“Shoeless” Joe Jackson is Reborn in Modern Day Trading Card

Baseball cards have taken their twists and turns throughout the years. From the cards found in packs of cigarettes in the early 1900s, to the cards your own mother probably threw away, to today where autographs and pieces of game used memorabilia are staples in baseball card products.

One of those modern cards with pieces of game used memorabilia embedded into them is creating quite a stir right now. The first “Shoeless” Joe Jackson trading card with one of his bat barrels embedded into it is about to be released into a product known as 2011 Panini Prime Cuts baseball.

This is the first and may be one of the only trading cards that will ever exist with this form of memorabilia, and as sports memorabilia and baseball card collectors know, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson items are extremely hard to come by nowadays. The fact that a piece of a rare item, a spectacular piece at that, will be going into a collector’s hand is a great thing for sports card and memorabilia collectors everywhere. Panini America’s own Tracy Hackler called it “history making”.

And it will be hard to attain either directly or on the secondary market. The product that features the possibility of obtaining this product runs for about $250. But secondary market values, some experts are predicting, may reach in upwards of $10,000.

Either way, one lucky collector will be happy in the end as this is surely a one of a kind collectible. You may have your personal opinion on “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and his role in the 1919 Black Sox scandal, but you can’t deny the collectibility of the once great outfielder.

Kevin Ransom is a sports card enthusiast from the Pacific Northwest who has been collecting cards since he was a young child. He now writes about sports cards daily on his blog at SportsCardBlog.net.