Weekly Market Report - July 26, 2006

A Fresh Look at Sports Collectibles News

"The Topps Company has announced that it has signed an exclusive trading card deal with New York Mets superstar David Wright.

The deal grants New York City-based Topps exclusive rights within the Major League Baseball trading card category for autographed cards, memorabilia cards, insert cards and Wright's image on packaging and advertising."

All signs point to Wright being one of the elite players of the coming decade and Topps did well in signing him up. And Wright actually could use the money - with all of his success he's only making $374,000 - good for 21st on the Mets roster. He might be the MVP of the National League, but he's paid less than Endy Chavez and Chris Woodward. Unbelievable. [read release]

"McFarlane Toys has long recognized the rabid popularity of the NHL in Canada, and our upcoming NHL 14 lineup debuts a new way to provide a few country-specific figures to our collectors on both sides of the U.S./Canada border. The expanded series features one extra figure than a typical Sports Picks lineup, as well as four of the league's top 14 scorers, four players making their Sports Picks debuts, and one well-respected veteran honoring his current and former teams."

The series includes Markus Naslund, Simone Gagner, Sidney Crosby, Henrik Zetterberg, Curtis Joseph, and Erik Staal (US)/Alexi Kovalev (Can). I think it's pretty interesting that the two sets will be different - especially the Cujo figure that will be a retro Oilers figure for Canada and a current Coyotes figure for the US. [read release]

"Topps has announced its Fan Favorites Autograph collection in Topps Style ’52 Basketball. The checklist includes approximately 200 subjects. Topps announced that many of the autographed cards were shortprinted."

OK, so it's a slow news week. This set has a few interesting shortprint's (most notably only 85 Earl Monroe cards), but mostly includes studs like Charles Smith, Austin Carr, and Mark Eaton. [read article]

NOTE - for the immediate future, the Weekly Report is now the Bi-Weekly Report. I am finding it increasingly difficult to find quality stories each week and I'd rather come up with 3 quality stories every two weeks as opposed to crappy ones every week.