Wikipedia to Trading Cards to eBay

At the beginning of every month, in preparation for the monthly post on Top eBay Chess Items by Price (March 2010), I prepare a short list of top items sold in the previous month. The items on the short list often repeat previous posts in the series. For example, this month I had on the short list (listed from least expensive to most expensive):-

• A chess watch, similar to the watch shown in Skeleton, Marriage, Chess Watch (October 2016).
• A bronze of cats playing chess, reminiscent of Cold Painted Cats (December 2022).
• A dollhouse, the third such post after Another Dollhouse Chess Table (October 2016).

At the top and bottom of that list I could have added a couple of paintings by Ukrainian artists. Normally I like artwork as the basis for an eBay post, but neither of the paintings inspired me.

Instead of those choices I picked an item titled, '2023 The Chess 16 cards lot'. It sold for US $850.00 'Buy It Now', along with the mentions 'Other people bought this. [one] has already sold' and 'Condition: Used'. Only the first card in the series, pictured below, was shown in the auction.

The description of the auction said,

List of cards:
#2 Emanuel Lasker
#3 Jose Raul Capablanca
[...]
#12 Anatoly Karpov
#13 Garry Kasparov

These were followed by #14 through #17: Kramnik, Anand, Carlsen, and Ding Liren. Any casual fan of chess history will recognize the World Champions, where the post-Kasparov names are those generally accepted by public opinion (apologies to Alexander Khalifman and the other FIDE Champions who aren't on the list).

Where's '#1 Wilhelm Steinitz', who is shown on the card? Although the title of the auction says, '16 cards', '#17 Ding Liren' appears to have been added afterwards, since his name was listed using a different font. I bet that the set includes '17 cards'.

The back of the Steinitz card says, '(c) 2023 The History of Chess. All rights reserved'. The text of the card starts,

Wilhelm Steinitz was a Bohemian-Austrian and, later, American chess player. From 1886 to 1894, he was the first World Chess Champion.

It doesn't take much sleuth work to discover that the text on the card is copied verbatim from the Wikipedia page Wilhelm Steinitz (wikipedia.org). The image on the front of the card is also the same as Steinitz's likeness on the Wikipedia page.

It turns out that all of the individual cards in the card set are available from the eBay seller's store. Some of the cards have the same color as the featured Steinitz card; these each sell for '$49.00 Buy It Now + $29.00 shipping from United States'. Other cards are colored in gray; these sell for '$99.00 Buy It Now + $29.00 [etc. etc.]'. There are a couple of other Karpov cards, both with 'RC Rookie Chess RARE' in their titles, selling for $499.00 each plus shipping. I've seen both cards on eBay, selling for a small percentage of that price. It's hard to imagine that anyone would be gullible enough to pay that sort of money for those cards, but who knows?