Negotiating the Contract

After much anticipation, this arrived in the mail today:

That would be a contract between Topps and John Jaha. The language suggests it's his second contract with the company, which makes sense as I missed out on another contract a few months ago.

The contract has all sorts of legal jargon that doesn't make a lot of sense and references a License Agreement. Overall, not very sexy stuff. But from a card collector's perspective - very cool. I need very few cards of Jaha's now and it's the more unique stuff that keeps my collection growing. Even my wife took a bit more than a token glance at this.

I bought the contract through the Topps Vault, which I've always wanted to use but they seemed to have a strict policy against bidders outside the US. So I went and lined someone up to receive the item (thanks BD) and proceeded to request before bidding ended that the contract be sent to someone else and they'd send it along to me. That was okay so I proceeded to bid away. I go and pay and low and behold, the Vault apparently can ship to Canada.

The contract was also accompanied by a nifty little certificate of authenticity just in case someone wanted to counterfeit a contract from a one-time AL Comeback Player of the Year.

Topps Player Contracts

I've heard about Topps selling some of their old player contracts via their eBay-affiliated Topps Vault, but I hadn't really given them much attention seeing as how the Topps Vault only ships within the US. This is odd to me seeing as how eTopps likes Canadians and you can get things shipped to Canada through their eStore, just not with the Topps Vault. Oh, well. I get to save some money, I guess. But man, did I want to bid on those A-Team proof cards.

I digress. Here's a little piece of interest for Yankees fans:

"Donald" Mattingly's 1989 Topps contract. $75 per year? WOW! And you have to use it to buy Topps swag. Interesting indeed.

By the time you read this, the Mattingly auction will likely have ended. But there's still plenty more to pick from including Ozzie Smith, Randy Johnson and Ron Kittle. Not to mention Wolverine and Rogue, but the mutants are from a different seller.