Do You Know About Sketch Cards?
I’ve been creating sketch cards for licensed trading card companies for quite a few years now; checkout my trading card artwork page to see all the projects I’ve worked on. Sketch cards predate my work on them by a few decades, and even though I’ve been drawing and collecting trading cards since I was a kid in the 80s, and despite sketch cards existing since sometime in the 90s and being picked up by trading card companies in the early 2000s, I only found out about them in the late 2000s. However, that all isn’t too unique as there are a lot of people that collect cards, comics, and other stuff that don’t know about them.
Many people I’ve met online or at conventions do not know what sketch cards are. That group of people, who are the collectors of art, comic, and everything else geeky, often really like sketch cards once they find out about them. I think the appeal is found in the wide range of subject matter, the oftentimes affordability, and that their unusually small size allows people to easily build a collection of them without sacrificing a room in your house to store them in.
What Are Sketch Cards?
I purposely wrote that definition as broad as possible as really the defining features of a sketch card is its size and its originality; however, size receives an Asterix as explained later. Some artists and collectors may disagree with me, but to me these are the defining characteristic and then you can have a multitude of sub categories after that. For instance, painted or penciled or licensed or personal sketch cards.
There are no restrictions on what medium or style can be used to create a sketch card, much like how there is also no restriction on what material the sketch card is made out of. One trading card company, Upper-Deck, has recently been making some of their sketch cards on sheets of chrome and acetate! I have seen artists use paper collages, spray paint stencils, oil paints, acrylics, and simple 2b graphite pencils to create sketch cards. These aspects of sketch cards seem limitless, like any other arena within the art world!
What Size are Sketch Cards
Traditionally and most commonly, sketch cards are 2.5×3.5″. The artwork is typically created on the surface of the front of the card and the backside is filled with information about the company /publisher, the particular set the sketch card belongs too, some legal information, and then a spot left blank for the artist to sign. However, companies and artists have introduced many changes to this description over the years!
Trading Cards of a Different Size
The Spider-Man sketch card shown here is a great example of how different these cards can be. This example is of a card I drew for the 2023 Upper-Deck Marvel Premier set, which is a premium trading card set that includes only a handful of cards in a rather expensive tin and features characters from the Marvel comic book universe. The sketch cards range from your regular 2.5×3.5″ cards with artwork on the front to this Spider-Man card that has art on front and back, and is 10×3.5″ and folds up into a 2.5×3.5″ ‘booklet’ that is 2.5×3.5″. Another differently shaped example comes again from Upper-Deck, 2020 Goodwin trading cards. This set includes booklet sketch cards but differently the artwork is on one panel on the inside. The front has a printed image, the inside left has a story printed out, and the back has the usual set info and artist signature.
Trading Cards of a Different Shape
Sketch cards have also come in different shapes. Topps Star Wars has included a variety of themed shapes for quite a few years, with the cards cut into a particular shape giving the cards the name ‘die-cut’ or ‘shaped’ card. For a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set they had cards shaped like turtle shells and Star Wars has had cards shaped like Stormtrooper helmets, Vader’s helmet, the millenium falcon, and more. Topps sports trading card sets have also included shaped cards, as seen most recently with ‘t’ shaped cards that are shaped like the ‘t’ in their vintage Topps logo.
~A sketch card is a physical surface that often measures 2.5″x3.5” that has a one-of-a-kind piece of art on it.~
Where Did Sketch Cards Come From?
I may not be entirely correct, but it is my understanding that sketch cards began as ACEO’s, or Artist Cards, Editions and Originals. These were traded between fellow artists and given out to non-artists as a form of exposure. There was a strong emphasis on them not being sold, but rather an exercise in free art. ACEO’s are still common, and sometimes traded between fellow artists, but ever since their inclusion in packs of trading cards, their popularity and value has increased exponentially.
Sketch Cards and Trading Card Companies
In 1993 the first trading card product included sketch cards. These ‘Art De Bart’ cards were rare, chase cards with only 400 produced. These cards were all drawn by the show’s creator Matt Groening, but in subsequent trading card sets a variety of artists would be used. It was a mixed bag on who the artists were too. Some were experienced published professionals and some were people working on their first paid art project. This definitely produced cards of wildly differing levels of quality, but it also allowed for collectors to obtain artwork from rising stars and for said rising star artists to obtain a modicum of experience.
Throughout the 90s and exploding in the 2000s, sketch cards began appearing in numerous non-sports trading card sets. Sets based on movies and cartoons used the sketch cards as an incentive or chase in the product. Oftentimes the sketch card would be exceedingly rare even if there were tons created. What I mean by that is that thousands of sketch cards would be created but 10 or 100 times that many boxes of cards would be produced.
The sketch cards created right up to the late 2000’s were largely simple and quick sketches done on paper trading cards. In some cases, artists were tasked to draw 1000 or more sketch cards for one project. There was no way an artist can do more than simple pencil sketches when such quantities are so high! Sometime around 2010 this all changed and sketch cards gradually became more and more detailed. Some artists were using oils, some water colours, and some markers. Bottom line though, is that sketch cards were often being done in colour and to a higher degree of detail and quality.
Trading card companies in the late 2000’s also started changing sketch cards by altering their sizes and materials. Some companies introduced Box Topper Sketch Cards that were 2, 3 or 4 times the size of a normal sketch card. Booklet sketch cards were also being introduced, where multiple regular sketch cards were attached in a way that they could be folded on top of one another to fit into a pack of cards. Different materials like plastics and metals were also introduced. The moral of the story is that not only have the artists continually changed in what they were producing but the companies also changed the types of sketch cards, ultimately enlarging the original definition of what a sketch card is.
So You Want to Be a Sketch Card Artist?
Fortune and glory are not in the cards for the vast majority of sketch card artists. Every so often a sketch card artist might obtain an opportunity they wouldn’t otherwise have had. An example is of an artist I saw online who created sketch cards for a project was then invited by the company that owns the license to the property he was working on to then illustrate a poster for that company. That is absolutely the exception. More often, sketch card artists work on these projects for a little bit of exposure with people who may commission them for more work, to say they worked on a licensed product, and to build up their portfolios.
Sketch card artists are paid for their work but it isn’t exactly life changing bags of cash. Instead, a small handful of sketch cards are provided back to the artist that they can resell. These are called either Artist Returns or Artist Proofs, frequently listed as just AR or AP’s. The images the artist draws on these cards are all licensed by that franchise like Star Wars or Marvel Comics. The artists receive only a small number of AP’s in comparison to the number of cards the produced for the project; often the ratio is 1:10.
Some companies create their artist returns differently. Topps does not make their artist returns look any different from the regular, pack-inserted sketch cards. Sometimes an artist like myself will write AP or Artist Return on the back of the card but otherwise it will be indistinguishable from what one can pull from a pack of cards. Some companies, like Upper-Deck will stamp their Artist Proofs with an AP on the front and other companies like Cryptozoic have stickers for the back of the cards that say AP.
Sometimes particular types of cards will not be offered as a return at all. This is common with the more unusual sketch cards such as booklets or the larger format cards I mentioned earlier.
Can You Grade Sketch Cards?
Yes, but maybe sometimes no. I personally have not sent my artist proof sketch cards to grade, and that’s because the price for doing so can be steep and the people who buy my artwork generally haven’t expressed much interest in me doing so. Some people that have bought my artwork actually dislike grading them as they prefer to be able to look directly at the artwork, taking them out of the one touch or top loader that I put them in. These collectors also store their cards in 9-page binder sleeves, in card boxes, or in glass cabinets along with other cards they love. However, this is not true for every collector and I need to mention that there is no wrong way to enjoy your cards!
I’ve found it more common with sports card collectors to have sketch cards graded. It’s just part of the hobby culture with sports cards and personally I have a few graded sports card in my own collection; they sometimes look pretty sharp and if it’s a high value card the grade does improve upon it. Anyways, a few collectors have reached out to me and let me know they had my cards graded and slabbed. The Rizzo sketch card shown here was sent to SGC not for a grade but instead to be slabbed and marked authentic; my name is included on the label. The other example I show is a sketch card I drew of Giants pitcher Logan Webb. The collector took this card to a Giants game and had Webb sign the card and then they sent it to PSA to be slabbed and authenticated.
Caution on Grading Art Cards
A word of caution on grading sketch cards -don’t expect high grades. It shouldn’t come as a shock that artists handle the cards when they draw on them. We use pencils, inks, paints, and even exacto knives when working on them. A grading company looks at a number of factors when grading a card, including the condition of the edges and surface. This is kind of crazy when grading a sketch card as not only will those aspects assuredly being modified during the drawing process but sometimes it’s done intentionally. Furthermore, a grader has no idea what a sketch card looked like originally from when the artist finished the drawing or painting to what it looks like now; there’s no frame of reference for what may or may not be damaged unlike when an art historian looks at a Picasso painting as there are earlier photos of what that painting originally looked like.
One more word of caution is that not all grading companies will grade sketch cards and if they do, not all companies will include the artist’s name on the card. This is because there are artists out there that draw on blank sketch card but that artist was not part of the project -some people call these bootleg sketch cards. Companies often release checklists on who the sketch card artists are but sometimes it’s impossible to read the artist’s signature on the back or more importantly, the list is not accurate and an artist’s name is missing -it’s happened to me a few times! To protect the integrity of the grading company, they may then choose to not grade any sketch cards or add a name to the slab as they feel they cannot be 100% accurate.
Anything to Add?
Think I missed a topic here or have a story to add? Comment below or send me a message and I’ll try to add it. This is going to be a post I’ll likely keep coming back to and adding a bit more to. For instance the topic on grading sketch cards is something that wasn’t originally part of this article when I wrote it a few years ago!
Check Out More of My Artwork:
I remember getting my first sketch card from a Marvel pack way back in the early to mid 90’s sometime. It was just that. A simple sketch. Fast forward to 10 years or so ago when I started finding them online and they were already such incredible full-fledged works of art. The evolution is exactly as you described here, and it is interesting to see someone actually lay out the history like this.
It will be really interesting to see where this goes over the next decade.
Thanks for taking the time to recount the history of one of my favorite hobbies – sketch card collecting.