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- A Texas-Sized Hat Blunder
Hey there, Collectors.
Did you see the news? Yahoo Sports launched a collectibles vertical, and they’re teaming up with us here at Mantel, along with our friends at cllct and Sports Card Investor, to deliver sports memorabilia and card content. Starting this week, you can expect to find trend and collector-focused stories sourced from the community on Mantel, Collecting 101 articles, news, video content (like Mantel Quality Stories) and our two newsletters, Mail Day and Above the Mantel on the Yahoo Sports site.
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via Yahoo Sports
As the MLB Tokyo Series approaches (Dodgers vs. Cubs, March 18-19), all eyes in the collecting world are on Dodgers stars Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and rookie Roki Sasaki, and Cubs star pitcher Shota Imanaga. To satisfy demand, Topps released a Japan-exclusive Baseball Series 1 - Tokyo Game set, as well as a Complex-exclusive Takashi Murakami + MLB World Tour Tokyo Series set. The Murakami set retailed for $120 and sold out immediately, and now sealed boxes are trading on eBay for more than $650.
Avert your eyes! New Era's recent "Overlap" hat collection has encountered significant backlash due to design oversights, particularly with the Texas Rangers cap. The design featured the team's "T" logo superimposed over the "X" in "Texas," inadvertently forming a Spanish slang term for breasts. This misstep led to the cap's removal from both MLB and Rangers online stores, though a few have already hit eBay, with cllct reporting that at least one sold for $999.99. Other teams' hats in the collection also faced criticism for creating unintended and inappropriate words, highlighting the importance of, ya know, thorough review processes in merchandise design.
Topps secured the shooting sleeve LeBron James wore when he scored his 50,000 point, and they’re cutting it up for a 1/1 card. So that got us thinking… what weird item from a historic sports event would we want inserted into a trading card? Mail Day scribe, J.R. Fickle tossed out a few interesting suggestions (Steve Bartman’s headphones, the famous sheet of paper from Wilt Chamberlain’s 100 point game), but the Mantel community came through with some incredible options as well (minus, perhaps, Curt Schilling’s bloody sock).
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Beckett Collectibles is taking legal action against Diamond Legends, a Rhode Island memorabilia shop, and its owner, alleging they were involved in forging over 1,100 items falsely attributed to Jason Kelce. The lawsuit claims that an independent contractor reported witnessing Kelce signing items at an event that, upon further investigation, Beckett determined never actually took place. In response, Beckett offered full refunds to those affected, and is using the lawsuit to recover damages and bar the accused from selling Beckett-authenticated items again.
In another case highlighting some of the risks in the sports memorabilia market, last month a man pleaded guilty to selling counterfeit 1986-87 Fleer Michael Jordan rookie cards, defrauding collectors of nearly $800,000. The case turns a spotlight on the risks of forgeries in high-value cards and memorabilia and reinforces the need for vigilance, with experts advising purchasing graded cards from reputable sources (like PSA or BGS), learning key authentication markers, and buying from auction sites with good track records.