Q&A on Bond's home run ball

I found this question on Yahoo! Answers and thought I came up with a pretty good response - see below.

Q: IRS forcing sale of Bond's homerun ball? - what would prevent the kid from donating it to hall of fame and claiming it as a tax write off, then collecting money from the IRS as charitable contribution.

A: That's a very good question, I think having to pay tax on an baseball like that with no intrinsic value is BS, who's to say what the baseball may or not be worth so to get taxed on memorabilia like that is garbage

So if it's worth 1,000,000 and he sells the ball he probably gets 700,000 after taxes (depending on the tax rate which I have no clue about), if he donates it and wrights it off he'd probably save 300,000 in taxes so he's still better off selling it

I think what he should do is find some hot shot lawyer who's looking to make a name for himself and take the IRS to court over the issues, he could probably find someone to do it for free just for the publicity, if he drags it out in court for a while the hype could increase the value of the baseball substantially - it could be the most famous baseball ever, so then win, loose or draw against the IRS, he might be able to sell it for 2,000,000 and keep 1,400,000! How does that sound?

Display Case Design Help from The WoodWhisperer.com

I’ve been a big fan of the WoodWhisperer podcast since I came up with the ideas to design and build the ultimate premium baseball card display case. I emailed Marc with my preliminary design ideas for the case and he was kind enough to take some time and make some recommendations.

“One of my favorite things to do with picture frames is splined miters. It involves cutting a tablesaw kerf through the miter and inserting a thin piece of contrasting wood. Very elegant.”

I’m not entirely sure what that means but Marc knows his stuff so it’s probably something that I’ll want to incorporate into the final display case design once I see some pics.

If you’re into woodworking be sure to check out his site and podcasts – www.TheWoodWhisperer.com

If you happen upon this and have any design ideas for the ultimate ultra premium extra deluxe baseball card display case – be sure to drop me an email.

Daisuke Matsuzaka Allen and Ginter Rookie Card from Topps

Picked up a few packs of Topps Allen and Ginter baseball cards and landed a Dice K rookie card – pretty sweet. They’re pretty cool cards with lots of nice extras like autographs, you can actually get cards that include the original printing plates that Topps used in production. I saw a few on eBay, they’d probably make really cool display pieces. It looks like it will be a very limited set of cards so they should maintain solid value over time.

Find Daisuke Matsuzaka baseball cards on eBay!

NFBC Fantasy Baseball Bump from Trade Deadline!

My NFBC fantasy baseball team just got a bump at the trade deadline. Nothing major but with 15 teams per league and 25 man rosters, the player pool in the NFBC is super thin - the cumulative effect should add up to something significant.

Morgan Ensberg – designated for assignment by Houston but reportedly will go to the Twins, he’s been killing us at third base all year and his best baseball is behind him but any increase in playing time will be huge
Luis Castillo – going to the Mets is great, might go from ~20 SB guy to 30-35 SB second baseman, for a 300 hitter that’s real solid
Jarrod Saltalamacchia – (longest last name in MLB history) supposed get a huge bump in playing time going to Texas, the NFBC requires 2 starting catchers so this is a big gain

Fantasy baseball is a total grind this time of year but the bumps in all 3 of these starters should make for a nice push toward the end. We’re definitely out of the $100,000 grand prize but we could score some cash by coming in second or third in our league.

The Big Train, T206 Portrait

Here a pic of the Walter Johnson T206 card I bought on eBay with my fantasy football winnings from last season – thank you Ron Dayne! I was pretty excited that it wasn’t graded but looks like it could be - it’s in really nice shape, the corners are in good shape and only one significant crease in the upper right. It has a Sweet Caporal 350-460, Factory 42 back. Long term I think the T206 will hold it’s value better than if I just blew the cash on a new TV or something.

Buy T206 Walter Johnson baseball cards on eBay!

Diamond View of Prince Fielder at RFK

Prince Fielder, taken from sweet Diamond Club seats I scored off of eBay during the July 4^th weekend series in Washington. We saw Ryan Braun jack 2 home runs, he rules, should have grabbed a pic of him too.