The ball Barry Bonds hit for his 756th home run will be displayed in the Hall of Fame, but it will not look exactly the same as it did when it first landed in the seats at AT&T Park in San Francisco.

Marc Ecko, who bought the ball in an online auction, set up a website for fans to vote on one of three options for the ball’s fate. The winning choice: brand the ball with an asterisk and send it to Cooperstown.

How the ball will be marked and when it will be displayed have yet to be decided. Hall of Fame president Dale Petroskey said the museum is grateful to have the ball for display, even if it will be in an altered state. “This ball wouldn’t be coming to Cooperstown if Marc hadn’t bought it and then let the fans have their say,” Petroskey told The Associated Press. “We’re delighted to have the ball. It’s a historic piece of baseball history.”

Reportedly, 10 million votes were cast on the site, which gave Ecko plenty of name recognition beyond those who might have known him as a fasion designer. For his sake, I hope it was worth the $752,000 he spent on the ball.

Upper Deck has produced two eight-card sheets featuring players from the Chicago Bears that will be available for $1.99 each this month at all 180 Jewel Food Stores in the Chicagoland area.

A sheet featuring eight offensive players (pictured below) will be available for one week, while a sheet featuring eight defensive players will be available the other week. The sheets will be promoted in the store’s newspaper ads and through in-store signage and will be available while supplies last.

The promotion was supposed to begin the third week of September, so if you live in the Chicago area you might want to check with the Jewel store in your area to see when the promotion officially begins.

Minnesota Twins pitcher Pat Neshek is also an active card collector. His web page includes, among other things, his reviews of recent card products. You can also offer to trade him your baseball or hockey cards in exchange for his signed cards.

Included on his website is information about a pack opening event attended by Neshek, Twins manager Ron Gardenhire and roughly a dozen of the team's players. The event was coordinated by the MLB Players Association.

A story about the pack opening event will air Sept. 19 on ESPN between 7-8 p.m. Eastern time.

Topps released a report this week it hopes will convince its shareholders to vote in favor of a proposed sale of the company to Michael Eisner's Tornante Co.

It's filled with lots of charts and graphs and rather dry business talk, and a rather frank discussion of Topps' current weaknesses in the sports card and candy markets. It also criticizes Upper Deck's recent takeover attempt and the efforts by a dissident group of shareholders (Crescendo Partners) to block the proposed sale to Eisner's group.

If you're interested in reading the report, click here.

Between business travel, Labor Day, a magazine deadline and a much-needed vacation day, there’s been little time left for bloggin’. But the schedule has calmed down a bit, so the blog entries should become more frequent.

Speaking of travel, odds are that you probably have to drive a little further these days to find a card shop or card show. There are an estimated 1,200 independently owned card shops around the country, down from more than 4,500 stores a little more than a decade ago. And there are also far fewer card shows around the country.

Online competition has played a role in both of these declines, of course, Dealers are finding it easier and more cost effective to sell material online. With less quality material at the shows, it’s harder to attract consumers. Owners of hobby shops are finding it difficult to compete with the prices offered by some online dealers, many of whom do not have the overhead costs (i.e., rent, utilities, wages) involved in operating a hobby store.

Are there fewer card shops and card shows in your area of the country? If so, has this reduction affected your buying habits of sports collectibles? Any comments are appreciated.

An insert card from Topps’ Allen & Ginter Baseball product that features a strand of hair from George Washington generated bids as high as $8,300 before eBay cancelled the auction.

Topps produced three Relic cards in the set with strands of Washington’s hair. One turned up on eBay in an auction that was supposed to end Wednesday night. But the item was pulled after an eBay user reportedly complained that Washington can’t be listed in the baseball card section of the auction site because he is not a baseball player. The collector who pulled the card has relisted the item.

The story of the card has generated a fair amount of publicity, including a lengthy story in Wednesday’s New York Times. The paper even quoted the senior curator of Washington’s home in Mount Vernon, Va., as saying it was “shocking” Topps would put something of such great value in its baseball card packs and expressing concern the eventual buyer “might not be a responsible custodian” for the piece.

Topps spokesman Clay Luraschi is quoted in the story as saying the company bought the hair from John Reznikoff, who is in the Guinness Book of World Records for the “Largest Collection of Hair from Historical Figures.”
In the Times’ story, Reznikoff said a strand of Washington’s hair has an approximate value of several hundred dollars.

While some non-card collectors will roll their eyes at the thought of a trading card with a strand of someone's hair, the fact this story garnered attention in a paper as widely read as The Times is good publicity for the hobby.