2013 is winding down and tomorrow we will unveil the first-ever Mikey Awards. Compiled by our own erstwhile 
columnist Mike Fruitman of Mike’s Stadium Sports Cards, the Mikeys will sort out the good, the bad, the ugly and everything in between from the sports card product releases of the past 12 months (and, as usual, there were plenty to open).
Mikeys will be handed out for the year’s top product, best card (a sentimental choice), Comeback of the Year and of course, the ‘Justin Bieber, Retire and Take This With You Award’ which you won’t want to miss.
We’re not saying it’s good, but ESPN Classic may want to take a look at this column for possible Instant Classic status.
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We’d be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge the hobby contributions of Bill Wagner, a/k/a ‘Babe Waxpak”. His syndicated column on the hobby has been running in newspapers for many years. It’s primarily served as a Q&A where readers could send in their questions and ‘Babe’ would answer them, often via his contacts in the industry.
As Rich Klein told us a couple of weeks ago in his Ramblings column, 2013 marks the end of Wagner’s column. His final edition focuses on the sports card grading companies, where some pretty staggering numbers are revealed about the number of cards graded. Read about it here.
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A couple of weeks ago, I chatted about the upcoming auction of the Babe Ruth ‘Little Johnny Sylvester’ baseball and other items with NBC Sports Radio. Host Brian Weber and I also touched on a couple of hobby topics in the interview, which isn’t long. They sent me a clip and you can listen to it below.
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In case you missed buying something for yourself amid the holiday gift shopping, the new Standard Catalog of Vintage Baseball Cards came out recently. If you don’t own one, you probably should. There are over 700 pages of set checklists, brief descriptions and pricing information for baseball card issues through the years.
It’s more reference tool than price guide but either way, it’s worth owning. Click here to order.
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Our Facebook page now has over 30,000 fans.
Many of the folks we see commenting on the posts are not serious collectors (not yet, anyway). They are guys who collected as kids but have now grown up and are itching to get back into the hobby after finding the page (and the website). Others know their way around the new card products but are blown away by some of the vintage cards and memorabilia I post after pointing it out on eBay and other places. Still others are just sports fans who see the posts and decide to start collecting just because it looks like fun. Their enthusiasm is really fun to see.
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We’ll have another update for you Tuesday, then take our usual New Year’s Day holiday here on the website, but I’ll be on Facebook and Twitter in the meantime and hopefully we’ll connect there.
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