Giants Super Bowl Rings Stolen

If you find these rings on eBay - don't bid!

A $2Million smash-and-grab at a Mass. jeweler took off with some of the NY Giants staff members Super Bowl rings. Isn't any coincidence this happened in New England?

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Beckett Hears Your Screams

Your Blog Needs More Love
They are the sports cards Leader
Beckett hears your screams

How about a little Humpday Haiku love?!

Anyway, Have you noticed the Beckett blog changes? Congrats to Eric and Beckett for cracking the Beckett virgin vault of opinions.

Beckett's blog has a link titled, "What's Coming Up" section that invites guest bloggers and a way for other blogs to get noticed and highlighted on the site. Mario from Wax Heaven has a guest blog entry scheduled soon.

I think this is a great start with Beckett. Lets wait and see if this is the beginning of a plan to create a web community or if they are only throwing bloggers a bone? Either way, it's time for sports cards bloggers to take advantage and let their opinions get heard!

Is TuffStuff or Sports Collector's Digest going to do the same?

The Last Best League - Game On!

I just finished reading "The Last Best Leauge," by Jim Collins and I'd recommend it to anyone who covers baseball, likes watching baseball, and for the fan who's reaching the mid-summer sense of feeling jaded by your favorite team's lack of enthusiasm and performance. I know it's not a new book, but it's like those summer reruns... if you didn't see it the first time, then it's new to you!

I needed this book after watching the Mets through the first third of the seaon.

I didn't know much about the Cape Cod Baseball League before reading this book, but I think every baseball fan who reads this will want to plan a trip to the Northeast.

If you're a baseball fan, check out this book - you can find it on paperback.

Making Beckett Blog Ideas Better

I'm not expert on blogging, the web 2.0, trading cards, or marketing. But for the sake of this post, I'll pretend to be one from my blogging chair.

Kudos to Beckett (Eric) with a quick response to my post about the leaders of the industry (Beckett, SCD, TuffStuff) being more inclusive and bringing the community together... blah, blah, blah, read the rest of that post here. I think Eric's going to do great with his new role @ Beckett.

But how do you do expand the blog and be more inclusive? And what does that mean? Here's an example:

A few weeks ago Beckett had a cool story on their blog about attempted destruction of their grading cases. It was very creative, promoted their product, and who doesn't like trying to destroy something. But that was it?! Beckett can be more inclusive by expanding on that idea:
What punishment will your grading cases accept? Let us see!
Beckett could run a campaign by asking you to send your YouTube video of what kind of damage your Beckett Grading case will take WITHOUT getting destroyed. Now I'm not saying to get your graded Mantle rookie and see if it'll survive a shark attack, but put something to test. Be creative with it.

If Beckett did this, they'd have a ton to gain and we'd all have fun using their product.

They could run a huge campaign on it where the winner of the most creative grading case punishment got 10 graded cards for free and were featured in the next multi-sport trading card magazine, put on their web site and whatever else.

Now that's interactive marketing, that's web 2.0, and that's getting 100s of people to use your product, believe in it, and sharing the video of your product with 1,000s of people on the internet.

Capture the Stanley Cup Moment with a Newspaper

Red Wings shouldn't miss out on one of the best (and cheapest) ways to remember and treasure their Stanley Cup Trophy victory - Thursday's Detroit Free Press newspaper!

You can order a single copy of the Detroit Free Press by reading their FAQ page. It has links and phone numbers to call.

In my opinion, this is the best way to capture the moment. I have a some Dallas Morning News papers from the day after a couple of Super Bowl wins and a Baltimore Sun from the day after Cal Ripken broke Lou Gehrig's streak.

Some people frame it for a few bucks or get it signed by players on the team, or just read it and add it to the collection. Having the front page of the paper also helps you capture the mood of the nation during the championship win. One of my paper's has a side-bar column story on disgraced Congressman Bob Packwood! ha!

Remember, newspapers are made on the cheapest and lightest paper. It won't hold well over time if you have it exposed to the sun, have it folded or get signatures on it.

What are some of the memorabilia items that you buy when your team wins the championship?

Beckett, SCD, or TuffStuff Should Promote the Blogs

One of these magazines should do blog reviews or blog profiles in their next magazine, web site, and blog.

Blogrolls aren't doing these great sites justice. There are so many great blogs that have started in the past year or so and it's impossible to find them all.

A few months ago, Beckett had a posting on their blog that asked readers about topics for their next magazine. I suggested the web 2.0 feature, and they responded that it was a great idea, but since then . . . .

If Beckett, Sports Collector's Digest and TuffStuff want to be considered the leaders in the industry, then they need to reach out an embrace all the good work that is being done to improve the hobby.

Start a weekly feature to promote a blog, start a monthly column in your magazine, and become the glue that brings the community together. Putting a url on the blogroll is only the start.
To TuffStuff's credit, I know they've invited bloggers on their radio show - I'm sure my invitation was lost in the mail. :) And Mario @ Wax Heaven consistently talks about other cool blogs and does a few features. Chris @ the Gavel Chat is great at this too.

Beckett has been posting YouTube videos of their box breaks, but there are a lot of blogs and collectors out there that do the same thing. Why not post their box break on the site? It doesn't take away from the Beckett break and it brings another perspective and opinion to the community.

It's time for the leaders of the industry to step up, lead by example, and bring this diverse web 2.0 to everyone.

2 Clicks Sports Memorabilia - A Great Resource

I don't know how these guys keep up with all the sports memorabilia sites, but they have a ton of them!

2 Clicks Sports Memorabilia tries to bring the community a little closer together by listing memorabilia sites and providing brief descriptions of what you'll find on each one.

It's a pretty cool site and I'm sure it'll grow in functionality. I'd think someday they'll have some kind of search wizard and a way to measure how successful your search was. I would think it would some day have a "was this helpful" type of metric.

Check it out - I think you'll find a lot of cool memorabilia sites.

Doomsday Clock Near Final Hour for Tiger Stadium

Is this it? The Detroit News is reporting that a group of investors failed to make a partial payment to keep the wrecking ball out of Tiger Stadium.

I wish there was a way to preserve Tiger Stadium, make it a museum, a minor league park or something. But it's sad to see it's going to be torn down to make room for a Walmart or something.

I'll add more if there is info on how collector's can get a piece of Tiger Stadium, but I think a lot of it is gone.

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