A-Rod Traded For Clinton, Obama And A Republican To Be Named Later
6:27AM on February 01, 2008
Fantasy? For sure. But in the competitive world of card collecting, a McCain and Romney for Johan Santana deal is set to become reality.
For years Topps was the last word in baseball card collecting. They were able to get exclusive contracts with the Major League Players Association and for the better part of 2 decades had a monopoly on baseball card production. In 1980, the courts allowed the monopoly to come to an end, and the card collecting boom was on. What had previously been a hobby for most became a multi-million dollar industry, and continues to be to this day.
The Smoking Gun website reports that for 2008, Topps will be inserting a political candidate card in roughly every ninth pack of baseball cards,. The set of 12 contains 6 Democrats and 6 Republicans and will not be sold as a set separately, so your only chance at being the ultimate lobbyist and having all the candidates in your pocket, so to speak, is to purchase enough packs to collect the set. Alternatives to that grandiose plan include wheeling and dealing with 9 year olds (Ryan Howard for Mike Huckabee?) or praying that someone else will achieve the ultimate and assemble a complete set to put up on e-Bay.
The irony is, for some of the featured politicians such as Ron Paul, Rudy Giuliani, John Edwards and Fred Thompson, having a card in this set may be their presidential aspiration legacy as they've already kicked themselves off the island in this year's version of "Political Survivor."
And it isn't even Super Tuesday yet. Yawn.
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