Cashing In On Spain's Historic Dominance

Originally posted on 7 July 2012.

Little less than a week ago Spain were crowned 2012 European champions in impressive fashion after defeating Italy with a resounding 4-0 scoreline. After their latest conquest there's now even talk of this Spain team being the greatest national side of all time and at the center of Spain's historic success has been the UEFA Player of the Tournament, 'Don' Andrés Iniesta.

Recently I came accross this auction for an extremely scarce Iniesta Panini autograph. This is one of only two certified autos he has out there, mind you I'm not counting any dubious Futera autos he may have. Apparently the card ended up selling for ¥74,500 (see below) which at the current conversion rate from yen to dollars, comes out to nearly $1,000 USD!

2013 Topps MLS Hits The Streets

Topps' first ever Major League Soccer trading card product has gone live with the initial offerings surfacing on the bay in the form singles, team sets and blaster boxes. The few autographed singles listed as of the writing of this entry seem to show that the autos are on a sticker which is not an improvement over Upper Deck so far. A couple of the autos do have an attractive refractor look to them and apparently there are 3 autographs in each hobby box, only 1 in Upper Deck's hobby boxes.

Other than that though the autograph checklist is the weakest in several years. None of the biggest names currently in the league have signed cards in this product, including Thierry Henry and Landon Donovan. For this reason as well as the $90+ price per box, I'll be staying away from this product until it's available for under $50 (at most) which I suspect it will be soon enough.

Update: It appears the final checklist indicates there are in fact Henry autographs to be found in the product, albeit via redemptions. In fact pretty much all the big names in the league have an auto save for Donovan. The full checklist can be found here: 2013 Topps MLS checklist.