Fake autographs run rampant in the hobby for years and eBay seems to be overran with sellers trying to move them to uneducated and unaware buyers. no longer is it safe to assume that just because an autograph appears on a manufacturers printed card, that the autograph is 100% legitimate. There has been rumors of card being back-doored, handed out to friends and family, and even potentially stolen prior to being forged and trying to be sold to the secondary market. This article is aimed at attempting to educate you in how to find authentic and pack inserted, certified, autographs from 2009 Topps Football Rookie Premiere.
Take a look at these two cards and see if you can notice some glaring differences between the two:
The first thing that jumps out at me is obvious forged autograph of the version on the left. However, some forgers have made a real art into duplicating an athletes signature, so that may not always be a tell-tale identifier in the case of the Donal Brown above.
The best identifier I have found is attempting to locate the “Topps Certified Autograph Issue” label on the card, directly above the autograph. As you can see, the pack issued cards have it printed directly on the card, while the forged version is missing the the label. Now, this does not mean the cards can’t have authentic autographs on the cards. Here is an example of a Michael Crabtree that the card may have been back-doored, then actually signed by Crabtree, however, the card is missing the “Topps Certified Autograph Issue” label.
Let’s take a look at some more:
Here are some eBay auctions of some fake Rookie Premiere Autos:
Here are some eBay auctions of some authentic Rookie Premiere Autos:
Riding on the coat tails of his skyrocketing 2008-09 Upper Deck USA cards and recent cover shots on SportsIllustrated and Beckett, Harpers limited edition AFLAC All-American Promo cards have been hitting eBay with their sellers looking for premium prices.
From what I have read, production numbers are around 125 per player, with 40 total cards in the set.
Over the weekend, our friends at BlowOutCards.com were having a sale on their 2009 Bowman Baseball boxes. I decided to buy one so that I could do a review of the product for all of my readers, as well as, hold the very first DailyWax Reader Contest. To enter the contest, simply reply to this entry with your name and email address (which will not be visible) along with your guess of which pack (1 through 24) will contain the Bowman Chrome Prospect Auto. If you correctly guess which pack contains the auto, I will mail you the card. In the event of multiple correct guesses, it will be randomly awarded to one of the correct guessers. You are only allowed to enter your guess once, multiple guesses from the same email address will result in disqualification from the contest. Be sure you use a valid email address, as I will be contacting the winner via email on where to send their prize. I plan on posting the results of the break as well as my review of the product sometime this week, so please check back for the results.
At the ripe age of 23, the Baltimore Orioles phenom Matt Wieters has finally arrived. This highly anticipated event was put on hold coming out of Spring Training as the O’s decided to reassign Wieters instead of having him join the club at the beginning on the season. In 39 games for Triple-A Norfolk, Wieters batted .305 with 5 HR and 30 RBI. These numbers pale in comparison the physical number that Wieters posses, the 6-foot 5-inch, 230-pound frame of Matt is almost as freaskish in nature as the hype that has been surrounding him at his days at Georgia Tech.
While there is no sleeper watch to report here, many prospectors are looking to cash in on Wieters arrival. A number of his cards with very high price tags following closely to the hype that was around Jay Bruce as he made his debut last year. Wieters did not have the same instance success that Bruce did at the plate, but I have a feeling in the long run Matt will be far better than Jay.
If you are looking for some of his more popular cards, currently his 2007 Donruss EEE is on our hot list as well as a top card among many prospectors and hobbyists alike. Be sure save a few as the potential for Wieters is just as monstrous as his size.
Topps recently released the information on their 2009 Topps Chrome Football set. The 220 card set will feature Topps famous chrome technology along with their famous refractor parallels. Along with the refractors, each hobby box will contain a autographed rookie card from one of 50 in the set. Each of these autographs will also be produced in a superfractor (1 of 1), gold (/10), and black (/25) variation. Included again in this years set is the Rookie Patch cards, were just exclusively in the hobby boxes.
Each of the base cards will be available in superfractor (1 of 1), red (/25), copper (/599), refractor, and printing plate variety. Each hobby box will contain 9 parallel cards.
Along with the refractors, there will be inserts of Cheerleads and Ring of Honor, each of which will be produced in a variety of refractors as well.
The 20-year-old New York Mets phenom, Fernando Martinez, made his major league debut last Tuesday (5/26/2009) making him the youngest player in the MLB today. Today, Topps announced that F-Mart would be their first Red Hot Rookie redemption player. These redemption cards were randomly insert one-per-box in the 2009 Topps Series 2 Baseball packs. The cards can be redeemed online at topps.com.
In total, there are 10 Red Hot Rookies in the set, which will be announced throughout the rest of the baseball season.
Fernando also was featured in the 2007 Bowman Chrome Prospects Auto set, as well as, the 2008 Bowman Chrome Draft set. While this 2009 Topps Red Hot Rookie may not be his first produced card, it will definitely be a sought after card due to the expiration of the redemption and the attractiveness of the card.
This our first look at the 2009 Bowman Chrome product. Always a fan favorite, this years product looks to be another success for the product. The product will feature a 220-card base set, 40 card World Baseball Classic, and of course, the prospects inserted 2 in every pack. Each of the cards will also be produced in Bowman Chrome familiar parallel sets of Refractors, XFractors, Blue Refractors, Gold Refractors, Orange Refractors, Red Refractors, Superfractors, and Printing Plates, ranging in production numbers of 500 to 1 of 1’s. These parallel’s are inserted 7 per box.
The prospect checklist contains 110 players that have previously not had a card in the Bowman Chrome series. Still missing from the set is last years top-pick, Tim Beckham. The preliminary Prospect Autograph set, inserted 1 per box, looks to be very promising. One of the more attractive perks about the Bowman Chrome Prospect sets is that each of the prospects are always featured in their MLB uniforms. The checklist contains autographs from some of the top prospects in the game. Some of highlights include: Tommy Hanson, Freddie Freeman, Carlos Santana, and Dayan Viciedo. Here is a small run down of the autograph checklist from the 2009 Bowman Chrome Baseball Hobby Sellsheet:
- BCP91 Rinku Singh
- BCP92 Dinesh Kumar Patel
- BCP93 Randall Delgado
- BCP94 Pat Venditte
- BCP95 Zack Putnam
- BCP96 Robbie Grossman
- BCP97 Tommy Hanson
- BCP98 Gift Negope
- BCP99 Dylan Lindsay
- BCP100 Chris Marrero
- BCP101 Freddie Freeman
- BCP102 Chris Johnson
- BCP103 Jefry Marte
- BCP104 Ernie Banks
- BCP105 Brett Anderson
- BCP106 Juancarlos Sulbaran
- BCP107 Ryan Perry
- BCP108 Carlos Santana
- BCP109 Brad Emaus
- BCP110 Dayan Viciedo
- BCP111 Tim Federowicz
- BCP112 Allen Craig
I can guarantee that at least two of those prospect auto’s will be cut prior to production as BCP111 and BCP112 already belong to Beemer Weams and Logan Morrison from the 2009 Bowman inserts. With the numerous parallels, great prospect checklist, and riding on the heels of the lackluster prospect autograph checklist from the base Bowman, you can count on this being a very hot product.
