If you don't know much about the Hawaii Trade Conference, it's one of the most important events of the year. Last year was the first year we've hosted it on the mainland (Ft. Lauderdale) and this year's event took place last week in Phoenix. It's literally a who's who of the sports industry and the only place you'll ever find leading figures from MLB, NFL, NBA and NHL, along with all the card manufacturers, distributors and retailers in the industry all in the same place at the same time.

Some of the major news coming out of the week included:

Topps signed a exclusive card licensing deal with CMG for the rights to produce trading cards of 16 baseball legends, including Lou Gehrig, Christy Mathewson, Jimmie Foxx, Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby, Cy Young, Thurman Munson, Honus Wagner and more. The first cards will be unveiled in Topps Triple Threads Baseball with an array of triple game-used memorabilia cards. The deal officially begins in June and runs through 2010.

Upper Deck is making some very cool and consumer friendly changes to its redemption program and is also reducing the number of super premium brands this year. The redemption program involves tiering the redemptions and allowing collectors the flexibility to exchange their redemptions for a different player in that same tier that is currently in stock, thus reducing the amount of outstanding redemptions. Collectors can also cash in their redemption cards for "points" and save up for other redemptions from UD's inventory. It's also worth noting that Upper Deck will soon introduce inserts featuring strands of hair from historical figures, like Geronimo, Marilyn Monroe and Ronald Reagan.

Donruss unveiled its impressive football card lineup for 2008, along with details of its upcoming Celebrity Cuts and Americana II (releases this summer) products and admitted, "We have celebrities contacting us wanting to be in the set." I also thought the Donruss retailer roundtable was really impressive. It's an open discussion where retailers don't hold much back and Donruss seemed to welcome the difficult questions.

The exclusive cards given out at this conference are always a very hot item in weeks/months after the show. I'll update this scene a little later in the week since most of the stuff is either just hitting or not even on ebay yet. There was some very cool stuff given out this year, including the coveted Donruss black box (with seven 1/1 printing plates, including two autographs), Upper Deck's black box (with three cards, including one autograph) and Topps' Allen & Ginter cards numbered to just 30 sets and more.