Place your chips on trading cards

When the baseball card collecting business took off some years ago, so did the active imaginations of the sports' marketing experts. Athletics, in all its many forms, can be a money-maker if the right idea is promoted in the right way by the right people.

The Upper Deck Company, LLC, Carlsbad, Calif., one of the foremost producers of collectible cards--from Yu-Gi-Oh! to Justice League to Winx Club to The Avengers to the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB---is at it again with the immensely popular Poker and Mini Jersey collections.

The Upper Deck Poker Collection ($129.99)--which is cashing in (pun intended) on the poker craze currently sweeping the country--includes two decks of casino-quality playing cards, five dice, and 500 clay chips that feature team-specific logos from various NBA, NHL, and all 30 Major League Baseball clubs. It all comes packaged in a rounded aluminum tournament case, making it easy for those who want to take their game on the road.

With modern-day and retro uniform jerseys being all the rage, Upper Deck delivers a cute and affordable alternative with its Mini Jersey Collection ($6.99 per pack), which features a replica mini MLB or NFL jersey in every pack of trading cards. Sports fans now can collect wool jerseys of legendary baseball players (Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, and Ted Williams, to name a few) and perhaps an autographed mini jersey of a heralded veteran NFL or MLB player. Each set (that's 70 cards) consists of approximately 30 different players' home and away jerseys, including contemporary football stars like Peyton Manning, Julius Jones, Michael Vick, and Donavan McNab.

For further information and details on these and other products, visit www.upperdeck.com.

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