The nuns of the School Sisters of Notre Dame did well selling their Honus Wagner card.

The nuns will receive $220,000 from the sale. The total sale price includes a 19.5 percent buyer’s premium. Sister Virginia Muller, who was entrusted with the card, says the proceeds will go to the order’s ministries in more than 30 countries around the world.

Collector and card shop owner Doug Walton bought the card.

Doug gets the double pleasure of securing a rare collectible and helping people all over the world at the same time.

Here’s my second nun story. My aunt was a nun, and when my grandmother passed away, Sister was retired in New Haven, just up the road from the family in Bridgeport, CT. She came down to stay at the convent at the family’s church, and there were a number of young nuns in the parish. That evening, she’s walking around and hears guitar playing. She walks into a room and sees the young nuns gathered around a man in a Hawaiian shirt, a good looking guy with thick red hair and a beard playing the instrument. The nuns are looking at him like he’s a rock star, and my aunt, shocked, pipes up with, “What’s going on here?” Turns out, the guitar player was the parish priest, who calmly explained that to Sister.

The next day we held the wake. For four hours we sat there, and nuns kept coming in, two or three at a time. We didn’t know until later, but my aunt’s order bussed in everyone from New Haven and New York City (where my aunt taught for many years) to go to attend. Rather than inundate us all at once, they waited in the bus in the parking lot, and came to pay their respects in dribs and drabs. We reached the end of the wake, and the nine grand children, including me, are sitting in one row when three more sisters walk in. We all thought the same thing, “There’s more of them?” when my uncle Tony, sitting behind us, says, “I didn’t think there was that much black cloth in the whole world!” We all lost it that point and started laughing, and I almost fell off my chair. 🙂

A man left an order of nuns in Baltimore a Honus Wagner card.

When they opened the box, they found the card, with a typewritten note: “Although damaged, the value of this baseball card should increase exponentially throughout the 21st century!”

The card was unknown to the sports-memorabilia marketplace because the nuns’ benefactor had owned it since 1936.

It has a big crease in the upper right-hand corner, and three of the white borders have been cut off. It has also been laminated. But even in poor condition, a T206 Wagner card is prized by collectors, said Chris Ivy, director of sports auctions at Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas, which is auctioning the card.

The sisters will use the money to support their international ministries.

Here’s my nun story. My father’s oldest sister became a nun. She spent most of her time teaching kindergarten in New York City, and not in the best of neighborhoods. Many years later, she was visiting her sister, and some news came on about the John Gotti trial. My cousin said something negative about Gotti, and Sister took exception. “Don’t you say anything bad about Mr. Gotti, he’s a great man.” My cousin’s family was a bit shocked. Sister then went on to tell how her convent in New York had hired a painter. They paid him up front, he worked for a day, left the place unfinished, and didn’t return. So the next Sunday, Gotti, who was a parishioner, walks in. He asks the nuns what happened. They tell him the story and ask him to pray for them. Gotti agrees to pray for them. The next day, the painter shows up, gives back all the money and finishes the job. Al because Gotti prayed for them. 🙂

A reader (Ryan Duffin, via James Crabtree) sends along this story about the Washington, D.C. police working their tails off to return a baseball card collection. From the E-Mail:

This is hilarious. It seems like an Onion parody story, but CNN ran it.

The line that cracked me up was:

Breul won’t hazard a guess on their value, but he indicated some might be worth about $1.

I hope the D.C. police work this diligently on all the break-ins and other theft that occur in the city.

MLB is suing Upper Deck over the card company’s continued use of MLB trademarks.

Topps becomes the official trading card maker for Major League Baseball:

By dropping Upper Deck, M.L.B. hopes that Topps, under Michael D. Eisner, the former chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, can invigorate card collecting, especially with young fans. The league also believes that one cardmaker can end the confusion of competitors selling multiple card series in hobby shops and big-box stores.

“This is redirecting the entire category toward kids,” said Eisner, who acquired the company in 2007. “Topps has been making cards for 60 years, the last 30 in a nonexclusive world that has caused confusion to the kid who walks into a Wal-Mart or a hobby store. It’s also been difficult to promote cards as unique and original.”

Baloney. Kids are more than capable of keeping track of the various card companies. I suspect this is more about limiting supply so the company of a former major league team owner can make more money. Competition kept Topps on their toes:

Since Eisner’s privately held Tornante Company and Madison Dearborn, a private equity company, acquired Topps, it has introduced 3-D cards, the ToppsTown trading and collecting Web site, and the Topps Attax game to appeal to young card enthusiasts and to develop new ones.

I doubt that will continue without other companies pushing new products as well. I hope Upper Deck comes up with a way to keep competing, since they still have an agreement with the MLBPA.

Remember that George Scott card I received in the mail? A number of other bloggers received cards as well, and we decided it was some kind of viral marketing scheme. We were right. There’s a contest called Cardboard Fetish:

In July 2009, in conjunction with its 11th Annual Shrine of the Eternals Induction Day, the Baseball Reliquary will present Cardboard Fetish, a major exhibition celebrating baseball trading cards, past and present. The exhibition will be held at the Pasadena Central Library, Pasadena, California.

A major component of the exhibition will be a display of original and one-of-a-kind baseball trading cards designed by artists. The Baseball Reliquary is now accepting submissions for this unique exhibition in any format: original drawings, altered or manipulated cards, collages, computer-generated, etc.

Sounds like fun.

Someone sent me a George Scott baseball card in the mail today. There was no return address and no note. Whoever sent it, thanks!

Kevin Rozell of Zell’s Pinstripe Blog ran into Phil Hughes on a baseball card message board and ended up scoring some autographed items. The world keeps getting smaller all the time.

No one was willing to come up with $100,000 for the ball Jose Molina hit for the last home run at Yankee Stadium. If Jeter had hit the ball, the bidding would have been huge.

Did you know there are law enforcement professionals assigned to each ballpark to authenticate items used in a game before they are sold?

The 49-year-old Chicago police officer is not there as a fan — although he does love baseball — but as part of Major League Baseball’s program to guarantee the authenticity of game-used jerseys, balls, bats and other memorabilia it sells to fans.
At the end of the White Sox game, Cunningham will assign each item an identification number, attach a tamper-proof hologram and record its details.
Fans who pay hundreds or sometimes thousands of dollars to buy these items — usually via the Major League Baseball website — can be sure that they are getting what they pay for.
“It’s put integrity back in collectibles,” said Cunningham, one of baseball’s 130 authenticators, who also witness and authenticate the signatures of players who sign items for sale.
The program was set up after a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe into sports memorabilia in 2000 that concluded that as much as 75 percent of sports and entertainment memorabilia was fake.

I still think it’s not that difficult to fake one of these things. How many people look at the hologram and do the research to determine it’s the hologram as opposed to a forgery?

Upper Deck writes:

On behalf of Upper Deck, we are thrilled to announce the “Presidential Predictor” card set in the 2008 Series One Baseball release. The illustrated parodies show several of the top candidates in rare form by tying each one of them to a pivotal moment or personality from baseball’s rich history.
The candidates’ cards, inserted at a rate of 1:8 packs in Upper Deck’s 2008 Series One Baseball release, are hitting store shelves now!
Notable names in the “Presidential Predictor” set include, from the Democratic side, Barack Obama and John Edwards; and from the Republicans: John McCain, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson. A few other surprise candidates and political personalities are also showcased in the collection including Al Gore being tagged out by reigning U.S. President George W. Bush in a funny portrayal of Yankee second baseman Chuck Knoblauch’s phantom tag of Boston’s Jose Offerman during the ’99 American League Championship Series.
Collectors who pull any of the Presidential Predictor cards from packs will have the opportunity to win a trip for two to throw out the “presidential” first pitch at an official Major League Baseball game during the 2009 season. They simply need to type in the static code(s) found on the backs of the cards at www.presidentialpredictor.com to gain entry into an Upper Deck Baseball sweepstakes. The top prize will be open to all collectors who register the winning candidate’s trading card. Each of the cards can be viewed at the www.presidentialpredictor.com website.

I like the Fred Thompson card.

MLB commissioned Malcolm Farley to capture the Rockies run to the pennant in a series of paintings:

Farley has been commissioned by Major League Baseball to do a series of five pieces: Helton’s home run; shortstop Troy Tulowitzki turning a double play; two of Matt Holliday, including his shot over the center- field wall in the pennant-clinching victory; and a stadium piece with fireworks erupting over Denver’s night sky.
His work last week took him to Los Angeles to paint Stevie Wonder during an awards ceremony, to New York to paint Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James and to San Antonio, where he crossed paths with Eva Longoria, wife of Spurs guard Tony Parker.
“They’re all Rockies fans,” he said of Wonder, James and Longoria. “They’re all talking about the Rockies. It’s what’s good about baseball.”

You can see some of his other baseball work here.

The Honus Wagner card sets another record.

This recent post about baseball cards got me in the mood to buy a pack, so when I was out this afternoon on errands, I stopped by the local CVS to buy a pack of Topps. I looked through the candy rack at the front of the store, but didn’t see any. I asked the cashier, and she told me CVS didn’t carry them anymore! I guess they’ve really lost popularity.
Baseball Musings is holding a pledge drive in March.

The Honus Wagner baseball card sold again, nearly doubling in price since the last transaction, going for $2.35 million:

The seller Brian Seigel in 2000 paid a then-record $1,265,000 for the prize card, which is in better condition than the rest.
“This particular one was preserved in spectacular condition,” said Joe Orlando, president of Professional Sports Authenticator of Newport Beach – the company that certified the authenticity of the card. “It’s the Holy Grail of baseball cards.”
Still, the Wagner cards are so rare that even those in much worse condition will sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, Seigel said.

I remember the market for baseball cards was hot in the early 1990s. I didn’t trade, but I know at some point the market collapsed. Did that happen because collecting was a fad or did card companies produce too many cards trying to make a buck off the craze?

Dan Wechsler sends this article on what it’s like to create the back of a baseball card.