President Bush On a Card with Derek Jeter?

Feb 27 2007 10:21AM

Unique, different, odd, confusing, or even funny – all adjectives that could be used to describe a new Derek Jeter base card from the recently released 2007 Topps product.

So what's so special? The card pictures Jeter following through on his swing. Innocent enough, but it's hard to ignore George W. Bush standing in the crowd behind the Yankee captain, smiling and waving. If that didn't cause enough question marks to form over collectors heads, close inspection of the Yankee dugout reveals Mickey Mantle himself standing with a bat on his shoulder. Yes, it's "Photoshopped", but the card was quite popular in the early days of its release, selling on eBay in the $10-$25 range.

"Somewhere in between the final proofing and its printing, someone at our company — and we won't name names — thought it would be funny to put in Bush and Mantle," said Topps spokesman Clay Luraschi in Tuesday's edition of the New York Daily News.

The media hype surrounding the card has secondary market prices skyrocketing. Just yesterday morning the card had settled down from its initial $10-$25 range to a lower deman of about $3-$8. Late last night, there were several Buy It Now prices on eBay for as little as $6. When major news outlets picked up on the story earlier today, the card jumped; Buy It Now offers at $50, $75, $100 early this morning were being snatched up and the bidding on active eBay auctions quickly escalated to more than $100 in many cases.

Will the market be able to be able to sustain these prices? Stay tuned, as the Beckett Baseball team continues to track this card's meteoric rise.

- Brian Fleischer

Collectors are talking about this card in the Beckett messageboards...tell us what YOU think!