One of the most interesting things about going to the Hawaii Trade Conference every year is coming back and looking at the prices of the giveaways. This year's conference in Ft. Lauderdale was no different. Virtually every event has card giveaways of some kind and attending the conference is the only way to get it. I've never seen anything leak out in quantity months after the conference is done.

Here were the highlights of this year's giveaways and some of the details.

Donruss Playoff: Distributed its famous black boxes at Meet the Industry. Each box has five printing plates used in 2006 Donruss Playoff football products so you have the chance to get Reggie Bush, Matt Leinart, Vince Young, etc. These were selling for $200 right after the trip, but have settled at $150-$160 for now. They did the same thing last year before everyone realized how tough they were to find and then they shot up to well beyond $200 before completely disappearing. Another Donruss Playoff was a six-card set given away at registration, which includes JaMarcus Russell and Adrian Peterson among others. It's tough to find complete sets, but the Russell single has sold anywhere from a penny to $15.50. These aren't appearing in much quantity either so it'll probably be Russell and Peterson's rarest rookie card for most of the season.

Upper Deck: Gave away a black box of its own at Meet the Industry, with a four-card pack that included one autograph. Since attendees opened the box as part of Upper Deck's Meet the Industry, I haven't seen a single sealed box appear on eBay, which is a tribute to limited these are. As far as sales, the Jordan autograph (numbered to 27) sells for close to $500. The LeBron autograph (numbered to 34) sells for $150, with Cal Ripken at $113, Akinori Iwamura at $110, Derek Jeter at $105 and Peyton Manning close to $100. Unsigned singles are also popular, with Sidney Crosby and Michael Jordan both selling at $20 or more consistently. Daisuke Matsuzaka is also available unsigned and sells for near $60.

Topps: Gave away a three-card pack of Allen & Ginter cards at an evening reception. The cards featured different Topps employees and could be exchanged for other Allen & Ginter cards, numbered to 25, during the week. These have been very popular, with Mickey Mantle selling for $154 and $150, Bruce Lee selling for $107, Ryan Howard for $79 and $56 and David Wright for $69 and $46. These have been incredibly rare to find on eBay so far.

Other rare singles, mostly 1-of-1s were given away at various events, usually the retailer roundtables for each company. There was a Bush Certified Mirror Blue that sold for $227; a 2001 Leaf Auto Jerome Bettis for $167; a Bush Topps Turkey Red Auto (numbered to 25) for $130; a 2001 Quantum Leaf Auto Fran Tarkenton for $100; a 2007 Bowman Chrome Alex Rodriguez Auto (numbered to 35) for $96; and a Leinart Topps Turkey Red Auto (numbered to 25) for $60.

Two observations should be very clear. First, collectors who didn't attend, but still want the cards are going to have to pay premium prices for them and supply is very limited. Second, it's pretty easy to see that just by going and attending most of the event...and with a little luck...a retailer can more than pay for the conference.

I attended the Heritage live auction on Saturday and was very impressed. First, they were testing a live bidding software on the web site that allowed bidders to actually see the auctioneer as the bidding was going on. They could also compare items to other similar items and look at different images of the item. This was pretty amazing and worked just like you were sitting in the room. The only thing it couldn't do was show you how incredible the mid-1960s Ray Nitschke jersey they sold was. No photo could do this one justice. It's the most impressive football jersey I've ever seen, with the shoulders and neck area featuring a ridiculous amount of repairs. I'm a game-used bat collector and I go for the most beaten, ball-marked, pine-tar-covered ones I can find so I had a real appreciation for this jersey and no doubts about its game use. The jersey sold for $38,837 and the winning bidder definitely will not have any buyer's remorse.

Heritage really knows how to run an auction and made it very easy to bid. Bidding was done five different ways:

1. By attending the live auction
2. Bidding on the Heritage site (either before the auction or live during the sale)
3. Bidding on eBay live
4. Bidding by phone
5. Bidding by mail or fax

The leading piece in the auction was a 1922 Babe Ruth signed contract addendum, which limited his drinking and late nights. The one-of-a-kind contract sold for $65,725 and had plenty of bidding action. The No. 2 item was a 1922 Bert Cole game-worn Detroit Tigers uniform, which sold for $47,800. This one surprised everyone, including the auction house, since it was estimated around $10,000. The No. 4 item was a 1922 historic sale of Babe Ruth promissory note, which is one of only three to exist. It sold for $35,850 and led to the winner bidder mentioning to us that there are only three that exist and he now has two of the three. And yes, he actually seemed a little upset that he didn't have the third.

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This auction was the first time I had the chance to meet and talk with authenticator Lou Lampson for any length of time. Most sports memorabilia message boards spend a lot of time ripping on this guy, but I'll be the first to advise you to give him a chance. I'm not sure if I've met anyone more passionate about what he does than Lampson. He's also just basically a collector with 100x more knowledge than most of us, who happens to wind up authenticating for auction houses because others have priced themselves out of the market. Does he make mistakes? Sure, but it's more related to trying to do too many items at one time than anything else. And the responsibility is still on us to do our research before buying an item to "double check" the authenticator's work. I'm sure Lampson has plenty of faults. We all do. But when he starts talking about athletes that he's met, knows and is very good friends with and going through his photo album of his collection and pictures of him with guys like JaMarcus Russell and Larry Fitzgerald, it's hard not to like him. If anyone else was a better option, I'm sure the auction houses would use them to authenticate, but don't think that this guy doesn't know his stuff.

What was really amusing is when he took us to the site where JFK was assassinated (something tells me I should re-word this immediately) and listening to him act as our tour guide. Yeah, he's also very passionate about that and knows his stuff. The actual tour guides around the site were actually stopping and listening to Lou point out details about where certain people were and what happened. He even got up on the concrete pedestal which extends from the John Neely Bryan concrete structure overlooking Elm Street in Dealey Plaza and imitated Abraham Zapruder filming the motorcade. Check back on the site in the next week because we'll be posting video of our interview with Lampson.

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.

I realize that it wasn't the nail biter that everyone had hoped for, but the NCAA Championship last night was a great game and display of talent. Any time you put that many future NBA players on the court at one time and they all generally play well, it's a good game. Greg Oden was amazing and we finally got to answer the question: what would this guy if he actually played a full game? Now he faces the choice of being the No. 1 pick or staying another year at Ohio State and trying to win a championship. It would be great to see him follow the Florida players last year and stay, but it's tough to pass up the millions.

The Florida trio of Corey Brewer, Al Horford and Joakim Noah accomplished their goal of coming back to school and repeating as champions, which was nice to see. Like I said, it would be great for college basketball if more players would follow their lead and stay at least a couple years. Think about how great the tourney would be next year if Kevin Durant and Oden both hung around. And don't be surprised if one of those Florida guards hang around with an NBA team...when you can shoot like that there's always a place for you.

Ohio State teammate Mike Conley also has a bright future and is already the best point guard in college basketball (Ty Lawson is a very close second), but he's insisted that he'll return to college. Ron Lewis might get a look with someone, but nobody else is close although not as far off as Jamar Butler's shots.

The most interesting part of all this is that while the Celtics, Bucks and Grizzlies are trying to lose to get more lottery balls and hopefully be one of the top two picks, they might get that coveted No. 1 spot and find neither Durant or Oden in the draft. I wouldn't bet on it, but I wouldn't be shocked if it happened. If they both come out, it'll be a tremendous year for trading cards and basketball in general. I'm assuming Topps and Upper Deck are salivating and getting their check books ready to sign these guys as exclusives.