Earlier last week, I commented on how important Leaf’s signing of Ichiro was for their products. For a guy with as large of an international fan base as he has, im surprised it took as long as it did. From early reports, there were a lot of suitors in the mix, but Brian Gray and his infamous ability to go for the jugular won out in this case.
After seeing the actual cards themselves that Ichiro will sign next week, one thing has become obvious to me – Leaf is not taking this lightly in any possible way. For the patch cards in the picture posted on Leaf’s site, its easy to see that Brian knew exactly which parts of the jersey to use.
As a result of posting this picture, I would guess that the patch redemptions inserted and up for auction will jump significantly in price, which will make Leaf Draft Baseball also jump in price. I have no problem saying, they did this production and publicity exactly in the way they needed to do it.
Here is the file – Its large, so I might think twice about downloading this on a phone/iPad or a slow connection (if that even exists anymore).
Can I just say, even more beautiful than those patches is the fact that with that simple picture, we would be able to identify fake patch cards. Not that any of those look like they need any faking, but still. If every company would just take all the cards, place them next to each other, snap a simple photo and put it on their web site, the fake patch industry would dry up almost overnight.
The garbage that Topps spewed about it costing millions to do such as thing is…well, garbage. It would cost them next to nothing.
You cant fake a patch with an image like that laying around. Thanks to leaf for stepping up to the plate there.