Junk Wax Reworked: Griffey, Sandberg, Gwynn and More in New CardArt

Familiar junk wax cards offer plenty of room for personal reinvention. Gavin’s latest CardArt batch puts that idea to work across several generations of baseball favorites, reshaping cards of Ken Griffey Jr., Ryne Sandberg, Andre Dawson, Robin Yount, Ozzie Smith, Tony Gwynn and Rickey Henderson. The results range from imagined parallels to mini treatments and small groups designed to look good together.

These projects also have a personal purpose. Gavin is in his fourth year of making card art, a hobby within the hobby that he continues even as building an audience and finding steady buyers remain uncertain. A card that ends up filed in a collector’s player collection can feel like a small piece of creative work with a future beyond its maker. That sense of permanence sits behind this batch, though the focus here is on the cards themselves and the pleasure of giving familiar designs a new look.

All-Star designs and familiar favorites

A page of Ken Griffey Jr. remixes starts with his 1991 Topps All-Star card, reimagined as a set of parallels that never existed. The concept leans on recognition: collectors know the original card, while the new treatments invite a second look at its design. The finished page gives the variations room to read as a group.

Ryne Sandberg gets the same 1991 All-Star treatment. Pairing him with Griffey gives the idea a clear frame: one card design, revisited for two players, with the shared format doing some of the visual work. The point isn’t to suggest these were original factory issues; it’s to imagine how a different set of parallels might have looked.

Andre Dawson shifts the focus to 1993 Topps Black Gold inserts, which Gavin describes as sentimental favorites. That attachment matters: a remix often begins with the maker’s own memory of a design, and Black Gold gives this project a distinct visual reference within the larger group of altered cards.

Robin Yount’s 1988 Topps remixes bring another recognizable design into the mix. Ozzie Smith’s 1987 Topps card adds a different kind of intervention: Gavin likes applying a “full wood” treatment to that set, and says the cards often look better with rounded corners. That detail shows how the source card’s frame and shape can become part of the artwork, rather than simply serving as a border.

Small-format Gwynn projects and a growing stack

The 1988 Donruss remixes continue the run of familiar designs given a fresh treatment. Gavin imagines these as the sort of cards collectors might have chased if they had appeared as rare inserts, perhaps one per case. That’s a playful counterfactual, not a claim about the original set’s distribution.

Tony Gwynn appears in a miniature treatment sourced from the 1988 Topps “Padres Team Leaders” card. The crop removes Benito Santiago to make the smaller Gwynn format work. Gavin also has a stack of 1990 Leaf Tony Gwynn cards that passed along from Rod to Fuji and then to him; he’s now turning those blanks into new pieces.

Working on just a segment of the card makes these Gwynn pieces quicker and cheaper to produce than fuller treatments. About 50 blanks remain in the stack. Gavin is considering a listing at $3.94 per card, or perhaps $6.19 for the fuller versions, with most of the profits intended for a San Diego area charity. Those are plans he’s considering, rather than confirmed completed sales.

Cards made to be seen together

A group of smiling Rickey Henderson cards suggests another strength of the project: the appeal of a player focused display. Gavin may keep these together as a nine-card arrangement, where repetition becomes part of the effect. A single card can stand on its own, but a cluster gives the eye more to compare and makes the player the center of the display.

Another display brings four altered 1992 Score cards together. Gavin plans to list the group on eBay eventually, but for now it’s hanging on his own wall. He says the cards shine when they catch the light and would like to make better videos to show that effect. The choice to keep the group on display for a while says something about the project: these aren’t just pieces being made for a listing; they’re objects the artist enjoys living with.

The Robin Yount pieces are already available through Gavin’s eBay store, and he expects to add more of the recent work over time. He says he prefers trading for items on his wantlist and uses eBay because it’s a straightforward way to offer the card art. Collectors interested in a custom take on a favorite junk-era card can also contact him about trading for a project. For now, the newest batch is a look at how much personality can be built from familiar cardboard, one player and one design at a time.