Place your chips on trading cards.

• Position: What's New?

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...