Welcome to my Sports Illustrated/TIME magazine blog – Your collector’s guide to the latest hobby updates and insight into what’s trending now.
It just keeps getting better. Although I’m not an expert on the new marketing program TOPPS has introduced involving trading cards picturing vintage SI covers, I wanted to bring this to the hobby because I believe it’s totally relevant to our hobby interests.
TOPPS has begun their introduction of a 70 trading card set, each card illustrating a vintage SI cover! Are you serious? Yes I’m serious. The cards are not initially for institutional sales meaning they are presold and only printed and distributed in those qualities. The set is being released in two card increments – those purchasing each card on a pre-sale format receive their order in about a month subsequent to the close of sale date. If you don’t order initially, the only way to get them is thru the secondary market.
There are also parallels (similar to regular trading sets) inserted randomly (how they are doing this I’m not sure) in various advertised quantities.
The importance of this development for SI mag hobbyists is that it’s just another acknowledgement from the manufacturer (TOPPS) and the market that vintage SI magazines have a following significant enough to devote an entire product line based solely on SI cover market awareness. In other words, more exposure for our hobby.
It’s stuff like this from the industry giants that supports everything we’ve been saying and doing. Three years ago Heritage Auction House was leery about even listing SI’s for fear of lack of interest. Not anymore – graded SI’s are a staple of their weekly auctions. Ebay sales are up. Private sales are up. The word is getting out there. Maybe not overnight but I can see the movement from month to month.
It’s an exciting time to be on the front edge of something this popular. It’s once in a lifetime.
Click the link below for an illustration of a couple of subject cards.
Duke Snider
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/EhUAAOSwsgZgcCzx/s-l500.png
Mike Trout
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/JBYAAOSwppZgUQrp/s-l500.jpg
I hope you are enjoying the reads on the history of TIME and SI magazines as well as an insight into relevant magazine collecting.
Great collecting to you and best fortunes with Sports Illustrated/TIME!
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