Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Topps Authentics signs Shohei Ohtani to exclusive autographed memorabilia deal

 

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Shohei Ohtani has signed an exclusive autographed memorabilia deal with Topps Authentics, the memorabilia arm of The Topps Company. Topps.com is now the only place to get authentic signed memorabilia from Ohtani.   Items signed by Ohtani are witnessed by representatives of Authenticators Inc., the industry standard for autographed and game-used memorabilia authentication.

As of this post there are 8 types of items listed for sale, 7 Jerseys and a signed Baseball. Topps plans to have signed bats listed too. There are different Jersey versions of both Authentic and Replica Jerseys in home white and away red, signed either with his lone signature or his signature and “Kanji” inscription.

This Topps Authentics deal is separate from Ohtani’s autographed baseball card deal with the company. His first pack-pulled autographed card appeared in 2018 Topps Heritage Baseball, which is currently in stores.



With this deal Ohtani joins other MLB players who are part of Topps Authentics including Francisco Lindor, Gleyber Torres and Amed Rosario.

Monday, March 26, 2018

A Parents’ Guide to Collecting The 2018 Topps Major League Baseball Sticker Collection

You are walking through your local big box store and either yourself or your child notices the card section right next to the check out registers. Front and center is the 2018 Topps MLB Sticker Collection with a few boxes of stickers and starter albums to hold the set. With 301 total stickers to collect, should you go down the road towards collecting them all?
 Of course fun is a crucial part of collecting but as a parent of two children I take things like cost and ease of finishing the set seriously before I allow my kids to jump into any collection. Side benefits of collecting stickers are lessons in patience, perseverance, completing a task and for even younger kids, number sequencing, kind of the “hidden vegetables” of collecting. From past experiences with other companies’ sticker collections that required buying almost as many sticker packs as there were stickers in the collection, any valuable lessons were lost and the fun factor quickly dissipated.

Luckily you should have very little concern of a potential downside with 2018 Topps Major League Baseball Sticker Collection as it almost perfectly fits with my ease of finishing and a low cost equation. As sticker collections go, this was one of the easiest ones to finish, the stickers look great, organization and layout of the sticker album is premium and the fun factor is very high. What follows is a parents’ guide to the sticker collection to help aid your child towards the easiest path to completion, whether you are making the purchases or you child is spending their allowance.