NFL game-used collectors are intrigued by the league's somewhat dramatic decision to allow pink cleats, wristbands and gloves for this month's games.
The league tried to commit to a similar event last year, but nothing was really that visible and they took some heat for it. Apparently, they wanted no such questions this year because the pink was everywhere.
Of course, it's a great cause, but it looked really strange to see it in a league for whom throwback jerseys represent daring and untucking one's shirt is cause for a fine.
One week the Seahawks go lime green; the next it's pink. I can't wait for robin egg blue day.
The auctions should be fun to watch later this month. Here's a slideshow of some images. You'll see some of this stuff at NFL Auctions.
Marc Ecko, the hip-hop fashion mogul who bought Barry Bonds' 756th home run ball for over $750,000 two years ago, is apparently having some financial trouble.
The ball wound up having an asterisk placed on it after fan voting and landed in the Hall of Fame.
The New York Post reports that Ecko's business hasn't been doing so well, but he's working on selling his brand to another company.
Oakland A's rookie Matt Carson hit his first major league home run this week. He apparently couldn't have found a worse place for it to land.
An enterprising fan caught the ball and either knew it was his first or found out pretty quickly. The fan tried to hold the young player up for a ransom--$10,000 was the figure trotted out there by Carson, but he couldn't be sure he heard right.
Good luck with that.
"Kind of a bummer," Carson told the San Francisco Chronicle. "They authenticated the bat I used, though, so I'll do something with that.
"It would have been nice to have the ball, and I would have been happy to give him a bat and signed it — that's more than a baseball, anyway. But that's OK, I have a souvenir, I'm happy."
Legendary Auctions has joined forces with Gaynor & Dent auctions to help facilitate the sale of over 3 million it purchased recently. The photographs span decades and include significant figures from varying sports, poignant scenes from the turn-of-the-century, entertainment icons and other notable individuals and events in history including the Civil Rights movement.
The massive photograph archive will be sold in several upcoming Legendary Auctions Premier sales events, through an eBay presence - Legendary Photos and as components featured in future Gaynor & Dent auctions.
“This is one of the largest photo offerings ever made public and its’ overwhelming diversity required a variety of sales channels to do it justice,” said Legendary's Doug Allen.
The first installment in the series of auctions closes next week.
Major League Baseball Properties and the company formerly known as Donruss-Playoff have settled a lawsuit filed by MLB earlier this year.
The case involved Donruss (now Panini America) using what MLB claimed were trademarks, service marks and trade names in its baseball card products.
Donruss, which lost its baseball card license several years ago, produced cards of former players and current minor leaguers beginning last year. MLB Properties sued the company and last month, court papers show the two sides reached an out-of-court settlement.
The agreement prohibits former Donruss exec Ann Powell from manufacturing, selling, distributing, advertising or promoting any items depicting Major or Minor League players in uniform or with MLB trademarks. Donruss also promised that all of the cars and marketing materials had either been sold or "disposed of".
Topps announced Thursday morning that it was adding a newly created relic card paying tribute to the Kennedy Brothers…John, Robert and Ted. The card, titled “Camelot” will be limited to just 5 copies and will be inserted into packs of 2009 Triple Threads Baseball. Triple Threads, known for its wide array of relic and autographed cards, ships later this month.
The card includes a swatch from an old sweater worn by JFK and two chunks of floor that used to reside in the Capitol Building.
It's always fun to check our logs and find out where our web traffic is coming from. Most of it is from search engines: Google, Yahoo, AOL and Bing are the biggies.
Google sends the most visitors our way--thousands every month.
What's really interesting, though, is what keywords people type into that box at the top of the search engine page in hopes of finding what they're looking for. I'm astounded at how far this site reaches after three years. When you write about everything day after day,I suppose it's not surprising. In the last four months, over 34,000 different keywords and keyword phrases folks typed into the search box on one of those sites wound up sending them here. That works out to over 100,000 keywords for the year (the results are fairly consistent). That's a startling--and very cool-- number.
What topics are among the most popular with our search engine visitors? "Babe Ruth rookie card", "Mastro Auctions", "Most Valuable Football Cards", "2009 Allen and Ginter" and "Yankee Stadium Auction" are in the top ten.
Nearly 3,000 people typed the exact name of this site into a search engine to find us instead of just coming here directly.
I never have been able to figure out why they do that, but to each his own.
Have a great Labor Day weekend! We'll be back on Tuesday morning.
Editor's Blog
