By Susan Lulgjuraj | Beckett Sports Card Monthly Editor

With golf, baseball, football and Olympic athletes in 2013 Goodwin Champions, Upper Deck has a wild assortment of sports stars.

Set for a July release, Goodwin Champions is coming back with basics that make the product popular and adding a bunch of extras to make it unique. It Came From Outer Space! Cards are back again with Museum Collection Wild West Relics or new Element Booklet Relics.

Some of the cards collectors will have to see believe.

Goodwin Champions will come with five cards in each pack with 20 cards in a box. Collectors can expect to find three hits in every box ranging from unique memorabilia to autographs.

There are 150 regular base cards with an additional 60 short-printed cards. In addition, there will be 14 high series mini short prints. Base cards will have back variations with unnumbered Magician and Presidential parallels.

Autographs will came from a range of athletes including Ray Allen, Mario Andretti, Oscar de la Hoya, Juan Gonzalez, Tony Hawk, Allen Iverson, Reggie Jackson, Nicklas Lidstrom, Shannon Miller and Manti Te’o.

The Animal Kingdom Patches are back once again. These manufactured patches have been popular with collectors with cards selling for hundreds of dollars at times on the secondary market.

Also to Goodwin Champions this year are End of Days 3-D cards and Goodwin Masterpieces – Art of the Ages.

Check out the preview gallery below.

Susan Lulgjuraj is an editor of Beckett Sports Card Monthly. You can email her here with questions, comments or ideas. Follow her on Twitter here. Follow Beckett Media on Facebook.

Editor’s Note: Dale Tafoya is the author of Bash Brothers: A Legacy Subpoenaed and a long-time baseball fan and a collector, too. When he asked about doing a guest piece for us, I gave him a green light, and here’s where I’ll make a shameless plug for his book, which I read several years ago. It’s one that talks to a lot of players who you might not expect to hear from on the issue of steroids in baseball — and it’s one that shows us all that it’s not something that started in Oakland or any other big-league town. It started down on the farm — or even earlier. It’s worth a look and worth adding to your book collection. — Chris Olds

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By Dale Tafoya

Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco, poster boys and pioneers of baseball’s steroid era, always will represent one of the shameful periods of the sport. Why not?  In the 1980s, before the game fully embraced weightlifting, these two muscle-bound teammates of the Oakland A’s showed up and took baseball by storm. Blasting thunderous home runs, Canseco and McGwire morphed into one word like Smith & Wesson and Procter & Gamble. Soon, bulging biceps, dumbbells and steroids saturated the game, resulting in unprecedented home run totals and contracts that gutted the integrity of the game.

In 2005, however, Canseco blew the whistle on the sport and his teammate when he wrote Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits and How Baseball Got Big. Canseco not only exposed rampant steroid use in the sport, he also claimed he and McGwire were at the forefront of it all. Suddenly, they were no longer considered one of the most feared power-hitting duos in the history of the game; they were now considered cheats who helped taint our beloved sport. Sadly, steroids received the credit for decades of accomplishments.

One could have never foreshadowed their crash two decades before. Canseco, the Elvis of baseball at the time, awed scouts with his bionic tools on the diamond. Becoming the first player to ever hit 40 homers and swipe 40 bags in one season, Canseco was an oddity with movie-star looks and freakish power. McGwire, the unassuming, freckle-faced redhead, shattered the rookie home run record by smashing 49 in 1987, and quickly became one of the most feared sluggers in the league. Before morphing into what he later became in St. Louis, McGwire spent over a decade thrilling fans with his booming power in the A’s organization.

The Bash Brothers, you see, were heroes to many of us during that era. As a baseball card junkie living 10 miles from the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum in 1986, I was a naïve Little Leaguer fascinated by them. In my neighborhood, uncovering the Rookie Cards of Canseco and McGwire in a pack was equivalent to finding Willie Wonka’s golden ticket.  And if you rode the bus to the Coliseum and somehow persuaded them to autograph it, you rushed back to the card shop to brag about it. We craved heroes and we found them in the Bash Brothers.  We patterned our batting stances after them. We pumped iron like them. We smashed forearms like them.  We wore A’s hats like them.

Twenty years later, when I wrote my book, Bash Brothers: A Legacy Subpoenaed, I wanted to capture their riveting legacy — warts and all. Between their rise to fame and ultimate shame before Congress was an electrifying period in baseball, particularly for fans of the Oakland A’s, who made three straight trips to the World Series from 1988-90. McGwire and Canseco were at the forefront of their success and left us a trove of fond memories. Who can forget Canseco celebrating his pioneering feat of 40/40 by lifting the second base bag over his head after he swiped his fortieth base of the season in 1988 at Milwaukee’s County Stadium? Who can forget McGwire raising both arms when he belted a walk-home run in the ninth inning of Game 3 of the 1988 World Series at the Oakland Coliseum? Who can forget their swagger as they slammed their forearms together after a home run?

Though many of their feats are stained by steroids-use, we admired them through the eyes of innocence. Nothing produced a home run except a skillful swing connecting to a baseball, we thought.  After all, steroids were for Lou Ferrigno, Arnold Schwarzenegger and bodybuilding’s underground industry. Not for the Bash Brothers.

Now, two decades later, we can choose to completely disregard those memories because of the baggage attached, or embrace them still because of the thrills they brought us. Many of their accomplishments may not be considered legitimate anymore; but the memories they left us are. We can choose our own way to digest them.

They may have cheated the game, but they didn’t cheat me of my memories. They’re still alive and well — and so are their Rookie Cards in my closet.

Dale Tafoya is the author of Bash Brothers: A Legacy Subpoenaed. His work has appeared in the Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, Orlando Sentinel, Huntsville Times and Modesto Bee. In addition to his writing credits, he has been a guest on ESPN Radio, FOX Sports and Cumulus. You can follow him on Twitter: @DaleTafoya.

Photos courtesy of Lenny Steren

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By Chris Olds | Beckett Baseball Editor

When one looks back at some of the most-memorable times in MLB history, the Summer of 1998 perhaps still stands out as one that can’t be forgotten as Mark McGwire topped the once-thought-untoppable 61 home runs of Roger Maris.

While subsequent sluggers and tearful confessions might have changed how we view that run into the record books now, for 46-year-old Lenny Steren it still resonates quite well.

In fact, one McGwire moonshot that summer changed his life forever.

A collector of baseball cards since 1971, the native New Yorker attended a Cardinals-Mets game on the evening of May 8, 1998 — a memorable Friday contest pitting Rick Reed against Cliff Politte (remember them?) at Shea Stadium. The weather was a bit spotty, but Steren and his wife, Tammi, went as she was a Cardinals fan and he, of course, favored the hometown crew.

It started to rain in the third inning — but not before McGwire smacked a Reed pitch over the fence for his 400th career home run. While the madness of million-dollar milestone baseballs would not happen for a few more months, he did not catch the call. Nothing that simple. But this mad man (Steren worked in print advertising) had an idea.

” It was not announced, but I knew it was his 400th career home run,” he said. “We sprinted to gates A and E to buy 200 additional tickets to the game. After putting $2,000 on my Visa as an investment, I knew I would have no problem selling them with the interest McGwire was attracting.”

Turns out that his hunch — he was also a ticket stub collector — was right, and a business was born.

“When my wife and I returned to our Manhattan apartment, there were 10 messages on our answering machine from ticket collectors, asking if I went to the game and saying that they would ‘pay anything for a ticket,’” he said. ” [Back in] 1998 was the heyday for eBay and these tickets brought between $75 to $225 each.  Even my father, who is the smartest businessman I know, was skeptical of my intent to quit my job and start this as a full-time business.  He was impressed.  I don’t know of any Wall Street stock that jumps from $10 to $225 overnight!”

(Need a full checklist for Mark McGwire or an OPG? Click here.)

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That same month, Steren quit his job and he hasn’t looked back. Today, he has an inventory of more than 175,000 tickets and works full-time buying, selling and trading tickets using eBay as one outlet (userID: Buckner). It’s a job that takes a lot of research as well as an attention to detail to catalog all of the possible trivia that can be attached to each stub.

” I love dates and stats,” he said. ” I enjoy giving great detail to research and accurate dates of milestone events.  I have 4,000-plus milestone events listed on my Excel file.”

So, how does one actually collect tickets? While it’s different than, say, cards, it’s really not that much — particularly with where to find tickets.

“eBay is the No. 1 source,” Steren said, “And word of mouth.”

And amassing tickets?

“My wife and I buy collections from shows, on eBay, and private clients who are selling out,” he said.

Steren said that the most commonly collected tickets are milestones — 500th home runs, 3,000th hits, first and last games, for example. Then, of course, some people collect Opening Day tickets or games where players hit for a cycle, or where there was a triple play among other things.

So, are there any seemingly easy tickets that just aren’t all that easy to find?

“[The] 1960s and 1970s Busch Stadium tickets with printed years,” he said. “For example, June 10, may be on the ticket, but not the year.”

And what about the toughest to find, period?

“Tickets with printed dates from the 1920s and 1930s are the toughest,” he said.

As a Mets collector, Steren said he hunts Mets stubs, of course, with his goal to own every regular season stub from the famed 1969 and 1986 seasons — home and away. But there is a catch.

“I will sell duplicates,” he said. “But I won’t sell my singles.”

On the side, Steren also works for PSA as a ticket consultant — a job where he often helps weed out reproduction stubs before they are graded and slabbed … just like cards.

“Super Bowl tickets and World Series tickets are more of a problem,” he said. “People try to sell the ‘artist proof’ from the printer as valid tickets.  For example, Super Bowl I played in L.A. in 1967 should always have ‘Dillingham’ as the printer in fine print.  The other printers are all fakes. ”

Steren also said he’s learned a lot about his business by working with others.

“There are too many to mention, but the late Joe Demattio helped promote this great hobby/business for me,” he said. “I bought thousands of Cubs and White Sox tickets from him.  And Dan Busby, who is a wealth of knowledge, knows more about vintage tickets than anyone I’ve ever met.  Also, Scott Garner, Rick Taylor and Tony Swann have helped me invaluably along the way.”

So, where can Steren be reached?

“I am listed as Buckner on eBay, and my email address is Sirmook@aol.com,” he said. “I love receiving wantlists.”

Chris Olds is the editor of Beckett Baseball magazine. Have a comment, question or idea? Send an email to him at colds@beckett.com. Follow him on Twitter by clicking here.

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STEREN’S TOP SEVEN STUBS
While milestones are big, here are seven tickets that Steren remembers selling:
1.  5/30/82 @ Orioles stub - “First day of Cal Ripken’s streak.  I sold it for $1,500.”
2.  6/13/48 @ Yankees stub – “Babe Ruth was honored at Yankee Stadium when he was two months away from death.  I sold it for $900.”
3.  9/13/71 @ Orioles – “Frank Robinson’s 500th home run (2 full tickets).  I sold them for $750 each.”
4.  4/8/63 @ Reds stub – “Pete Rose’s MLB debut.  I sold it for $700.”
5.  7/11/47 @ Giants stub – “Mel Ott’s last game played.  I sold it for $533.”
6.  6/24/55 @ Braves – “Sandy Koufax MLB debut.  I sold it for $500.”
7.  9/28/68 @ Red Sox stub – “Mickey Mantle’s last game played.  I sold it for $650.”

By CHRIS OLDS | Beckett Baseball

Imaging getting paid $20, $50 or $100 for a single swipe of a pen … for your autograph.

Collectors know all about the practice of autograph signings for cash — we see it all the time at shows. However, have you ever put yourself in an athlete’s shoes?

For a multi-millionaire, a private autograph signing might be work — if an athlete even bothers because, after all, time is money. (Meeting and signing for fans? That’s another story. Many athletes have no worries about doing those events — or signing for free if it’s the right place and right time.)

And, when you think about it, signing autographs is work in a different way, too. Can you imaging sitting down and signing your name 500 or 1,000 times with only a break or two?

Many collectors don’t — and that’s why they complain when they get autographs that look like chicken scratch. (To some degree, I understand why they sometimes look the way that they do.)

We all have heard about the “give-up graph” — and we all know about the checkmark autograph of former Houston Texans running back Vernand Morency – but there’s another type of autograph out there that has always interested me.

It’s the “early” autograph — the one where an athlete either hadn’t yet adopted a shorter version of an autograph or a rarer signature where we just don’t commonly see it on items signed in bulk.

There are countless examples where an athlete’s handwriting changes over time — just like a person’s handwriting changes with age or time. (Believe it or not, your handwriting shouldn’t look like it did when you were an 8-year-old — if it does, I’m sorry.) For example, Mark McGwire has a distinctly different looking autograph from circa 1997 on compared to his earlier signatures. Why? While there could be a steroid transformation joke here, it’s likely about supply, demand and the venue in which the autographs were signed. (And, yes, handwriting is one way a personality change could be manifested, but we’re collectors not psychologists, here, Jim.)

But there’s another reason autographs are getting smaller and less intrinsically interesting these days — and it’s not just based on the volume of them being signed. It’s what’s being signed, too — you don’t get the same type of signatures on manufactured patches or teeny, tiny stickers as you do on a card or an even larger object.

(Here’s where the critics of sticker autographs discover another reason to hate them.)

This isn’t some grand discovery — but it was reinforced for me when I sat down recently to sign a handful of “baseball card business cards” that are larger than Allen & Ginter minis but not the same size as a standard-size card. As much as I like Ginter minis, there’s flat-out no way that my signature would fit on one without signing the cards sideways or vertically, which would be awful-looking. (And of course, autograph No. 1 can be quite different than the final one if in a hurry.)

You can bet that these smaller cards — and small stickers — have aided in the deterioration of some athletes’ signatures.

But the issue really isn’t new to stickers, minis or whatever that’s being signed. I’ve always has some fascination with “early” autographs — like the Nick Swisher baseball up top that has a distinct different signature than any you will find on a certified autograph card, sticker or not. (Since Swisher is a player I collect, I’ve found that the full signature sometimes appears on items in charity auctions — a more “special” autograph — but more often than not these days it’s the shorter, quicker version that’s used.)

Changes happen.

There are other memorable examples out there… sometimes it’s an evolution seen from autograph No. 1 to autograph No. 757 in a signing like a pair of 1995 Andruw Jones Best cards and then comparing those to today. Or the changes from Vladimir Guerrero‘s early Classic autographs to what we see now.  Or Manny Ramirez‘s first certified autograph to what his signature looks like now.

It’s obvious in my book that one version of the autograph would be in smaller supply — and there might be aesthetic reasons that make a card more valuable, or at least more interesting.

But what do you think?

All that said, we also want to know … what autographs that have become dramatically different over time amuse you?

Chris Olds is the editor of Beckett Baseball. Have a comment, question or idea? Send an e-mail to him at colds@beckett.com. Follow him on Twitter by clicking here.