Anyone is welcome to submit a Guest Blog Entry to torontomike.com. I received the following submission earlier today.
I am the estimating mgr. of one of the largest printing companies in North America & I could not beleive one of the calls I got today. Some print broker from the U.S. wanted to print 25,000 or 50,000 sets of 100 trading cards of Pope John Paul II - including 2 pics of his assassination attempt in 1981. I immediately thought this was not humanly right. I called the Prez. & vice Prez. & after some discussion ("we could make lots of money on this project") I declined to give this A-HOLE a price. I told him we were not interested in providing the services he wanted & I said (tongue in cheek - You SOB - hopefully you get the same response from everyone you call). We were the 10th & all before said the same. Some money grabbing facility will jump & produce these cards - they are to be on the market before the end of April. What's next - OJ, Robert Blake & Michael Jackson sets? These papal cards will be worthless & hopefully nobody buys them - you will probably see them on ebay in the next few months for 25 times their actual cost.
It's too bad our world has come to this - Money is the root of all EVIL.
Twins From Bolton
Your story reminds me of an article I read a while back about serial killers trading cards. Somewhere, somehow there was a market for these cards of Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer and the like. That was sick glorification of mass murderers, but I don't think Pope John Paul II trading cards are so horrible an idea if they were done tastefully. If they are meant to honour him and praise his accomplishments, they're merely harmless slices of cheese, right?
I'd still stick with my O-Pee-Chee cards of Reggie Jackson and Rod Carew when they were with the California Angels. I've got a great Rollie Fingers with a handle bar moustache you just can't find these days. Now that's a collectible.
