Another eBay Toad: Mike Zunino Custom Card

As a Mariner’s fan I try to pick up cards from some of the younger players before they make it to the big leagues when their prices tend to increase. Even though I know that Michael Zunino has limited options right now, a 2008 Bowman AFLAC card and a card from the Everett Aquasox team set, I still keep an eye to see if one is posted at a reasonable price

 

I came across this beaut tonight. I am just going to let this settle in before I go any further…

 

It has a $79.99 BIN price and is being advertised as:

MIKE ZUNINO 2012 ACEO # 1/1 ROOKIE Teal Variation (1 of 1) 1st Mariners Card

 

I shit you not, here is the link to the auction: AUCTION LINK

 

This is what happens when you hand someone the keys to MS Paint (or GIMP) who has big aspirations and not an ounce of talent.

 

Let us begin with the obvious; this is not an ACEO card. ACEO by definition is an art card and unless I am blind as a bat this card is not sketch, paint, pencil, charcoal or any other art medium. Though you may have an argument for a collage.

 

You can see that another card was used as a template, I am not sure if the additions were added on and then printed out or if someone printed out a bunch of elements and pasted them on top of another card. You can actually see the border of the original picture underneath Zuninio’s image. I like the use of a baseball to cover up the Topps logo in the upper right corner and the original player’s info on the bottom left. There appears to be a Kanji character on top of the ball in the upper corner, it looks like the “artist” attempted to cover up what was on the ball with the addition of the character.

 

So let’s see, they used another card, most likely a licensed card (looks like a Topps card), they pasted in a draft pick’s image and then added a baseball here and a baseball there (hey, at least it fits the theme right?), toss in some floating elements including Topps’ “#1 Draft Pick” logo, the old MLB Rookie Card logo that has not been used since 2009 and a Seattle Mariners logo and you have a perfectly legit rookie card.

 

But wait… there is more…

If you buy the card now you also get an equally well designed card back.

So there are more pictures of Zunino including the one along the top that is clipped a tad, using more than 3 fonts, using an overly ornate (and illegible) font for the player’s name, an uneven background image that makes the card appear to be an angle and the piece de resistance… stats cut off at the edge. My favorite part is the little “TM Suicide Squeeze 2012”, with this much copyright infringement there is no question that the designer is not really trademarked.

 

I did not know whether to laugh or cry about this card but I decided to send the seller a head’s up about the copyright laws that are being broken with the card and let him know that he is representing the card as legit so he can be sued if anyone brought it to a legal situation. Let’s see if/how he responds. What is sad is that the seller has 100% Positive Feedback with over 2500 responses, he has 100 auctions currently and everyone one of them, except this one, is a licensed card. I don't know if he bought it off someone and is trying to recoup his losses, I went through his recent purchases and everything that he has bought has been legit so he didn't buy it through eBay if he did buy it, or if he created himself trying to make a few extra (or $80) bucks or if he is helping someone out but I know that the card companies do watch auctions, as was obvious with Topps' NFL Opening Day fiasco, so he could get dinged in the end.