The Beckett Blog

Sure, the mania surrounding Michael Phelps has gone a bit up in smoke since his record-setting performance in the last Olympics, but a little off-the-field (err, out-of-pool?) controversy probably won’t stop fans and collectors from chasing the latest in MP Memorabilia.

His 2009 Allen & Ginter Speedo Relic card from Topps.

Sure, that’s not actually a swatch of his controversial Speedo suit embedded into the card. It’s actually a Speedo swimcap, but who’s counting when there are so Olympic gold medals involved?

The card is one of only a few that will have part of the Speedo logo on it — the rest will have just a plain white swatch. With nearly a week remaining in the auction, the bidding sits at just $27.99 after six bids.

Phelps fans and other collectors will recall the crazy money being paid for his only certified autographs after his successes in Beijing. (We’ll have to wait and see if there’s as much interest these days, but these cards should be a bit easier to land than previous Phelps releases.)

Phelps appears as one of the World’s Champions in the popular baseball card set in its fourth year that hit hobby shops this week. The cards are designed after the 1880s tobacco cards of the same name and include a strong selection of baseball players as well as champions from other sports, who have signed autographs and had used clothing cut up for Relic cards.

Phelps also has signed several different cards for inclusion in packs, but none of them have arrived on the auction block just yet. Only an N43 Autographed Box-topper redemption card  — with a Buy It Now price of $3,500 — and a second mini card autograph redemption has a $2,000 pricetag have shown up on eBay.

We’ll detail more on Phelps’ autographed cards in the set — a pretty creative project in and of itself — soon.

First, though, we’ll let the idea of a Speedos card sink in.

Chris Olds has collected sports cards and memorabilia since 1987. Before coming to Beckett Media, he wrote about the hobby for the Orlando Sentinel on his blog, SportsStuff, and for the San Antonio Express-News and The Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News. Do you have a comment, question or idea? Send e-mail to him at colds@beckett.com.