By Susan Lulgjuraj | Beckett Sports Card Monthly Editor

Bringing together an iconic group of athletes to sign for a product is an ambitious task, but one Leaf has taken on again.

In 2012 Legends of Sport, Leaf has assembled popular athletes and pop culture figures to fill out the set, including international baseball stars, Olympic athletes and even a former Vice Presidential hopeful.

The set includes more than 150 subjects.

Legends of Sport is scheduled to come out at the end of January and each box will contain three autograph cards.

The base set of autographs includes names such as soccer star Hope Solo, baseball’s Ichiro Suzuki and football’s Robert Griffin III. There is even a Sarah Palin autograph thrown in the mix.

There is a large focus on Olympic athletes. However, maybe none greater than a booklet card featuring 16 autographs from members of the 1980 men’s hockey Olympic goal medal team – the men who brought the country the “Miracle on Ice.” Autographs on the booklet include Mike Eruzione and Jim Craig.

The autograph subsets include nickname cards, cards numbered to a player’s respective jersey number, Award Winner Autographs and We are the Champions Autographs.

In addition, there are Signature Swatches Autographs featuring gear used by the athlete.

Here’s a sample of the names included in this product (check out the gallery below):
Boxing
- Mike Tyson
- Roy Jones Jr.

Basketball
- Damian Lillard
- Bill Russell
- Scottie Pippen
- Karl Malone

Baseball
- Ichiro
- Albert Pujols
- Greg Maddux
- Cal Ripken Jr.

Football
- Doug Martin
- Robert Griffin III
- Deion Sanders

Olympics
- Lolo Jones
- Hope Solo
- Nancy Kerrigan

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.

By Susan Lulgjuraj | Contributing Editor

The race for the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States is on its way with primaries and caucuses already held in several states. Every week, there’s a new debate with candidates are stumping across the nation looking for support.

Upper Deck has joined the political fray with trading cards featuring many of the Republican candidates such as Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. In addition, UD also created a Barack Obama card to be included in this insert set that will be found in World of Sports.

World of Sports is scheduled be released on Feb. 21 with the World of Politics nine-card insert set inside. World of Politics cards should fall at an average of 1:40 hobby packs with even rarer variations of each card.

“We work hard to provide topical content in our new trading card releases,” said Jason Masherah, Upper Deck’s vice president of Marketing and Business Development. “With so much attention around the 2012 election, we thought it was only fitting to produce a set of cards that would help pay tribute to all the highs and lows of this presidential race by capturing the top candidates on cardboard.”

If you’ve forgotten who some of the earlier candidates were, the World of Politics cards has captured them too such as Herman Cain and Michele Bachman. A Sarah Palin card was even thrown in for good measure.

This isn’t the first time Upper Deck has featured political characters on trading cards. In 2008, caricatures of the candidates were made in “Presidential Predictors”, which received a lot of attention. These cards fell 1:8 packs at the time in 2008 Upper Deck Series 1 Baseball. In addition to the candidates, when Obama when the election, Upper Deck produced a special victor card.

The Presidential Predictors cards sparked attention when Hillary Clinton’s cards depicted her as Morganna, The Kissing Bandit, who would run onto baseball fields and kiss players. However, most of Clinton’s cards were pulled from production, but a few sneaked through.

Susan Lulgjuraj is a contributing editor for Beckett Media. You can email Susan here. Follow her on Twitter here.

Jakks Pacific created four custom Cabbage Patch Kids dolls — remember them? — as part of a charity fund-raiser on eBay.

The dolls, styled after four real-life people, were sold with all of the proceeds going to the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation. The auctions ended today — Election Day — so that’s the only hint I’m giving you now (other than the box photo above). The bidding topped $36,000 for them all.

Who are the dolls of? Who won the election? If the box didn’t give it away, all four can be seen after the jump.

The leading money-maker — or the winner of this election so to speak — was Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Bidding on the doll ended at $19,000 and 113 bids.

Next up money-wise was Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, whose doll sold at $8,400 after 96 bids.

Third in the race was Republican presidential candidate John McCain. His doll ended at $6,000 after 68 bids.

And coming up last was Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden at $3,550.01 after 60 bids.

Now we know who won this race for a spot in someone’s office. We’ll find out today who wins the spot in office that really matters.

Chris Olds has collected sports cards and memorabilia since 1987. Before coming to Beckett Media, he wrote about the hobby for the Orlando Sentinel on his blog, SportsStuff, and for the San Antonio Express-News and The Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News. Do you have a comment, question or idea? Send e-mail to him at colds@beckett.com.