Autograph Offering: Troy Aikman Allen & Ginter Super Bowl Champs

If the Super Bowl has become a ritual in America's culture, so has the preparations we make to see it on television each year.

In the media, we're already hearing about ads that are too controversial or are supposed to have the most buzz. The Who will perform during halftime. People are planning how they'll see the game and how they'll be entertaining at home.

The coolest preparation I've ever heard of for the Super Bowl came from an ebay buyer. More than 2 years ago, I sold a single-pack hobby box to a guy. When I shipped the box to him, I said in my email I wished him good luck in whatever he pulls.

To my surprise, he replied to my email. He told me throughout the year he buys packs and boxes of football cards and waits until the Super Bowl to open them, one at a time, throughout the game.

While the Super Bowl hype builds around us, etopps is offering its customers 25 chances to snag a coveted Troy Aikman Allen & Ginter Super Bowl autographed card tomorrow at 3PM EST for a mere $79.99.

Since Aikman is a recent Hall-of-Famer and lauded by fans of "American's Team," it will not be a surprise if this offering sells out within a minute or two after it becomes available.

Considering the 2007 IPOs of this set have all gone up in price and supply has dried up (the last in-port Aikman was listed a month ago, btw), there's an especially high demand for this, autographed or not.

And the autograph is a nice one. It's not "TA" with his jersey number and it's not squeezed on the card or smudged. It's done well if the scan that I placed in this post is any indication of what 25 lucky so-and-so's will be getting by mail.

Kudos first of all goes to etopps for offering this treat and the timing couldn't be better for Dallas, Super Bowl, Aikman, football or etopps autograph collecting fans.

I don't see this card having a problem selling on the secondary market if any of the 25 decide to sell it. Allen & Ginter cards are known for baseball so for regular cardboard collecting auto buyers, this could be a worthwhile investment.

A couple of things I saw on ebay. His auto holds more value when the card has something added to it whether it's a swatch of his jersey or there's another auto on the card. Both sell well on ebay. If I had a price, I would guess the auto could easily sell for $200 on ebay but I've been wrong plenty of times and I hate predicting.

Good luck if want to buy the card tomorrow. There will be plenty of unlucky etoppers tomorrow at 3:05pm. Hopefully you won't be one of them.

Special Discounted Shipping Offer for Allen & Ginter Super Bowl Champions and Presidential Candidates Sets until 3/31

From the etopps website:

Special Discounted Shipping Offer with Matching Sequential Numbers!

The Allen & Ginter eTopps Super Bowl Champions Collection will be ready to ship the end of the month. We are offering special discounted shipping between March 17, 2008 and March 31, 2008. If ALL 6 cards from the collection are present in your portfolio and you request delivery of the six cards during this window you will receive the cards with a special shipping discount of $9.99 per set, and we guarantee each card will have matching sequential numbers (for example, the Troy Aikman card will be 5 of 999, the John Elway card will be 5 of 999, the Terry Bradshaw card will be 5 of 749, etc).

IMPORTANT: Offer is valid for delivery of ALL SIX Allen & Ginter Super Bowl Champions Cards ONLY. No other combination of cards will be eligible for the discounted shipping. While there is no limit on the number of groups of six you may request through this offer, each group is subject to its own discounted shipping price. eTopps rewards points cannot be used towards this special shipping offer. Should you request delivery of the six cards after March 31, 2008 you will be subject to regular shipping costs and we can no longer guarantee the sequential numbers on the 6 cards will match.

I tried ordering a set and noticed a few things:

• The announcement states that the set will be available at the end of this month for delivery rather than the scheduled 4/25/08 date even though this April date is still listed for these cards if you go to the Take Delivery page.
  
• When placing my order, I received this message after accepting the terms of condition sale: " Due to a communication error with our Credit Card Processor, we are unable to process your delivery request at this time.
  However, our technical staff has been notified of the error and will be working on resolving this issue as promptly as possible.
  Thank you for your patience as we work to resolve this matter."
• When checking out, the cost is $8.99 rather than $9.99

Since registering on etopps almost 6 years ago, this is the first time I ever experienced a problem in processing my credit card order.

Update: After about half an hour from the time the offer became available, credit card orders can be processed and will be charged $9.99 for the set. Whether they will be shipped at the end of the month remains to be seen.

Update (Again): From the etopps home page and link from the home page:

Special Discounted Shipping Offer with Matching Sequential Numbers!

The Allen & Ginter eTopps Presidential Candidate Hopeful cards will be ready to ship the end of the month. We are offering special discounted shipping between March 17, 2008 and March 31, 2008. If ALL 4 cards from the set are present in your portfolio and you request delivery of the set during this window you will receive the set with a special shipping discount of $7.99 per set, and we guarantee each card in the set will have matching sequential numbers (for example, the Hillary Clinton card will be 5 of 999, the Barack Obama card will be 5 of 999, the Mitt Romney card will be 5 of 999, and the John McCain card will be 5 of 999). If you received a free pack of 2007 Topps Allen & Ginter at the time of allocation and still have the pack in your port, and wish to take delivery on it at this time, the discounted shipping rate of $7.99/set will include the free pack.

IMPORTANT: Offer is valid for delivery of ALL FOUR Allen & Ginter Presidential Candidate Hopeful eTopps cards (and the Free Pack of 2007 Topps Allen & Ginter if applicable) ONLY. No other combination of cards will be eligible for the discounted shipping. While there is no limit on the number of groups of four you may request through this offer, each group is subject to its own discounted shipping price. eTopps rewards points cannot be used towards this special shipping offer. Should you request delivery of the four cards after March 31, 2008 you will be subject to regular shipping costs and we can no longer guarantee the sequential numbers on the 4 cards will match.

Friday & February Marketwatch - February 29

As of today, February 29 the following are stats covering the last 7 days on ebay for etopps in-hands:

Quantity of etopps in-hands listings: 402
Sell-Through: 57.21%
Average starting price: $5.43
Average final price: $10.42

Highest Single Card Sale: 2007 Bill Clinton Allen and Ginter $44.99
Highest Mult-Card Sale: Mickey Mantle Collection (set of 18): $449.95
Highest Graded Sale: 2003 LeBron James RC (PSA 10) at $46.99
Highest Autograph Sale: 2007 Adrian Peterson $310.00

Other best sellers:
2006 Allen & Ginter Presidents Set
2007 Ryan Braun Autographed Card
2007 WWE Torrie Wilson Autographed Card
2007 Brandon Roy
1958 Mickey Mantle reprint

In-hand listing (not including graded or autographed) that received most bids that sold well:
Alex Rodriguez 6-card Lot: 20

The following are stats covering the last 30 days on ebay for etopps in-hands:

Quantity of etopps in-hands listings: 1,205
Sell-Through: 52.78%
Average starting price: $3.37
Average final price: $10.88

Highest Sale: (tie) 2007 Tim Lincecum, Allen & Ginter Ronald Reagan: $49.99
Highest Graded Sale: 2001 Albert Pujols RC (BGS 9.5) at $130.00
Highest Autograph Sale: 2007 Adrian Peterson $310.00

Other best sellers:
Mickey Mantle Set
2006 Allen & Ginter President Set
2007 Adrian Peterson
2003 Tom Brady

In-hand listing (not including graded or autographed) that received most bids that sold well:
Alex Rodriguez 6-card Lot: 20

This was the month of Allen & Ginter for etopps. Usually February is an off-month, being between football and baseball. We had the A&G Super Bowl Champions set, Super Tuesday, voting for the 2008 Baseball design, Adrian Peterson's autograph (the best offering in football since LaDainian Tomlinson), discounted in-hand shipping and reward points allocation. Kudos to etopps for making this anything but an off-month.

I will be surprised if etopps can out-do themselves in March. The 2007 Football Playoff teams are supposed to become available for shipping and we may see the first 2008 Baseball IPOs at the end of the month since the season officially starts prior to April.

One word of caution for etopps: slow down with Allen & Ginter. We now have four sets, three of the last four have been issued since last Fall. I think it should be left alone and let the secondary market absorb it. We're seeing very good sales for the first A&G set sold as singles and hopefully the same will happen for the SB Champs and the Presidential candidates (that is, the ones who are left in the race).

The Moments & Milestones Set is steadily selling around $100 this past month. It's not outperforming the Presidents set but may do better as the baseball season nears.

Thanks for voting on this blog for where to have the econ this summer. It was almost a tie between Las Vegas and another city. These two choices combined (59% of the vote) would have trumped Chicago (37%).

Have a good weekend and Happy Leap Year Day (my wife's birthday).

IPO Watch, Marshawn Lynch Auto and How The Autograph Program Works

At 1PM EST today, etopps offered the following cards:

Allen and Ginter Super Bowl Champions:
Joe Namath Print Run: 999 $9
Tom Brady PR: 999 $8
Troy Aikman PR: 999 $8.50

2007 Basketball
Greg Oden PR: 1,499 $8
Javaris Crittenton PR: 599 $5
Ray Allen PR:699 $4.50

As with last week's A and G SB Champs offerings, these are a great buy to collect the set and re-sell to all of the Allen and Ginter set collectors. As stated in a previous post, these are the first Allen and Ginter football cards. The outlier in the set is Brady because he's active, some people can't stand him but it's hard not to consider him after what he's done and what he could still accomplish with a win next Sunday in Arizona.

For Basketball, I ordered the Oden for the flip. I don't expect it to hold much and can easily pick these up when they become available for delivery at a lower price than $8. Think September.

While the Terrell Davis autograph offering on the website hasn't sold out yet at $69 each for a total of 49, it's nice to see they are still doing football autographs. I thought they would be winding down by now. They had a good football autograph season - Reggie Bush and LaDainian Tomlinson to name a couple.

Today they posted the offering of Marshawn Lynch. He signed 98 and they will sell out at $59 each. The offering will be Thursday, January 31 at 8PM EST.

You want to be quick to make money on this one on the flip. When doing a comparison on ebay for other autographed cards of this player that were limited to 100, the best price in the last month was what's being offered by etopps. Quick because the first few listed will probably earn something while others will barely break even (and this is without taking the price of the card into consideration before the autograph). I say this because the card won't be shipped until at least the middle of next month when any lingering appeal to the football season is waning while baseball is waxing. And this doesn't look good especially for a small market like Buffalo. Unless you are doing a pre-sale or want to make a few bucks on the flip of the online card before the autograph offering goes live, save your money.

Regarding the above photo, I always like signatures that include the player's jersey number. As usual, etopps chose a thin blue marker for the signature even though there's plenty of blue in the card already. Why can't they use a color that doesn't appear on their cards that often like gold or silver?

I assume the reason both offerings on the home page (and previous offerings too) are not sold in a round number quantity like 50 or 100 because the player signs right on the card rather than a sticker and I'm sure one or two do not make the final cut.

In the future to qualify for the autograph program, one has to meet the following criteria:

1. You have to be a registered member of etopps
2. You must have the card that will become available for autograph already in your online portfolio by the time the offering goes live on the site.
   

Once you've met these two requirements, you can purchase the autograph...but you have to move fast. Depending on the popularity of the player, you can get shut out. This happened to me with the Ladainian Tomlinson offering. I went after his rookie card rather than the safe bet, his 2006 card and got shut out. I've seen sell-outs occurring within 30 seconds from the time the offering goes live.

Autographs are now announced ahead of time (few days in advance) on the etopps home page. If you don't have the card, you may have to pay an inflated price on cardtarget or ebay because the demand for the card goes up to have it in one's online portfolio in time before the autographed card is offered.

I've made a few bucks flipping in-port cards that are announced on the home page as future autograph offerings. Emmitt Smith's event card usually sells below $3. I recall selling two at $35 each on ebay after scooping them up on Cardtarget for $6-$7 right after the offering was posted on the etopps homepage.

Rule of thumb: if an auto offering is underpriced, it's likely the difference between what the auto usually goes for and the etopps offering price will be what you'll get flipping the card quickly after the offering is announced. But you have to be quick.

There's no gain in listing it so it ends an hour or two before the offering goes live. When an etopper wants an auto and they don't have the card, they will pay for it even if it's cheaper to buy on cardtarget.

Before the beginning of the current football season, for example, there was an online article on Beckett's site that mentioned a few upcoming autographed cards on etopps. This article was posted on the etopps message board. Some etopps members bought these cards ahead of time while others didn't see this article or see the posting on the etopps message board.

Once you place your order, the card will be removed from your online portfolio and the signed card will be shipped to your provided mailing address that you give when you register your account via UPS anywhere between 2-5 weeks.

Allen and Ginter Super Bowl Champions IPO info

Joe Montana PR: 999 $9
John Elway PR: 999 $8.50
Terry Bradshaw PR 749 $8.50

Considering these are the first Allen and Ginter football cards to be offered, they're a steal (think re-sell).

Not surprised they are not offering the delivery special of $9.99 yet. I'm pretty sure they will next week when they offer the next 3 (or 4?) to complete this set. If not, I'll be calling etopps customer support to find out why not. I'm pretty confident I won't have to since they offered the shipping discount for the last two Allen and Ginter sets.

I'm not even mentioning the Basketball IPOs since their in-hand market value is not anywhere near as strong on ebay as etopps football or baseball. Buying them at IPO is just asking to lose money since their secondary market value will decline by the time they're available for delivery.

Another Allen & Ginter etopps set coming soon: Super Bowl Champions Set

This was posted on the etopps website yesterday (1/17):

eTopps and Allen & Ginter are proud to present this very special Super Bowl Champions collection featuring NFL icons who have helped lead their teams to Super Bowl titles. In the true spirit of Allen & Ginter, this extraordinary collection will celebrate the historic performances of these superstars in helping their respective teams win Championships. Until now Allen & Ginter has been limited to baseball releases, but this will allow collectors to experience the beauty of Allen & Ginter with top NFL Superstars.
To celebrate the Super Bowl we will begin offering cards from this collection on Monday, January 21st at 1PM EST and continue offering additional cards on Monday, January 28th. The collection will include NFL Super Bowl greats including Troy Aikman, Terry Bradshaw, John Elway, Joe Namath, Joe Montana and Roger Staubach. The collection will be beautifully designed and delivered via the classic Allen & Ginter design (even staying true to the original Allen & Ginter size), but brought to life on stunning eTopps technology. Cards will be offered individually, encased and be sequentially numbered* .
*While the Allen & Ginter eTopps cards differ in size from regular eTopps cards, they will continue to be encased in our standard sized eTopps tamper-evident, plastic case with eTopps sticker. The cards will be placed into a fitted frame and then fixed inside of the case. Be sure to visit eTopps on Monday, January 21st! Cards go on sale at 1PM EST and be sure to come back on Monday the 28th for additional cards.

This set is a strong buy even if you don't like every player listed. There are enough Allen & Ginter collectors and football fans to buy this as a set and you can be assured this set will sell out. Based on the other two A&G sets etopps has produced, these will most likely have a print run of 999.

And like the previous Allen and Ginter etopps sets, there will be a discounted shipping offer for a limited time. The 2007 Baseball Moments & Milestones A&G set had a $9.99 shipping offer to have them all the same serial number on the back of the cards.

The usual downside is this will become available in-hand months after their release but this wait is like all etopps cards. Though rest assured, if the Presidents A&G set is used as a measuring stick, you can sell this set easily on ebay with the same serial number.

As a reference, this is what one of the Presidents A&G card looked like: