Baseball Cards Are Worth A Few Dead Presidents

It's been a few years since I collected baseball cards, but with the recent sale of a T-206 Honus Wagner card for $1.62 million, my interest in trading cards was briefly rekindled. Since virtually every neighborhood card shop has closed down, the easiest way to find out what's going on in the hobby is to check out Ebay. So what's the trend now? Autographed cards? Game-used memorabilia? Gum that doesn't crumble when you chew it?

How about hairs from dead creatures?

A few weeks ago, Topps released the 2008 Allen & Ginter set and a few of the big ticket items have already been put on Ebay. There are Chase Utley, Joba Chamberlain, and Evan Longoria cards, but the most popular card available right now is a Woolly Mammoth card:

Yup, those are actual strands of hair from a Woolly Mammoth. Now all you need is to team up with a few ambitious Japanese scientists, and you could be the only guy on the block with a pet mammoth. (Or if you continue to team with the Japanese, you could make the mother of all monster-alien-porn flicks.)

Yesterday, a card with a strand of hair from Abraham Lincoln sold for $8,800. If the person who won that bid also gets the mammoth, they could take over the world. Abraham Lincoln riding a giant woolly mammoth? Now that would be an unstoppable force.