Owning Sidney is Expensive

Anyone ever try to collect Sidney Crosby hockey cards?

If so, it'll cost ya.

From Helen Jung of The Oregonian:

Sidney Crosby -- the Pittsburgh Penguins' star center and a leading candidate to be the NHL's Most Valuable Player -- already lays claim to another title: Most Valuable Rookie Card.

The Upper Deck Co., a trading card and sports collectibles company, issued 99 rookie cards for Sidney Crosby last July, after Crosby's first season in the NHL. The company distributed them in select hockey-card packs marketed under the name "The Cup," with a suggested retail price of $350, said Karvin Cheung, Upper Deck product manager for hockey.

Crosby's cards also included a piece of the Pittsburgh Penguins patch taken from Crosby's game jerseys.

Some of those cards are now fetching upward of $10,000, said Al Muir, editor of Beckett Hockey, a price-guide publisher and information service for people interested in hockey memorabilia. Crosby's fame extends far beyond hockey and may be drawing some speculative sports investors, he said.

The most valuable cards include a swatch with three colors -- black, yellow and white -- he said. Just one color, however, gets you a card worth about $5,000.

By comparison, the rookie card for Wayne Gretzky, the hockey player with whom Crosby is often compared, is fetching about $900. "It's completely unprecedented," Muir said.

Upwards of $10,000 for some cardboard and 1/10000 of a jersey? Cripes!