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.

If you haven't been using the most comprehsive auction prices database in the industry, it's time to start. SCD Auction Prices Database launched a few months ago and is currently up to 109,176 items, which will probably be increased by the end of the day. We've got literally every auction during the past two years included and post most auctions to the database within a few days after it closes.

Based on user requests, we also added seven new categories and manuevered the old information to populate them, which means you've already got some pretty comprehensive searches and trends available:

• Broadsides/Advertising Pieces (539 items)
  
• Game-issued/Store Model Equipment (467 items)
  
• Game-used Baseball Gloves (268 items)
  
• Nodders/Bobble Heads (525 items)
  
• Pennants (232 items)
  
• Press Pins (402 items)
  
• Original Artwork (256 items)

To give you a little better idea of how powerful this database is, there are 2,302 listings for game-used bats, 775 listings for autographed checks, 11,359 listings for autographed balls and 2,362 listing for Babe Ruth. Whether you are figuring out who to consign to, what your collection is worth or planning your next purchase, this database is something you should be using.

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On another subject, have you seen this blog? He's the autograph handler for Steiner, which means he arranges and conducts most of the player signings. It's very cool because he comments on how the player was in-person and some signing habits and it seems like he gets a photo with every single athlete he meets. The guy's gotta be racking up a ton of frequent flyer miles too because he's doing stuff every day of the week, with recent signings with many of the Giants' players, like Eli Manning, Plaxico Burress, Michael Strahan, Brandon Jacobs and Ahmad Bradshaw, along with Miroslav Satan, Bobby Murcer, Bill Guerin, Keith Hernandez, Derek Jeter, Y.A. Tittle and Ray Rice. He's actually meeting Hank Aaron today for a signing.