21 MLB All-Stars. Seven Panels. One Insane Custom Card
Every once in a while, a project comes through the doors at Reclaim Customs that forces us to ask a question we love:
“Can we actually pull this off?”
This was definitely one of those projects.
Our client came to us with an incredible collection of 21 player autographs from the 2022 MLB All-Star Game and wanted us to transform them into something worthy of the names represented.
But the story of how those autographs survived in the first place might be just as incredible as the finished piece.
Our client happened to be staying at the same hotel as the National League All-Stars during the 2022 MLB All-Star Game. While there, he watched as players signed sheets acknowledging receipt of their daily per diem. Once the process was finished, he watched as the person handling the paperwork threw the signed sheets in the trash.
Realizing what had just been discarded, our client retrieved the sheets and held onto them for years. What had essentially been treated as disposable paperwork now contained an incredible snapshot of one All-Star roster, with 21 player signatures together from that moment in baseball history.
Eventually, those sheets made their way to us at Reclaim Customs with a completely different purpose: turn this accidental piece of baseball history into something that deserved to be preserved.
A standard trading card wasn’t going to cut it.
Neither was a normal booklet.
So we decided to build something we had never attempted before: one enormous, seven-panel custom booklet designed to showcase all 21 autographs together as a single cohesive piece.
Projects like this begin long before anything gets printed or assembled.
The first challenge was simply figuring out how 21 individual autographs could coexist in one piece without the finished product feeling cluttered or overwhelming. Every signature needed its own space and needed to feel intentional, while all seven panels still had to read as one continuous design.
That meant working through the layout, visual hierarchy, panel dimensions, folds, materials, thicknesses and construction before we could ever think about final assembly.
And with a seven-panel booklet, a tiny mistake on one panel can affect everything that comes after it.
This wasn't simply graphic design.
It was engineering.
Designing Something That Had Never Existed Before
One of our favorite parts of custom work is that there isn't a template sitting on a shelf telling us how to build something like this.
We had to create it.
The design was developed around the feel of the 2022 MLB All-Star Game while giving each player and autograph enough visual weight to stand on its own. From there, we had to determine how the individual panels would interact when the booklet was opened, folded and displayed.
Then came the physical build.
Printing. Cutting. Alignment. Mounting. Assembly. Testing the folds. Managing tolerances. Making adjustments when something that worked perfectly on a computer screen behaved very differently once it became a physical object.
There were challenges.
There were moments when we had to rethink the plan.
And that's exactly why we decided to document the entire process.
Watch the Entire Build Come Together
We filmed this project from the initial concept through design, engineering and assembly, including the problems we encountered along the way and the solutions it took to overcome them.
And, of course, we captured the moment when all seven panels finally came together and we could see the finished piece for the first time.
If you enjoy trading cards, autographs, baseball memorabilia, or simply seeing how something completely custom gets made from scratch, this is one you’ll want to watch.
Twenty-one MLB All-Stars.
Seven panels.
One completely ridiculous idea.
This is exactly the kind of project Reclaim Customs was built to create.
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