(Cheers and hollering)
Now who likes baseball cards with hair in it?
(Silence before raping and pillaging)
On a recent evening, Barbara Ann Artusa and her husband hunkered down on the living room floor for their Saturday night ritual: opening packs of baseball cards.
That night, however, Ms. Artusa, a baseball-card collector since the 1970s, found something unusual in one pack -- a scratch-off code that pointed her to a Web site. The site told her she had won something too delicate to include in a regular pack: a single strand of hair from the head of Abraham Lincoln.
Upper Deck noticed hair on a list of items for sale from a collector it does business with, and thought it compelling, though it gave pause to some. "It was a little awkward initially, like, 'Is it a little morbid?'" says Joe Fallon, director of innovation for Upper Deck. "But when we saw it, we knew we had a good idea." Plus, it fit easily on a trading card.
The buzz that generated -- Ms. Artusa posted her Lincoln card on eBay for $30,000 -- prompted the company to launch a second series of hair cards a couple of months later. The company says that group of 140 includes strands from figures including John F. and Jackie Kennedy. WSJ
When I saw this story in yesterday's Wall Street Journal I was dumbfounded. When you open a pack of baseball cards you get the thrill of finding a rookie card, hologram card, player jersey card or something in the area. However, a hair from a dead person just doesn't intrigue me. I mean couldn't they just put an autograph or a clothing sample? I am also pretty sure Abraham Lincoln and John and Jackie Kennedy didn't think that this is what would happen with their bodies. Whatever, to each his own.
Kids these days.
