Imagine opening Tuff Stuff or SCD and reading a National Convention or Sportsfest ad stating that Michael Jordan will be one of the autograph guests. Don’t get too excited because it probably isn’t ever going to happen.

Very few celebrities carry the same persona as Jordan, and throughout the years sports fanatics have supported this fact.

Heck, I’m not even really a Jordan fan and I have still purchased his Nike Air Jordan sneakers, bought all his highlight video tapes and even purchased a signed Upper Deck Authenticated Jordan jersey.

So, what is it about MJ’s star power that everyone is so attracted to? Well, for starters Jordan is the undisputable “best” from his sport. Who is the best baseball player ever? Not sure. How ‘bout football? Let me think about that one. And basketball? Michael Jordan is.

Also, Jordan has pretty much always said the "right" thing, and has done it in a “cool” way. Don’t get me wrong. I think Tiger Woods is awesome, but he almost seems too goodie-goodie at times.
Another reason why Jordan is so sought-after, at least in the collecting world, is his exclusivity. For as long as I can remember, Jordan has had an autograph deal with UDA. So, unless you are buying a product put out by Upper Deck, you really have very little chance of obtaining a signature from the six-time NBA World Champion.

That brings me to the point of my rambling. If Jordan did a signing at a card show, how much could he charge?

Keeping in mind  how many Jordan fans there are Worldwide, and the fact that many of them would pay mucho bucks just to be in the same room with him, I truly think that he could sign autographs publicly for $3,000 a piece.

To my knowledge, no athlete, dead or alive, has ever even charged more than $1,000 to sign a piece of sports memorabilia in a public setting, so I fully expect that some of my readers will scoff at my bold prophecy. But, think about it, everybody loves Jordan. Nearly everybody in the world knows who he is. He is probably the most famous man on the planet and one of the least accessible.
Why couldn't he charge that much at a signing?

Maybe I am throwing it out there because I don't think it will ever happen. The days of a superstar athlete signing at a card show is deteriorating at a fast pace.

Muhammad Ali, Brett Favre, Lebron James, Kobe Bryant; the list goes on. These guys don't do public signings. And why don’t they? Simple. They just don’t need the money or the hassle.
In a perfect world these guys would want to sign for their fans out of the goodness of their hearts. Heck, the fans are the ones who made them who they are – superstars, but unfortunately there’s a better chance of Babe Ruth coming back from the dead and signing at the 2008 Chicago National than for one of these guys to do a card show.

Just think of all the really cool pieces that could get signed from his days at UNC and in Chicago.
If Jordan did a signing, it could spark a Bulls Reunion show. How neat would that be? MJ, Ron Harper, Scottie Pippen, Phil Jackson, Dennis Rodman and crew could all be reunited again and accessible to collectors.

It has been reported that astronaut Neil Armstrong was offered $1 million to sign at a public autograph show years ago and he turned it down. Now, I am not sure, but I would assume that Jordan would probably command more than Armstrong. So, what would it take, MJ? How about you sell 1,000 autograph tickets for $3,000 each and make a cool $3 million?I’d love to see it happen.

I was just checking out our new Realized Auction Lot Database at www.scdauctions.com, and thought it would be cool to lay out the highest selling items sold in the past two years, by player.
I picked out my favorites list and listed the results below. The one piece that stood out the most to me was the Bobby Orr jersey.
I would advise everyone to play around with this neat tool. It is free and can be very useful.

Barry Bonds record-breaking HR No. 756 ball - $752,467 - 9/13/2007 - Sotheby's with SCP Auctions

1952 Topps Mickey Mantle PSA 9 – $282,588 – 12/14/2006 – Memory Lane

Inaugural home run ball hit by Babe Ruth in the 1933 All-Star Game – $700,000 – 7/11/2006 – Hunt Auctions

1951 Bowman Willie Mays PSA 9 – $93,413 – 4/13/2007 – Memory Lane

Significant Joe DiMaggio 1947 Most Valuable Player Award plaque – $281,750 – 5/19/2006 – Hunt Auctions

Scarce 1913 Boston Garter Ty Cobb – $97,750 – 7/10/2007 – Hunt Auctions

1909-11 T206 Honus Wagner PSA 2 – $294,338 – 12/14/2006 – Memory Lane

Christy Mathewson Single Signed – $114,000 – 8/5/2007 – Mastro Auctions

1932 Jimmie Foxx American League Most Valuable Player – $69,265 – 4/27/2006 – Lelands.com

1933 Goudey Lou Gehrig PSA 10 – $274,950 – 9/15/2007 – Memory Lane

Wilt Chamberlain's "Searcher I" Custom-Made Race Car – $91,000 – 5/10/2006 – Grey Flannel

Bill Russell Early 1960s Celtics game-worn home – $56,596 – 12/7/2006 – Mastro Auctions

1959 Johnny Unitas Game Worn Baltimore Colts Jersey and Pants – $93,196 – 4/28/2006 – Lelands.com

Circa 1974 Joe Namath New York Jets game-used white mesh – $19,550 – 12/6/2006 – Grey Flannel

Mid-1960s Ray Nitschke game-worn jersey – $38,838 – 5/5/2007 – Heritage

Circa 1965 Jim Brown game-worn jersey – $57,867 – 8/25/2006 – Lelands.com

Circa 1985-86 Wayne Gretzky Edmonton Oilers game-used, autographed blue mesh jersey – $88,125 – 9/9/2006 – Grey Flannel

1951 Parkhurst Gordie Howe PSA 8 – $8,384 – 4/13/2007 – Memory Lane

1967-68 Bobby Orr game-worn Boston Bruins home – $179,655 – 4/28/2006 – Lelands.com

1991-92 Mario Lemieux Pittsburgh Penguins video-matched 3-patch game-worn jersey – $22,310 – 12/14/2006 – Lelands.com

1984 Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls game-used rookie road MEARS A10 – $70,500 – 4/28/2007 – Robert Edward Auctions

2002 Brett Favre game-used, signed Packers jersey, signed "2002 Game Used Full Game Jersey” – $7,632 – 7/19/2007 – American Memorabilia

1985 Dan Marino Super Bowl XIX game-worn – $33,460 – 5/5/2007 – Heritage

Early 1980s Joe Montana game-worn, signed 49ers jersey, early gamer – $9,611 – 4/7/2006 – American Memorabilia

The man who I talked to last week about his find of more than $1 million in cards just contacted me and notifiy me that he will be using Mastro to organize the sale of thousands of tobacco cards in high-grade condition.

Earlier this year Mastro sold the Lionel Carter collection and this man must have been impressed with the results. I would assume we will get to see another Mastro video focusing on this collection, similar to what the president of Mastro, Doug Allen did with the Carter collection.

I will be getting Allen’s thoughts on this topic later in the week and should have a column about this in the pages of SCD soon.

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By the way… I am still in severe mourning of the Packers loss last night. Talk about giving away a game! The Packers gave away three fumbles and Brett threw two picks. They had more than 90 yards in penalties as well.
That is gonna be a hard one to swallow. They better have a short memory, however, because the Redskins are coming to town this week and they looked darn good against the Lions yesterday.

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Speaking of football... is it me or are there more injuries to major players this year than any other? My fantasy football team is all banged up and it keeps getting worse.
About five of my normal starting players didn’t play over the weekend due to injury.

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Lastly, the image in this blog is a picture of Ashton Kutcher, who attended the game at Lambeau last night, and sat in front of some of my friends.

So, I figured since I was gonna be in the house when Brett broke Marino’s record I would take advantage of the situation to get as many ticket stubs as possible. It’s kind of cool at the Humpty Dome because they don’t tear tickets, so nearly all remain full. In my opinion, that makes for a better collectible… Personal preference.

That said, I made a sign reading “Buying all stubs $5.” I figured there was no way I could go wrong for that price.

At the end of the 1st half, I figured I would start trying to buy some. I have never offered money for people’s stubs at a game before, but I have seen it done. When Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were battling in 1998, I saw guys doing this at County Stadium in Milwaukee.

By the beginning of the second half I was able to buy about 30 tickets and ended up with more than 100. I did better than I expected, but the thing that surprised me more than the number I came home with, was the number of people who were completely baffled that I was buying their stubs for cash.

I honestly had about 30 or 40 people asking me what the heck I was doing.

I simply told them that Brett broke the record and that the tickets would be collectors items.

The tickets aren’t going for as much as I thought they would be. On eBay, you can pick them up for around 20. I guess that would still be great profit for only paying $5, but I think I am going to hang on to most of them for a while and see what happens down the road.

Keeping up with the OJ theme, I thought I would pose the question to memorabilia collectors – How much of your collection is stolen?
Before I start getting bombarded with derogatory emails asking me how I could suspect such a thing, please read what I have to say below:

For many years, stolen memorabilia has ended up in tons of collections. It’s kind of weird if you think about it; mainly because the distribution of stolen memorabilia is basically accepted in this industry. This holds true especially in the game-used-equipment-collecting hobby.

How, you ask? Since the origin of nearly all sports, game-used bats, jerseys, balls and more have somehow managed to walk out of locker rooms and into people’s collections. Equipment managers, trainers, and even players and coaches have stolen equipment in order to sell the stuff to collectors.

How is this any different than what OJ is going through right now? Well, I guess it is a little different. OJ’s stuff disappeared from his house and not a locker room, but if a player or trainer takes a jersey (that is owned by the team) out of a locker room and then sells it, it is still stealing.

The funny part about this is the “acceptance” that YOU may be buying a stolen good. How many times have you seen in an auction description, with the following phrase?: “XXX comes from an equipment manager”

I am sure that sometimes the person who takes the piece gets permission from the team's owner or person in charge, but I know for a fact that many times the goods are taken when nobody is looking.

I have a strong feeling that some day all the leagues will start cracking down on this very thing. The NBA has hired MeiGray to take on the sale of some of its jerseys. The MLB also sells many of its pieces via MLB.com. NFL Auction gets jerseys from some teams, but not the majority.

That said, this is not good enough. I have said it before and I will say it again. I want to see every single jersey that is used used in game play, properly inventoried, so everyone knows what is real and what isn’t. Via this process, we would know exactly what game a uniform was worn, how many games it was worn and where it will end up (auction etc.).

There are too many real jerseys slipping out the back door and too many fakes that are entering the market. Something needs to be done.

Clothing designer Marc Ecko. I tried to contact Mr. Ecko a few minutes ago and will let everyone know if I hear from the man.

Not sure if he is a collector or not, but he paid more than $750K for the ball. It doesn’t look like he plans on keeping it either. CLICK HERE to view his website where you can vote on what you would like to see done with the spherical piece of history.

You have three choices:
-    Send the ball to Cooperstown
-    Brand it with an asterisk and then send it to Cooperstown
-    Send it to the moon

Send it to the moon, hey? LOL… That’s a new one… I kind of hope the ball ends up in Cooperstown without the tattoo, but I have a feeling it may end up getting launched on the rocket. Either way, it will be interesting. Hope I get to ask Ecko his thoughts on it.


Leave it to OJ Simpson to top sports memorabilia headlines for the weekend. Turns out The Juice and some armed, thug buddies of his crashed a potential auction consignor’s party at a hotel in Vegas to try and get some of his stolen pieces back.

What ever happened to simple, nonviolent communication? OJ still may be innocent of all the charges on this one, but if you listen to the audiotape of the altercation, it doesn’t sound very good for the Hall of Famer. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO TAPE

This story has quite the auction correlation as well… Turns out that Universal Rarities owner, Tom Riccio, was the man who provided the audiotape to TMZ.com and who also tipped Simpson off that some of his memorabilia was being peddled without his consent.

I wonder if some of the memorabilia in the hotel room were the infamous “non-fitting” gloves.