Weekly Market Report - March 1, 2006

A Fresh Look at Sports Collectibles News

Last week McFarlane unveiled photography for their MLB Series 16 Sports Picks that will be released this summer. The interesting thing about this lineup is that it includes all first-time figures except one (Manny Ramirez, who hasn't had a figure made of him since 2002). Even better, the first-timers are a mixture of proven veterans and young talent, all of whom are deserving of figures. In addition to the Ramirez, the lineup includes Craig Biggio, Scott Podsednik, Gary Sheffield, Victor Martinez, and Jake Peavy. This is a nice change of pace from the NBA Series which has about 5 figures of the same eight guys at this point.[read release]

Like many collectors, I receive the Beckett Hobby Newsletter via email each week and overall I find it valuable, especially in helping me find stories for this weekly report. But the February 23rd edition had something in it that bothered me. The newsletter had a picture of a pie chart with the following text "The Football Card Boom - As you can see by the numbers, once the '90s hit, football card production exploded" followed by a link to view a full size version of the chart.

Look, I know everyone loves pretty charts and graphs but there is no point in them if they don't tell us anything. The purpose of a graph is to present data in an easy to understand format that supports your conclusions. That one sentence that they gave us tells us nothing. How about some more information. I guess it's kind of cool that 91.3% of all football cards produced were produced since 1990, but is that a larger piece of the pie than baseball or basketball? Is there a reason that production has doubled in the past five years? What I'm trying to say - is there anything special at all happening with football card production or were you just trying to meet your graph quota for the month? It's amazing the things that get under my skin... [view chart]

OK, fine. This probably isn't one of the top three stories of the week but I think it's important to the hobby. If you haven't already seen it, we launched a new browsing application that, in addition to being able to search collectibles, enables you to quickly compare multiple categories from several sites (eBay and Amazon included) all in one spot without having to open multiple browser windows. If you take five minutes to play around with the application, I am sure that you will find value in the speed and simplicity in which it lets you compare collectibles from across the web. Future improvements and enhancements will be based largely on your feedback so I encourage you to contact us with your thoughts.

One of the things that I am trying to push with SportsLizard.com is an "evolution" of collecting. Collecting has historically been behind the times with technology, but within the next few years as people become more and more dependant on new technologies they will expect sports collectibles to be offering the same level of innovation. That is the reason for the RSS News Feed, the Mobile Site, and now the Enhanced Browsing. I hope everyone gives these tools a fair shot and is able to see how they can enrich their collecting experience. For most collectors, this may be their first exposure to technologies such as RSS, but it certainly won't be their last. Using these tools is a great way to learn about the technology of tomorrow while enhancing your collecting experience today. [read official release]