What rankles people most about this: 1) There are now a grand total of TWO Babe Ruth jerseys left. Donruss could have bought this thing outright, then put it on tour to garner publicity, at least a quarter-million's worth. Instead, they slice it up like a lime at $.99 margarita night. What sort of respect does that show for the history of the game? 2) The game-used card market is falling apart. There are so many different cards featuring bases, balls (the horsehide kind, you perv), pants, jerseys, hats, bats ... there's just no way people can keep up with collecting them, and it's killing off those people who try to get every, say, Ripken card. Plus, who wants to open a pack and pull out a game-used Ruben Rivera pants card? 3) Stunts like these drive the pack prices up beyond the reach of most collectors. Yes, you will be able to get a Ruth jersey card in the $2.99 packs ... perhaps 5 in a run of 100,000 packs. To have a reasonable shot, you have to pony the big bucks, i.e. $150 per pack. A few collectors purchase these cards. The rest could give two shits. I used to own a baseball-card shop, and I remember the heady days of paying a whopping $18 wholesale for Upper Deck so I could mark it up to $1 a pack. Kids came in with $5 and bought five packs (I ate the tax - might be why I no longer own a card shop), then traded with me or the other customers. Now they are just as likely to throw the cards away, because they can only buy one pack of anything. I'll never purchase a new Donruss pack or product again because of this, and I hope other collectors will do the same.
Perhaps if Donruss had done this a couple of weeks ago the curse would have transfered to them and the Sox would have won. I know, I know, I'm obsessing.
If you think this is offensive, wait until you hear what Ted Williams' kids are planning to do.
the big deal now, for me (as with my prior feelings about the Vezina thing), is that they are cutting up history. There must be hundreds of Michael Jordan game worn jerseys out there. Cut up some of those and I don't see a problem with that. But when there is something is such short supply associated with such a legend it seems disrespectful. Sure it has been ongoing for ten years but I hadn't really seen it make 'the news' until the Vezina thing and now Ruth. Which says something about what those people mean to history.
rcade: wait until you hear what Ted Williams' kids are planning to do. What are they going to do? Take the frozen head and do some microslicing so they can embed each slice in a trading card? Mmmm. Yummy.
I told you don't fuck with my gum!
Too late. You know all those crunchy crystals in there? Heh heh heh.
