I bought my first Return card off Mike in 2008 from "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" movie that was released in August of that year. Actually I bought two off him from that set. I was newly into sketch cards, just having discovered them on Ebay earlier that year. I joined a message board called 'Scoundrel Art Community' because I needed help identifying artists and characters, and the people on Scoundrel Art were amazingly helpful. I quickly found out that a lot of the sketch card artists were also on there. I didn't even know what a "return card" was at first. What I found out was, part of Topps agreement with the artists for compensation was that the artists could designate a set amount of cards to be returned to them (instead of being pack inserted) and the artist could sell these cards for as much as they could get. To cut to the chase, Mike posted his returns for sale, and I was lucky enough to grab two of them. Now as much as I had appreciated the artwork from day one of seeing sketch cards, I didn't have the financial means to actually collect. I would rip a case of one product and sell the hits to finance the next product. For the longest time Mike's cards were the exception. Those I always planned to keep, always wanted to keep. But sometimes life gets in the way when it comes to finances, and I ended up selling a majority of those cards from Mike over the years. I have a ton of seller's regret and remorse, but I did take solace in the fact that I knew the cards were going to hard core collectors who loved the cards. 

   Fast forward to 2015 and I discover something new (for me).. custom comic book covers. Some issues of certain comic books are made with blank covers so you can get the artist of your choice to draw whatever you want on the cover. Cool! I bought some comic book blank covers when Marvel released Star Wars #1 in I believe January of 2015. First artist I asked for a cover.. Michael Duron. He did a great Luke Skywalker for me. Also got covers done by Katie Cook, Rhiannon Owens, George Davis, Kevin Doyle, Jeff Chandler and other artists that I like. 

   Fast forward again to last year. Actually I had been running this idea thru my brain for a few years, but it didn't get put into motion until last summer. I asked Mike if he would re-create the return cards that I had bought off him (and sold) onto blank comic book covers. That way I would have a reminder of those cards, albeit on a different form. Bonus was, these were BIGGER versions of those cards, so I liked that. Fast forward again 11 months and I have the first three in hand. I got Mike to do the two Clone Wars returns, and the Galaxy 4 return that I had gotten off him in 2009. Here's the first one- a Sith group portrait of Darth Sidious, Count Dooku, and Asajj Ventress! I loved the original card and I'll include a picture of it under the new comic book cover version. I think it's brilliant!

   I'll have a few more of these to show off in the upcoming weeks. Until then, thanks for stopping by and reading!

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