SportsCollectibles

Invisible Ink Protects Super Bowl Footballs

Filed under: Sports

On Super Bowl Sunday over 100 footballs will be used in the game. Some of those footballs will go to players, others to charity auctions and some will likely eventually end up on the collectibles market. The National Football League takes some interesting steps to protect against possible counterfeiting. Each ball used in the game will be be "tagged" with a specially-prepared synthetic DNA ink that leaves an invisible-to-the-naked-eye security mark. The sideline pylons and even the coin used for the coin toss will be marked, too.

For the 12th consecutive year, the National Football League will use sports memorabilia authentication company PSA/DNA Authentication Services of Santa Ana, California to certify all footballs used in the Super Bowl. A PSA/DNA representative will be on the scene in Miaimi to photograph and then mark each ball with a synthetic DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) strand that can be seen only when illuminated by a specific laser frequency. Just how serious is this? Joe Orlando, President of PSA/DNA, a division of Collectors Universe, Inc. says that the DNA ink has a 1-in-33 trillion chance of being accurately reproduced by counterfeiters. A letter of authenticity accompanies each Super Bowl football certified by PSA/DNA and the certificates have tamper-evident labels with individual, serialized numbers that can be verified online.

Tags: sports collectibles, SportsCollectibles, super bowl, super bowl football, SuperBowl, SuperBowlFootball

Yankee Stadium Sod Up For Auction

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Auctions, Sports

Yankees fans can have a piece of the old stadium in their own back yard. Steiner Sports is selling the 20' x 20'; plot of sod from the area behind home plate that was used in the Yankees old stadium. The lot comes with the Yankee stencil, white sod paint, lawn flag, special grass seed and a letter of authenticity. Delea Sod Farms, the official sod farm of the NY Yankees™ will provide instructions to properly transplant the living sod into your own yard or local ball field and maintain it for years to come. The auction notes that the actual turf will be coming from northern New Jersey and will be shipped via a freight company which charges a steep $7.50 per mile away. Ten percent of the proceeds benefit Family Services of Westchester which provides social and mental health services for more than 30,000 people a year. The auction has a starting price of $15,000 and ends on July 9th.

[via The New Jersey Star-Ledger]

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Tags: new york yankees, NewYorkYankees, sports collectibles, SportsCollectibles, yankee stadium, YankeeStadium