing session by team legends Victor Luengo and Nacho Rodilla in commemoration of the 10th Anniversary of the team winning the European ULEB cup. They both signed custom cards for the Valencia set.

After the game I received autos on custom cards from Ekene Ibekwe, Raulzinho Neto and Adam Hrycaniuk and Lagun Aro coach Sito Alonso signed a regular card. 

Most notably I also met Qyntel Woods - former Knicks, Trailblazers - whom I had made three different custom cards for. I had found three great photos and couldn't decide which photo to pick for a card. In the end I decided to just make all three and Woods was tremendously kind and signed all three.

8 April 2013 - Yesterday Valencia Basket received Real Madrid; the current leader who have gone 25-2 so far. However, despite having our main centers on the injury list and our team's leading scorer looking at three fouls halfway first quarter, Valencia pinned down Madrid with a solid defense backed up with 12/25 in three pointers. We had a lead of up to 20 points in third but ended up winning it 88-79.

Before the game injured PF Florent Piétrus (brother of Michael) signed a custom card for the Valencia set in a signing-and-picture session. After the game I managed to get a few more autographs, including from Rudy Fernandez and the American players with Madrid. Especially Marcus Slaughter, who is the most cheerful guy you can imagine, was really excited seeing the card I made depicting him in San Diego State uniform.

23 March 2013 - Today Valencia Basket received Herbalife Gran Canaria at home - a direct confrontation as we were tied in classification. We started off quite bad but managed to turn around the game by the end of the first quarter and maintained the lead from there onwards.

It was a 'home-coming' game for Brad Newley who played in Valencia half season last year and to the surprise of many wasn't renewed for this season. After the game he signed my Valencia Custom Card. Xavi Rey signed a regular custom card and Jon Scheyer signed a regular Topps McDonald's card. 

I also had a fun chat with Slovenian player and Raptors pick Uros Slokar, who signed the card shown on the right. He told me that this particular a card was a mess-up by Upper Deck as the player depicted is not him but some Canadian comedian (!!). They sent him a letter of apology and everything, lol.

21 March 2013 - Yesterday Valencia Basket played their home game against Russian team Lokomotiv Kuban in the Eurocup semifinals. We knew it was going to be a tough game but hadn't anticipated on being 19 points behind (3rd quarter). Fortunately we managed to shorten the distance to 10 points and we still have a chance to make it to the finals.

After the game I had an opportunity to catch Derrick Brown and Richard Hendrix and have them sign two rookie cards. Through COMC I had also ordered regular cards for Nick Calathes and Jimmy Baron Jr., but unfortunately they didn't arrive in time, so instead I made two custom cards for them, which they signed.

26 January 2013 - Today Valencia Basket played a home game against UCAM Murcia. Our team miraculously tied the game with 0.7 seconds on the clock, but Murcia amazingly managed to get a tip-in from the following inbound pass and take the victory.

Better luck I had getting signatures after the game. Justin Doellman signed my jersey and Thomas Kelati signed my custom Valencia card. 

I also brought the newly designed custom cards I announced a few days ago for Murcia players Joe Ragland (Wichita State), Marcus Lewis (Oral Roberts) and David Barlow (Australia). 

It was funny how all three of them were happily surprised to see these cards - especially Ragland who called me back to show his card to an agent he was chatting with and asked where I got the cards from and how I made them. 

All autos uploaded on their respective pages.

6 January 2013 - Valencia played against Bilbao Basket today. We started the game well with a 12 point lead at the end of the first quarter, but ended up giving it away slowly but surely. With 1.4 seconds on the clock they tied the game with a crazy three-pointer to send it into overtime. In OT we managed to take the lead and finally took the game by three points.

Our injured guard Pau Ribas did a signing session before the game and he signed my custom card. 

After the game Larry Abia and Mickaël Gelabale signed my custom card from the Valencia Custom set and Raül Lopez signed a regular game-used card. I also had Bojan Dubljevic sign my jersey (for the Jersey project) and Lamont Hamilton signed a blank decoy card.

Another great few additions to my collection on a very memorable game night!

25 November 2012 - Valencia played against Barcelona today. It was going to be a tough game as we had some injuries and their team is traditionally very strong. We started off 2-14 but ended up winning by three points despite Juan Carlos Navarro having two opportunities to tie it in the last five seconds. The arena was mayhem.

Our injured center Vitor Faverani did a signing session before the game. He signed a custom card and my jersey as well. 

After the game Chris Quinn signed my custom card from the Valencia Custom set and Juan Carlos Navarro, Pete Mickael, Nathan Jawai and Joe Ingles signed regular cards.

It was pretty amazing getting seven autos from six players on a single night with a character win to go with it.