Congrats to memorabilia website Insider Sports Deals for the baldest display of opportunism in recent memory with this pairing of Andy Marte and Yordano Ventura autographed baseballs, marked down in price and marketed as the deal of the day.


It’s been three days since Marte and Ventura died in separate car crashes in the Dominican Republic.

Insider Sports Deals alerted email subscribers this morning, offering the pair for $98.88. At 12:24 p.m. EST there were still 12 remaining. By 1 p.m. EST, a little more than an hour after the email had out, the deal had sold out.


Eliminating any possibility that it is simply a coincidence that Insider Sports Deals would have had a Marte/Ventura combination and slated it to be its deal of the day planned prior to their deaths, the product description notes their deaths. It also notes that Ventura’s autographs “have slightly bled.”

The word that comes to mind for this is: gross. It’s a business decision, yes, and this is how the collectible market works, but that doesn’t make it any less gross. Gross, gross, gross.

H/t Kurt