I was looking at the prices for some of the recently-released Adrian Peterson cards and found something that just doesn't make sense to me. There are two different Peterson rookies from similar products that have a patch, autograph and are numbered to 99. One is selling for around $700 and the other is selling for $2,500. Why is there such a huge difference?

The first product is Playoff National Treasures. The card is vertical, which is usually preferred. It's got a nice big patch, with a signature and, like I said, numbered to 99. Boxes of National Treasures are selling for around $400 and the product appears to be doing very well with collectors. There are two completed sales on ebay, with one for $592 and one for $689.

The second product is Upper Deck Exquisite. The card is horizontal with a nice big patch, signature and numbered to 99. Boxes of Exquisite are selling around $525. There are six different completed auctions on eBay and the final sale price ranges between $1,705 and $3,600.

What am I missing here? Both are in the highest-end products known to mankind and everything else is extremely similar. Playoff has a great reputation in football cards, which is obvious when you look at the Playoff Contenders Peterson rookie (limited to 355) and see that it sells for $320 to $440. Does the Exquisite name mean that much to collectors? It does in many cases in basketball, where it debuted in 2003-04 and blew everyone away with the first $500 pack (which now go for around $4,000). But in football, both National Treasures and Exquisite have been around for two years. Can anyone explain this one to me?

One of the hottest products right now isn’t really even a product; it’s the Topps McDonald’s High School All-American Game cards.

The cards were passed out to attendees at the game (March 26 in Milwaukee) with one boys and one girls card per pack. These are the first cards of these players and the only ones you'll see until (and if) they have licensed NBA card.

UCLA-bound Jrue Holiday has the highest secondary-market value thus far, selling at $50, while Evans, Arizona-bound Brandon Jennings and Georgetown-bound Greg Monroe singles sell for $40. USC-bound Demar DeRozan and Louisville-bound Semardo Samuels singles sell for $30. Unopened packs sell for around $40.

As for the game, Tyreke Evans showed everyone why he's one of the top prospects from this class. He had 21 points and 10 rebounds, taking home MVP honors. He'll be announcing his college decision on April 16.

Brandon Jennings either had an impressive assist or a bad turnover every time he touched the ball. He was trying to break the assist record and was amazingly flashy on his way to nine assists, but called out the big men on his team after the game for missing some layups.

Jrue Holiday was also impressive with 14 points, five rebounds, five steals and three assists. He seems like he's got a non-stop motor and almost had to tone down his competitiveness for this game.

Other guys I was impressed with were Kemba Walker, Demar DeRozan, Willie Warren, Mike Rosario and Scotty Hopson. Although Semardo Samuels didn't do much in the actual game, many of the players mentioned he was one of the most impressive players during the week with a great performance in the three-point competition among other things.

The only disappointment was Greg Monroe. This is never a big-man's game and Monroe struggled, with one point and five turnovers. He never really seemed to get into the flow of the game, but it wouldn't be the first time that's happened to a very good big man in this game.

I'll have to postpone writing about the McDonald's High School All-American Game for now because arguably the hottest topic in the industry is Beckett Exquisite Football box break video. If you haven't seen it yet, here's the link to the video.

The video has many collectors wondering if the box was purposely loaded with big cards so it would be promoted on Beckett. Sorry, I won't be commenting either way about that. Exquisite sells for $500 per box for a reason; there are a lot of cards like this in this product. While the odds of that happening are minute, it also wouldn't make sense for a company to advertise to the public that two or three of the best cards in the set are no longer available. The better publicity would be for collectors to see those same cards selling on eBay. Either way, this isn't the first time, or first card company, whose online box breaks have been called into question as far as their accuracy.

What I am writing about is what they pulled. First, what is the value of that Peterson Autographed Patch 1/1 card? The regular version is numbered to 99 and sells for anywhere from $1,525 to $2,352 on eBay. Where does that put this one? I'm guessing it's gotta be at least $5,000.

As for the Walter Payton/Brian Piccolo dual-cut signature card, I don't even have a ballpark figure for that one. I guess it might be in the $2,000-$4,000 neighborhood. To me, that was the strangest part of the video because one of the Beckett guys seemed like he'd never heard of Piccolo and the other one was explaining who he was. Piccolo is one of the most desired football autographs in the hobby. Neither seemed all that excited about a card that would probably be the best pull ever for about 99.9% of the collecting public.

Not to be outdone, I opened a box of Exquisite too. How did I do? I got a Jerricho Cotchery Signature Jersey Numbers numbered to 99, Kevin Kolb Rookie Signature Patch numbered to 225, Reggie Nelson Signature numbered to 150, Marion Barber Maximum Jersey numbered to 15, Trent Edwards Patch numbered to 50 and a Lee Evans base card numbered to 150.

It's one of the more volatile times right now in the basketball card market as teams make their playoff push. While a couple players on hot list are obvious, like Kobe, LeBron and Kevin Durant, others are a not quite as obvious. Two rookies from this season are really heating up near the end of the season. Al Thornton (Clippers) and Thaddeus Young (Sixers) have really shot up collector's wantlists and their prices are rising, in many cases, up to the level of Al Horford, Mike Conley, Jeff Green, etc.

Both are basically a result of playing time. Neither guy saw the court early in the year and is now regularly in the starting lineup. Both are also extremely athletic and highlight film worthy, which never hurts. Neither guy will be the Rookie of the Year, but both have really caught fire.

Two rookies from the 2006-07 class have also made significant gains this year. Rudy Gay has had a breakout year for Memphis, with most of his rookie singles increasing significantly throught the season. Rajon Rondo has held the starting point guard spot for the best team in the league all season and collectors were very high on him already going into the season. Even with the addition of Sam Cassell, Rondo will hold the bulk of the minutes through the playoffs.

On the flip side, Kirk Hinrich is one of several Bulls who has fallen significantly this season. Hinrich is still clinging to his starting job, but losing minutes to Larry Hughes and not very effective when he does play. In addition, teammates Luol Deng and Tyrus Thomas have also been huge disappointments this year. Deng was extremely hot in the playoffs a year ago, but has been ineffective and battled injuries this year. Thomas has been given many chances to start, but isn't anwhere close to consistent. He's currently buried on the bench.

Also, Andrea Bargnani was the runner-up to Rookie of the Year last season. This year he's been horrible. He's a 7-footer, who stands at the three-point line all the time and doesn't rebound. His sophomore season has been a bust and most of his cards are half the value they were when the season began.

If you haven't read it anywhere yet, Upper Deck is cutting production levels for its remaining 2007-08 offerings. This means hobby shops that purchase direct from Upper Deck will not be guaranteed allocations of the products with cards available on a first-come, first-serve basis.
 
“The cuts actually started with SP Authentic Basketball and have been pretty significant,” said Chris Kollmeyer, Upper Deck’s basketball brand manager. “The cuts are difficult to take from a financial standpoint, but allow us to make improvements to the brands.” Kollmeyer said the lower print runs for UD Black Basketball means a higher concentration of superstar autographs. There are two autograph cards per box. “This is the type of enhancement the production cuts allow us to make to improve the brand and ultimately the market.”

Production levels of two of Upper Deck’s higher-end products are being cut significantly. UD Premier Basketball, scheduled to be released April 2, will be limited to just 499 cases. SP Rookie Threads, scheduled to be released April 18, will be limited to just 599 cases. The cases will now be sequentially numbered.

Upper Deck reported that after its announcement, interest in its UD Premier product line has gone up dramatically.  They recently conducted a signing with Michael Jordan who was kept very busy with the sharpie as he added his signature directly to many of the cards in the set.  The photo above is a sneak peak of some of the cards Jordan will have in the 07-08 NBA Premier product.

A few interesting items were sold last night in Premier Auctions, including a Frank Sinatra single-signed ball from the Halper auction. I can't remember seeing another Sinatra ball in the auction circuit and this one got up to $2,413 with the juice. That still may wind up being a bargain for that rare of an item with stellar provenance. The bidding was around $1,000 until the wee hours of the morning and I thought it might go for a steal price, but it didn't. They also had a George H. Bush single-signed ball from Halper's collection, which finished at $312.

Another really interesting item in Premier was a single-signed Pope Paul VI ball. PSA/DNA wouldn't authenticate it, but Premier felt it was authentic and it seems like the bidders felt pretty good about its authenticity too. It finished at $3,327.

Since I touched on presidential candidate single-signed balls a few blogs ago, did anyone notice the Barack Obama PSA 10 ball that sold in Mastro Auctions on Wed.? It finished at $2,760. That's absurd, but congrats to Mastro and the consignor. Who pays that sort of cash for a signature of a guy who might not even with the Democratic ticket? Crazy things like that happen all the time though in the auction circuit, as evidenced by the Margaret Thatcher ball that finished close to $3,000 in SCP/Sotheby's internet auction Jan. 31. A similar Thatcher ball finished at just $390 last night in Mastro. Go figure.

Did anyone notice this card on eBay a while ago? I didn't record the auction number so I can't send you a link or anything, but I saved the image and thought it would be fun to post it. Did Magic think he was Larry Bird or did Larry Bird think he was Magic?

I don't think anyone would be complaining about getting an Ultimate Collection Quad Signature of Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson numbered 1/5, but it's crazy that it isn't signed in the right place. The first instinct is to think someone at Upper Deck stuck the stickers in the wrong place, but this is an on-card autograph.

It basically means one of them signed in the wrong place and the final guy to sign it must have thought, "hey, that moron signed his name in my spot...I guess I'll just use the last open spot."

It kinda reminds me of the joke my dad always used to tell me as a child. He would say that he had these two horses and couldn't tell them apart. So he shaved one's mane, but it grew back. Then he tied a ribbon around one, but it fell off. Then he did something else (you'd think I'd remember after hearing it roughly 400 times), but that difference soon went away too. Then he measured them and found out that the white horse was two inches taller than the black horse. Yeah, not funny, but a decent analogy of this card.

It started out as a playful idea when Upper Deck decided to do Presidential Predictors in the its recently released 2008 Upper Deck Series I Baseball product. Barack Obama was in there. John McCain was in there. John Edwards was in there. And Hillary Clinton.

McCain was in a Ted Williams pose, linking the two celebrated war heroes. Obama was patterned after Jermaine Dye. Edwards was patterned after Moonlight Graham with both being healthcare advocates. But what to do with Hillary? Well, remember that Morgana The Kissing Bandit? While it seemed like a good idea (and still does to me), Upper Deck pulled the Clinton cards before the product hit fearing they might be casting Clinton in a negative manner. Amazingly enough, some have reached the secondary market (not to be confused with Topps' Alex Gordon accidents in 2006 Topps Baseball or Topps' Jeter/Bush/Mantle in 2007 Topps Baseball). How many? Good question. Maybe 50. Maybe 500. Maybe 5,000.

The first wave of them has hit eBay and they are selling very high. One sold for $1,500 on Feb. 12. Two more are ending today and are up to $1,625 and $1,025. My guess is that these will settle quite a bit in the next month, much like any other "wasn't supposed to be released" card seems to do.

What does an unexpected run through the playoffs and an extraordinary Super Bowl upset do to the demand for a player’s cards when the player came into the NFL with the kind of pressure that Manning faced? After several years of little demand, he has become one of the most hotly demanded players in the card market.

Manning’s 2004 rookies had long sat untouched at lofty prices on dealer’s shelves, but are now being pursued and selling quickly. Some of his hottest 2004 rookies include: Ultimate Collection (No. 130, up from $400 to $450), which is signed and numbered to 150; Bowman Chrome (No. 225, up from $200 to $300), which is signed and numbered to 199; Playoff Contenders (No. 131, up $50 to $400), which is signed and numbered to 372; SPx (No. 221, up from $250 to $350), which is signed and numbered to 375; and SP Authentic (No. 216, up from $500 to $600), which is signed and numbered to 299.

Most other Manning rookies are also experiencing a significant increase in demand, with most rookie single prices rising 50-100 percent.

And he has a lot of company
Another Giants’ standout during their playoff run was rookie running back Ahmad Bradshaw. If you ignore Week 16, Bradshaw netted six carries all season, but became a vital change-of-pace running in the postseason and was more effective than Brandon Jacobs. His cards were commons until the postseason, but are now as in demand as any 2007 rookie.

His 2007 Playoff Contenders Rookie Ticket Autograph is selling for around $120, while his SP Authentic rookie (signed and numbered to 1,199) and his Leaf Limited (signed and numbered to 291) are both selling for $100. All were $10-$20 a month ago.

While demand for Plaxico Burress, Aaron Ross, Michael Strahan and Osi Umenyiora is also up, most of the other collector focus is on Brandon Jacobs, Steve Smith and play-of-the-game receiver David Tyree.

Jacobs top 2005 rookies cards include: Upper Deck Exquisite Collection (No. 59, up from $200 to $300), Bowman Chrome (No. 255, up from $40 to $50) and Playoff Contenders (No. 110, up from $40 to $60).

Smith, like Bradshaw, is a 2007 rookie, which adds more fuel to the collector’s fire. His best singles are from Playoff Contenders (No. 223, $50), SPx (No. 214, up from $30 to $40) and Bowman Chrome (No. 86, $25).

Tyree’s cards are seeing activity for the first time. He was a rookie in 2003, but had caught only 54 passes for 650 yards and four touchdowns during his career, including four catches for 35 yards during all of 2007. That all changed when he caught three balls for 43 yards, including a miraculous one on the final drive, and a touchdown in the Super Bowl. His two best rookies are 2003 Playoff Contenders (No. 193, up from $15 to $60) and 2003 Bowman’s Best (No. 119, up from $10 to $50).

There aren't many collectibles that are cooler than single-signed baseballs of U.S. Presidents. And on the heels of Super Tuesday, single-signed balls of some of the hopefuls continue to heat up. There was a John McCain that ended last night (now that's planning) for $305 and it featured a horrible scan so there's potential for those to sell quite a bit higher, especially after he distanced himself from the competition and looks like a shoe-in for the Republican nominee.

McCain baseballs were selling for around $100 a week ago and for as little as $30-40 a month or so ago when it seemed like he had little chance of winning. In fact, in late Dec. a lot of five single-signed McCain balls sold for only $120.

Barrick Obama single-signed balls have been an interesting collectible since he emerged as a leading Democratic candidate. Whether it's this presidential campaign or a future one, collectors feel like he'll be a major name for the next couple decades and are willing to spend more. His baseballs have been solid around $200. A quick bit of advice from surfing around eBay for a bit, beware of any non-authenticated Obama ball because most of them look like pretty bad fakes. It will be interesting to see what this PSA 10 ball goes for in Mastro's Classic Collector auction. There's also a pretty cool lot coming up in R&R with McCain, Obama and Rudy Giuliani that should go pretty high.

Hillary Clinton's single-signed balls are consistently higher priced than McCain or Obama, possibly because many people consider her the favorite and are holding on to them. As far as I've heard, she also doesn't sign as freely as she once did. A nice Clinton ball will cost you $400-$500 at this point. Judging by the last night, these are the only three that I need to mention.