Sorry for the lateness of Wednesday's events, but Meet the Industry was very strong again. Donruss Playoff gave away its familiar black boxes and Upper Deck had some great giveaways also. The black boxes contained a printing plate from 2006 nfl rookies, which means every box had a 1-of-1 card, with chances at Reggie Bush, Vince Young, etc. Upper Deck had boxes with one pack of cards containing three cards and one signed card. I saw someone pull a Michael Jordan and someone pull a LeBron, with most of the others being baseball rookies.

Topps didn't have any big giveaways during Meet the Industry, but had a really interesting promotion during the week. Here's how it went: on Sunday night, all the retailers at the Topps party got a three-card pack of Allen & Ginter cards with Topps employees on them. During the rest of the week, the retailers would have to track down the Topps employee featured on their card in order to redeem them for a different Allen & Ginter card, numbered to 25. Great idea that really worked as I saw many dealers trying to find Topps employees at virtually every event I was at.

Wednesday night was the Florida Marlins game and, although I decided to stay home and get some work done, it sounds like I missed a great time. Major League Baseball hooked us up with the picnic area so it was a great chance to talk, eat and drink, while watching a great game.

I interviewed Doug Allen of Mastro Auctions during the business sessions and learned two major things. First, Mastro is going to do a live event during the National, with 60-70 elite items, and second, that they are going to really be doing a ton of video on their site. The live event will be loaded with amazing stuff and I got the vibe that it would be just the start of a new, live presence for the company and yet another key selling point to get acquire key collections for its auctions. The video presence is planned to be used on most key lots in future auctions and will take Mastro's web site and auction bidding to another level. By the way, with Doug Allen being the only major auction presence at Ft. Lauderdale, it sounds like he had a great trip and capitalized heavily. I'm disappointed more auction houses didn't attend because there's a ton of value in this trade conference. Finally, my interview with Doug will be on our site in the next few weeks.

In other news, Topps has made two very important late additions to its 2007 Triple Threads Baseball product. First, Red Sox  pitching phenom Daisuke Matsuzaka will have three different Triple Relic cards. One features actual game-thrown baseballs from his first few spring training games. The die-cut paying tribute to his famous "Gyro Ball" pitch. Second, Barry Bonds will also have three Triple Relic cards. Every card will also have parallels - Sepia (numbered to 27), Emerald (numbered to 18), Gold (numbered to 9), Sapphire (numbered to 3) and Platinum (numbered to 1). Triple Threads ships the last week of May.