By Chris Olds | Beckett Baseball Editor

A high-grade 1932 U.S. Caramel set — all in PSA 8 condition — joins a high-grade copy of football’s holy grail card, a selection of T206 rarities and some 1950s Topps gems in the latest Memory Lane Inc. auction that starts this week.

The 32-card multi-sport set (checklist and OPG) includes Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb and Lou Gehrig among the baseball luminaries along with Jack Dempsey, Bobby Jones and other stars from the era in the auction from the Tustin, Calif.-based company. The set will be sold as either a single auction or separately, whichever generates the most bidding action. Bidding begins at $50,000 for the set.

The Ruth card has only been topped twice on the pop report, while the Gehrig is the highest specimen. Both cards will open with $10,000 starting bids.

The baseball presence in the auction is massive, but so is the  1935 National Chicle Bronko Nagurski, which is one of the most in-demand football cards in the hobby. It’s among the highest-graded specimens at a PSA 7, while the rest of the landmark set will also be auctioned.

Also up for grabs will be en entire T206 set (minus the big four) opening at $5,000, while a heavy presence of Babe Ruth items — even an autograph for William Bendix, who played him in The Babe Ruth Story — can be had. There’s also a heavy vintage pack presence that includes an unopened 1952 Topps wax pack, a 1909-11 Sweet Caporal tobacco pack, and countless other offerings from the Topps years.

To see more from the auction block, click here.

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.

By Chris Olds | Beckett Baseball Editor

If one looked closely at the on-box features of 2012 Panini Cooperstown, the very last line of the product’s features on the back panel of the wax box was a simple one.

“Ty Cobb Georgia Peach (one card) * Lou Gehrig The Iron Horse (one card)”

On Monday, Panini America unveiled exactly what those are — and exactly how tough they are to find.

The two cards were inserted into packs at a rate of one in every 9,600 packs, according to the company. That’s one per every 400 boxes of the product — making some of those elusive autographs perhaps seem much easier to find than they are.

These cards — simply substantially short-printed cards — just might be the rarest non 1/1s  in the product, which does not contain any game-used memorabilia cards.

Autographs are found one per 24-pack box of the Cooperstown-focused product with some boxes including two.

The only copy of either card to surface on eBay — a Gehrig — sold for $35 last week.

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.

Update: Deadline is extended … we want your entries!

By Chris Olds | Beckett Baseball Editor

If there’s one thing I’ve come to  appreciate more and more over the last few years at Beckett Media, it’s the tales of collectors — specifically, those of SuperCollectors who clearly are so focused on their niche that only one word applies.

Insanity.

And it’s a good thing. Imagine my thoughts today as I dipped into the SuperCollector mailbag and saw that we didn’t really have too many new and amazing entries piled up from the last few weeks.

I did the only sane thing I should do … I went and found this 2012 Topps Museum Collection Primary Pieces Ty Cobb card — one of just 25 made — and am randomly giving it away to one SuperCollector who submits all the necessary info between now and Feb. 1.

The card is an impressive one — the last selling for $210 on eBay — and we’ll make sure it’s in someone’s hands … as long as they submit their info about their collection.

How can it be yours? Read the instructions on submitting your SuperCollector info (any sport, any player, any niche)  … after the jump.

How can you be a SuperCollector? Your instructions …  read them carefully!

You don’t have to have the most-expensive collection on the block but it needs to be unique — downright crazy — in some way that it stands out.

Send in an email to Beckett editor Chris Olds at colds@beckett.com the following information:

1. Name, age, your email address, your location (city, state) and who/what you collect.

2. Statistics about your collection (total cards, number of 1/1s, number of autographs, number of game-used cards or items, etc., as seen on the examples seen here).

3. Tell us why you should be selected. Sell us on what makes your collection the best — and how/why your collection started. Tell us what makes your collection special and unique.

4. Send us LINKS to images that we can examine or use with your item — including one showing you with your collection. (Bad images won’t help your case … and 900-MB attachments won’t either!) Warning: Any emails over 10 MB will NOT arrive and will not be seen.

5. Be complete — and be patient. We WILL be in touch if you are selected or we need more information. If you sent info in the past, it’s likely outdated by now — so update it and send it again.

6. Act fast … we want your info.

Check out the SuperCollectors below if you need to see more … we’re awaiting your email.

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

By Chris Olds | Beckett Baseball Editor

First there was a Gold Standard, now there’s a Golden Age.

While the standard set a lustrous standard on the hardwood, Panini America‘s newest baseball card line apparently aims to celebrate the halcyon days of collecting.

It’s 2012 Panini Golden Age, a retro-styled product that will include eccentric inclusions, pennant or movie-focused box-toppers … and minis.

Set to arrive in late-November, Golden Age will include one autograph and one memorabilia card in each 24-pack box — and maybe even a Loch Ness Monster.

The base set will consist of 150 cards and include 25 short-printed variation cards found just two per case. Each card will be found in a tobacco-size mini parallel with a few parallel versions of those.

Among the other unusual inclusions will be an autograph from Watergate journalist Bob Woodward, Titanic memorabilia cards, buybacks from the 1930s and 40s (one per case) and mem0rabilia cards including the likes of Ty Cobb and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson.

Also to be found will be 50 Historic Signatures, 40 Museum Age memorabilia cards and even a Triple Crown Winners autograph for all those horse-racing fans out there. Meanwhile, other inserts will include Headlines, Batter-Up and Newark Evening World Supplement cards– all with nods to the past.

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.

Join Beckett Baseball‘s Chris Olds as he rips into a box of 1993 Action Packed All-Star Gallery in this latest retro edition of Ripping Retail.

What or who will he find inside? Watch and find out …

By Chris Olds | Beckett Baseball Editor

Panini America revealed the latest edition of Prime Cuts on Tuesday and the 2012 edition will arrive in October — just six months after the arrival of the 2011 product.

The company promises that the new edition has been “revamped, redesigned and re-engineered” from the previous version — an offering without prospects that were found heavily in the 2011 version and one instead relying upon Hall of Famers, current players, current rookies and other memorable players from the past.

Each two-card pack of the product will include one autograph and one memorabilia card or a pair of signed cards. There will be 15 packs per case, while the RCs will be numbered to 99 or less and there also will be some fresh prospects — memorabilia cards and autographs from the 2012 USA Baseball Collegiate National team.

The base set will be comprised of 50 memorabilia cards — each numbered to 99 — 50 signed cards (Century Signatures with Gold, Silver and Platinum parallels), 22 USA Baseball autographed jersey cards, 50 Timelines Materials autographs and 36 Timeline booklet cards, according to the company.

The Significant Signatures and Notable Nicknames inserts will each be limited to 49 or fewer copies and include Hall of Famers such as Tom Seaver, Robin Yount, Ernie Banks and Johnny Bench to name a few, while other legends to appear on memorabilia cards will include Ty Cobb, Jackie Robinson, Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig and Rogers Hornsby among others. It also will include new stars such as Albert Pujols and Yu Darvish. The Nicknames cards will be a mix of Hall of Famers and newer players such as Josh Hamilton and Larry Walker.

Hats Off Signatures cards will showcase a piece of a game-used cap as well as an autograph for Pete Rose and 11 Hall of Fame players, while Notable Nicknames Cuts will include the likes of Williams, Satchel Paige, Connie Mack and Casey Stengel to name a few.

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.

By Susan Lulgjuraj | Contributing Editor

Digging through an attic can be fun by uncovering old family treasures, secrets and sometimes even a stash of old baseball cards.

That’s the luck that Karl Kissner of Defiance, Ohio has seemed to found himself in.

He uncovered  a cardboard box that had been under a wooden dollhouse in his grandfather’s attic, according to the Associated Press. Inside the box, he found baseball cards bundled with twine, smaller than current cards.

According to the report, experts are calling this one of the greatest cardboard finds with many of the cards in terrific condition. Collectors will get a chance to see these cards at the National Sports Collectors Convention when some of the cards will be put up for auction.

”It’s like finding the Mona Lisa in the attic” Kissner told the Associated Press.

So what was in the group of about 700 cards?

The cards are from the E-98 series, according to the report, which is an extremely rare and obscure set. In Jefferson Burdick’s The American Card Catalog, he guesses a company named Briggs manufactured the cards, however, no one is really sure.

There is very little information known about the set other than there are 30 players in it.

Here’s more from AP’s report:

“The best of the bunch – 37 cards – are expected to bring a total of $500,000 …   They include such legends as Christy Mathewson and Connie Mack.

Kissner and his family say the cards belonged to their grandfather, Carl Hench, who died in the 1940s. Hench ran a meat market in Defiance, and the family suspects he got them as a promotional item from a candy company that distributed them with caramels. They think he gave some away and kept others.

”We guess he stuck them in the attic and forgot about them,” Kissner said. ”They remained there frozen in time.”

After Hench and his wife died, two of his daughters lived in the house. Jean Hench kept the house until she died last October, leaving everything inside to her 20 nieces and nephews. Kissner, 51, is the youngest and was put in charge of the estate. His aunt was a pack rat, and the house was filled with three generations of stuff.

They found calendars from the meat market, turn-of-the-century dresses, a steamer trunk from Germany and a dresser with Grandma’s clothes neatly folded in the drawers.

Months went by before they even got to the attic. On Feb. 29, Kissner’s cousin Karla Hench pulled out the dirty green box with metal clips at the corners and lifted the lid.

Not knowing whether the cards were valuable, the two cousins put the box aside. But Kissner decided to do a little research. The cards were at his office in the restaurant he owns when he realized they might have something. He immediately took them across the street and put them in a bank vault.

Still not knowing whether the cards were real, they sent eight to expert Peter Calderon at Heritage Auctions in Dallas, which recently sold the baseball that rolled through the legs of Boston Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner in the 1986 World Series for $418,000.

Calderon said his first words were ”Oh, my God.”

”I was in complete awe,” he said. ”You just don’t see them this nice.”

The cards were sent off to PSA. A magical find considering 16 of the Ty Cobbs from the set graded a 9. No Cobb from the E-98 set had ever received a grade higher than a 7 before.

Heritage Auctions plans to sell most of the cards over the next two of three years through auctions and private sales so that it doesn’t flood the market. In all, they could bring $2 or $3 million, Chris Ivy, Heritage Auctions’ director of sports auctions told the AP.

“The E98 set was always considered one of the most desirable candy issues from the early part of the 20th century, but not many high-quality copies were known,” PSA President Joe Orlando said. “In the 21 years PSA has been in business, we’d only graded about 625 examples, but now that population of certified E98 cards literally has doubled, and a large percentage of the recently discovered cards grade PSA NM 7 or better, which is remarkable.”

Here’s a link for the auctions.

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

By Chris Olds | Beckett Baseball Editor | Commentary

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again — nothing is perhaps more perfectly symbolic of a home run hitter than a game-used baseball bat.

And, unlike cards, jerseys and other pieces of memorabilia, the more beaten and worn out a bat is, the more impressive it is — as long as it remains complete.

For card collectors and game-used cards, bats are not always as impressive. It’s not always a love-love relationship. But Topps is intending to change that with its upcoming Tier One release arriving later this month. While bats can yield hundreds, if not thousands, of anonymous-looking wood chips to be placed into cards, the most-special pieces of chopped up gamers are the nameplates — the spot on the barrel where the player’s name is burned into the bat — and the bat knob where a player’s perhaps most-personalized touches can be seen via numbers, initials or sayings.

In Tier One, there will be a 100-card set of 1/1 knob cards for collectors to chase, including some of the biggest names in the history of the game. It’s not an accident, said Topps Vice President Mark Sapir.

“The goal was to add special content, over-deliver value on this release,” Sapir said Tuesday night. “To create buzz and excitement in hobby, provide a special chase.”

Bat knob cards are not a common thing in the hobby today — even as game-used memorabilia cards are much more commonplace than they were even a decade ago. Today, there are just 629 total bat knob cards in the Beckett.com database. (Click here for a complete checklist and to get an OPG) Many of them are 1/1 cards that few of us ever see.

Topps previously billed this release as “one of the most significant memorabilia inserts ever offered in a product” and the company already is the runaway leader in bat knob cards made previously. There are 491 different Topps knob cards in existence, while the old Donruss/Playoff made the second-highest total with just 92. The remaining companies all have made fewer than 20 knob cards.

Among the legendary bat knobs to be inserted into Tier One will be Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, Frank Robinson, Roberto Clemente, Ty Cobb, Joe DiMaggio, Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and many more. Oh, and you can find new sluggers, too, such as Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez, Jose Bautista, Josh Hamilton, Matt Kemp, Jay Bruce, Carlos Gonzalez and others.

It’s an impressive array — largely retired greats — and it will be a pricey one, too. In the cases of some modern sluggers the knob card might outpace the price of a complete game-used bat. (I’m expecting that as I’ll fight — and lose — to deep-pocketed Yankees fans online for what will be just the third Nick Swisher bat knob card to ever be released. It will likely surpass what I paid for even the most-expensive of my 10 or so complete game-used bats.)

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.

Feast on a massive gallery of the actual Tier One bat knobs below and then take our poll.

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By Chris Olds | Beckett Baseball Editor

The auctions have ended, the numbers have been crunched. The ranges have been tabulated and the OPG has been posted.

The 2011 Limited baseball card set from Panini America has arrived on Beckett.com with the prospects, legends and more all in tow. Let’s take a look inside the numbers crunched by Beckett Baseball Senior Market Analyst Brian Fleischer  — and see even more — after the jump.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Total value … of all priced cards in product: $9,423.25.

Average price … of all priced cards: $14.43.

Highest-priced card … 2011 Limited Hall of Fame Gear #1 Ty Cobb/25 ($150-$250)

Notable card … Tigers catcher and All-Star Alex Avila’s first certified autograph can be found here. It’s limited to 49 copies and has been a surprisingly strong seller.

Other notable cards:
– 2011 Limited Draft Hits Signatures #1 Josh Bell/149
– 2011 Limited Draft Hits Signatures #10 Trevor Bauer/99
– 2011 Limited Draft Hits Signatures #12 Archie Bradley/99
– 2011 Limited Draft Hits Signatures #26 Danny Hultzen/99
– 2011 Limited Greats Signatures #14 Pete Rose/30
– 2011 Limited Match-Ups Signatures #2 Gerrit Cole/Josh Bell/25
– 2011 Limited Match-Ups Signatures #4 Archie Bradley/Trevor Bauer/25

Fleischer’s Focus: While the product may seem like it’s loaded with prospect autographs, there many attainable hidden gems to be found from game-used cards from Joe Jackson and Ty Cobb to autographs from top sellers like Frank Thomas, Will Clark and Ken Griffey Jr.

Olds’ Opinion: Limited’s lower price point (compared to Prime Cuts) makes it a bit more fun, but it seems that some cards are still a bit soft. To me, that’s an invitation to buy right now as there is plenty available. The singles route on cards could be fun for some sets in the product — check out sets such as the Limited Gamers for something different, affordable and collectable.

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.

By Chris Olds | Beckett Baseball Editor

Panini America unveiled its newest forthcoming baseball card product under its MLBPA licensing deal on Thursday, and it’s one that a few collectors might remember from the Donruss days.

It’s Limited.

Set to arrive late next month, it will be branded as a 2011 product and include three autograph or memorabilia cards per pack with each 15-pack case including an average of 43 autographs, according to the company.

First arriving in baseball back in 1994, Limited was a bit of a staple for the former Donruss/Playoff company, which included releases all the way until 2005. Since Panini purchased Donruss and its portfolio, the brand has lived on in each of its other sports — football, basketball and hockey.

Base cards will be numbered to just 249 in this high-end brand, which also will include cards including pieces of real gold and silver as well as memorabilia cards of unusual types — batting helmets and buttons to name a couple. It also will include a 30-card Historical Cuts autograph set including notable names from baseball, entertainment and politics. Notables there? George Steinbrenner, Ben Hogan, Lucille Ball and boxer Jack Johnson.

Other inserts will include Rawlings Gold Gloves Signatures — cards with a piece of 14-karat gold as well as an autograph. Meanwhile, Silver Slugger cards will include pieces of silver along with autographs.

Some of the notable legends in this one? Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb, Jimmie Foxx and Joe Jackson — most possible because of the company’s recently signed deal with the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Meanwhile, active stars and more recently retired names in Limited will include Josh Hamilton, David Wright, Matt Kemp, Dustin Pedroia,  Ken Griffey Jr., Cal Ripken Jr. and Don Mattingly to name a few.

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.