A slew of cool Indians cards from @GypsyOak! Thanks to @MDAubrey!

A friend of mine many of you may know, Mark Aubrey (of Mark's Ephemera fame), shared some very cool pieces of art on Twitter with me. I suppose the proper vernacular would be something akin to: @mdaubrey tagged me in a Tweet showcasing some #Indians items made by @GypsyOak.

I reached out to Jeff at Gypsy Oak to see what Tribers they had and to inquire about purchasing some. Well, some turned to a "slew" and the slew turned into a whole freaking bunch! Now, in the name of full disclosure, I did not pay for all of the items you see here. Many, many were actually marked "FREE GIFT" and were thrown in for nothing! How great is that!?

I'm not even sure where to begin, so I'll start with the Artist's Proofs. These are 4x6 prints of some of the amazing work produced by Gypsy Oak. Each one has a label on the back indicating the player pictured and the Artist Proof Number out of 10. Yeap, there are only 10 Proofs of each player! Just. Wow!

Joe Wood (#07/10)	Ray Chapman (#07/10)
Tris Speaker (#05/10)	Addie Joss (#04/10)
Cy Young (#03/10)	Joe Jackson (#03/10)

In addition to these incredible player depictions, I received a wood-burned "card" about the size of a T206. The one I received features Bob Feller, which I found a bit ironic (though, I am probably not using that word correctly in this context) since it was on his birthday that I had previously retired from writing here.

A set of cards that I did purchase in addition to the Proofs above: Helmar Brewing Art Stamps. In my correspondence with Jeff, I learned there were 20 Indians in the set, so I bought them all. I'm not exactly sure how the "sets" work because I received an additional 9 cards (29 total):

The backs of the cards have either a "2015" or a "MMXVI" (2016) in addition to some text. The thing is, there are 18 of the "2015" and 11 of the "MMXVI" cards. I'm sure someone somewhere can explain - or perhaps Jeff just misspoke about the number. Either way, I am not complaining one bit!!

Now, you are probably thinking, "DANG! That's a lot of stuff, there, man!" And, you'd be right. But, that's not the end! In fact, in terms of "types" of cards, we're only halfway there (cue the Bon Jovi music...)

The next three cards are thick. I don't points of thickness from a hole in the wall, so I can only say they are about as thick as a standard relic card. These are also T206-sized. The Chapman is dated 2005 while the other two are dated 2014.

The back of the Chapman has a rubbed off coupon for Helmar Brewing while the other two feature an "ad" for Colgan's Chips:

Those are some seriously cool cards! I have not done any research into the make/model/pricing of these nor do I know if they are considered "fan art" or collectibles. I don't really care. As far as I'm concerned, these go into my personal collection and add the value of "those are freakin' cool!"

Gypsy Oak also included two custom cards with pennies in them! The cards are the same thickness of the ones I just mentioned, which makes sense since these actually DO have relics in them!

The Feller has a 1952 penny and the LaJoie has a 1933 penny in it. These are great cards! 

Rounding out the incredible package I got, there were three MICRO Indians cards plus an entire strip of 12 micro cards featuring all kinds of players!

Now, when I say MICRO, these little babies measure 3/4" x 1" each. Yes, you read that correctly. These things are tiny and are oh-so-good! 

First of all, I want to thank MARK for hooking me up with the incredible talent of Gypsy Oak! And, I want to thank Jeff for not only sending what I ordered, but for also surprising me with an INCREDIBLE array of Indians cards greatness!