Do you like Buzz Breaks? Today’s your day then as we launch 12 in 12 — a series of a dozen breaks of past wax boxes and wax packs in a dozen hours. We’ll post one every hour on the hour all day long today … this is Hour 6.
The box: 1994-95 Signature Rookies Kro-Max basketball
The cost now: $19.95
The cost then: $180 ($5 per pack?!?!)
What’s inside this one? Keep reading …
Does the run on O.J. Simpson memorabilia begin now?
The Hall of Fame running back was granted parole Thursday afternoon in Nevada after spending nine years in prison for armed robbery involving two sports memorabilia dealers in Las Vegas. Before that, he was acquitted in the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman in 1995.
Not long after the new news on Thursday, one auction house had its own Simpson news. SCP Auctions will sell a pair of Simpson’s driver’s licenses in auctions in October — one issued to him in 1995 — around the same time that Simpson will be released.
There’s no doubt that even after years out of the spotlight that O.J. Simpson remains one of the more-controversial and polarizing people on the planet, and we’ll get a new wave of discussion about the retired and incarcerated football star with the premiere of O.J.: Made in America, which is a five-part ESPN Films documentary, tonight on ABC.
Simpson, of course, is behind bars for armed robbery and kidnapping after an altercation with a memorabilia dealer back in 2007. His acquittal in the deaths of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman — and the 1997 civil suit found Simpson liable for their deaths — will be one of the main focuses of the nearly eight-hour series.
Will the new story spark any added interest in his key cards? It’s very possible and people are seemingly already interested to some degree. His 1970 Topps Rookie Card (above) actually surged in value back during the first trial and there were non-NFL-licensed card companies that actually had him sign autographs while in jail. According to one advance account of the new documentary, those autographs signed in jail are discussed in the series.
“O.J. had only been in jail for two or three days when, per his agent Mike Gilbert, he gave instructions to start ‘marketing and merchandising and generating a lot of money,'” reads one advance review. “Gilbert and memorabilia dealer Bruce Fromong brought in fabric numbers for O.J. to sign, which would later be sewn into jerseys, and leather panels that would eventually become footballs. Demand, says Fromong, was through the roof, and as photographs reveal, an O.J. autograph signed from behind bars could go for hundreds of dollars.
“‘He sat in jail,’ says Fromong, ‘and we did $3-million dollars in autographs.’ One photograph of O.J. and Johnnie Cochran got both their signatures. ‘I look back,’ says Gilbert, ‘and think, this sucked. I can’t believe we did this.’”
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