In most cases, people dread getting Manufactured Patches in packs. The one-per-pack Premier Stitchings card in Upper Deck Premier is a guaranteed stinker. However, manufactured patches are cheap to make and seem to be a mainstay in the hobby. Manufactured letter patches are featured in products across all the major companies, so they must be at least marginally popular.

I, for one, am usually against manufactured patches. However, one card in Topps Series 2 Baseball really caught my eye. It’s a manufactured patch card of Alex Rodriguez that features a replica of the commemorative Yankee Stadium Patch that all Yankees are wearing on their sleeves for the last season in Yankee Stadium.

I think its a neat looking card, and would be a great idea for a set. Manufactured patches of commemorative patches of different teams would be pretty awesome. I guess the more successful manufactured patch cards are replicas of patches that actually exist on authentic uniforms. Once card companies start making up random stuff to plunk down on cards, the manufactured patches go from cool, to just annoying space fillers.

Here’s an interesting auction for a 2007 Topps Allen & Ginter Cut Signature of Fidel Castro, #’d 1/1:

Click here to see Auction

The owner of the card apparently disagreed with Topps’ inclusion of a Castro cut auto in its product, and covered the front and back of the card with his own social commentary towards the Cuban Dictator.

In most cases, drawing on the surface of a card will completely devalue it, but I’m not sure that holds up in the case of the Castro cut signature. As far as I know, it’s the only certified Fidel Castro cut signature to be released, making it truly one-of-kind.

Some people will probably consider this card “ruined” and worthless. Personally I think the inscriptions on the card make add to its uniqueness, and I’m sure that it will fetch top dollar.

According to the Auction text, all proceeds from the auction will be donated to the Center for a Free Cuba.

Looks like Upper Deck was tired of letting Topps have a monopoly on “DNA” cards. They will be releasing cut auto/hair sample cards of 10 historical figures in 2008 Legendary Cuts Baseball and 2008 Piece of History Baseball. I must admit these cards look really nice, even if I’m a bit iffy about having 200 year old hair in my cards…

[Click here for more photos!]

Hey all, sorry for the lack of posts recently. I’ve been out of town for a while and busy with various work related tasks, but things have settled down a bit so I should be posting more regularly again.

2008 Topps Co-Signers Baseball came out a while back, and it didn’t really excite me. I think the story with this product is that the really big hits are super mega awesome, but 95% of the boxes probably won’t get you your value back. Here are a few interesting cards from the set that I managed to dig up:

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This is probably as far as I’m going to get with my Alex Rodriguez 2007 Bowman Chrome Rainbow. The 1/1 Superfractor has already been pulled and sold on eBay, so it’s probably tucked away in someone else’s rainbow for all eternity. This actually only took me about 2 months to finish, which was a lot less time than I thought it would.

If you are a player collector, chasing the rainbow can be lots of fun, and completing it (almost) is quite satisfying. Now I need to find something else to hunt…

Tell me what you think about these David Ortiz 2007 Topps Sterling Jumbo Swatches #’d 10/10.
The World Series Patch is on eBay right now (See Auction here).

I still have some doubts that this is a fake patch. There are two sets of Ortiz Jumbo Swatches in 2007 Topps Sterling, each #’d to ten. Example:

However, as you’ll notice the pictures on the cards are different in the two sets. Now is it possible that Topps mistakenly used the same card template in both of the 10/10 cards? Well, we’ve already seen their quality control in this set. So the jury is still out in my eyes. I don’t want to jump to any conclusions. What do you guys think?