Collecting authentic Sports Memorabilia pays off

Acquiring sports collectibles from best teams and renown athletes is a unique hobby that will pay you back with huge dividends later on. Taking up a collecting authentic sports memorabilia really pays off.

Signed jerseys, autographed posters, a shoe worn by a famous athlete with his signature, a baseball thrown by a legendary player, even a commemorative t-shirt or pennant, these things have tremendous monetary value simply because they have been immortalized by their famous owners, a historic sports moment, or a legendary place.

Rabid sports memorabilia collectors search for their treasures from all places. They travel, they join collectors groups, they seek out fellow collectors to buy their collections, or they order online. 

Now collecting authentic sports memorabilia just got easier for Pinoy aficionados. The one and only trustworthy authorized internet retailer of authenticated signed sports memorabilia is now in the Philippines. They are Hall of Fame Authentics or HOFA.

Through this online-based provider, fans of different sports can get their much-coveted signed memorabilia from basketball, boxing, baseball, football, hockey, golf, and soccer athletes around the globe. A vast array of items that range from autographed and even game-worn uniforms, caps, jackets, shoes, posters, balls, among others are just a click away. Launched in 2018, HOFA has over 5,000 choices of 100% authenticated signed items from various athletes –supplied by world-renowned brands like Upper Deck, Panini, and Fanatics.

How do you get started in this special and unique hobby? HOFA owner and managing partner Ron Uy offers a 101:

Sports memorabilia collecting does not always have to be about GOATs like Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Tom Brady, Kobe Bryant or Floyd Mayweather. Seasoned collectors do go for the legends, all-stars and superstars, but one can start with promising rookies or role players as well and end up with a lucrative haul too. HOFA has items that fit varying budgets with goods coming from a wide range of athletes – from rookies to veterans, and even retired superstars. To start, here are some steps fans may want to consider and think about before diving all in. 

 1. Focus on the sport you love – Pick the sport that you feel a very strong connection to. Maybe your Dad taught you to love the game when you were little. Maybe you fell in love with it on your own. Twenty or thirty years later, you still have that same love and passion for the sport. Buy memorabilia items based on that sport. 

 2. Celebrate your favorite team –Families often have favorite teams. Wave your family banner high by going for a team item. Or maybe there’s a team you admire through and through and appreciate everything about it. Look for jerseys, t-shirts, signed posters or shoes that will show your loyalty to your favorite team. 

 3. Honor your favorite player – There will always be sports fans who are going to be loyal to certain athletes through the highs and lows of their careers. Take LeBron James. He has played for three different NBA teams but his fans from around the world support him wherever he goes to play. Owning a thing or two signed by your idol, whoever he or she is, will be a treasure for all time. 

 4. Search for the particular item that you like on the site – Not all jerseys, caps, t-shirts or posters are the same. Pick out the one that suits your taste or really speaks to you. Pay attention to the color, consider the design. Most important, look at the price. Do the necessary pros and cons exercise. Then make your decision. 

 5. Follow the steps. Now that you’ve made your decision on hofa.ph, pick the memorabilia you want to own and add to cart. Provide your details and check out. You will get a confirmation email that will provide further instructions. You may also opt to direct message HOFA on Facebook and Instagram to ask if the product you want is available even before you purchase it. All HOFA items are inclusive of 12% VAT and are available through different options such as credit card, PayPal, installment, and even layaway plans. Product arrives between 2 to 4 weeks. 

 6. Enjoy! – Finally the long-awaited signed ball, or boxing glove, or baseball cap has arrived. It comes in a secure glass case that you can put on display and admire every day. Recall that golden moment when your favorite team or athlete made history. Michael Jordan’s signed basketball? Wayne Gretsky’s hockey helmet? Tom Brady’s football shirt? Tiger Woods’ golf shoes? It’s yours now.

The best part about starting your memorabilia collection through an online store like hofa.ph is that you can make your sports dreams come true without even leaving home. 

 Go to hofa.ph or facebook.com/hofa.ph and Instagram @hofa.ph for more information about authentic sports memorabilia.

SQREEM AI tracking solution that helps users monitor the COVID-19 situation by Finding Hospital Beds and Ventilators

After tracing a million steps for contact tracing last year, Singapore-based AI solutions firm SQREEM Technologies has launched a new COVID-19 tracking tool to aid in the battle against the virus – a real time system that tracks live COVID-19 data, including available hospital beds and ventilators by zip code.

Named “Data Natin,” meaning our data in Tagalog, the AI-powered tool is now being used in the Philippines, where COVID-19 cases have reached an all-time high. The country currently has one of the highest numbers of cases in Southeast Asia.

Named as one of Asia’s fastest-growing companies by the Financial Times, for two years running, SQREEM is the world’s largest “behavioural pattern data aggregator” that collects, analyses, and creates a database of open data on the Internet using its own Artificial Intelligence technology. The Singapore-based tech company provides data analysis services to more than 100 companies and government agencies across various industries.

After redesigning, recoding and further developing their technology to augment government contact tracing efforts worldwide last year, the same AI system has now been re-adapted to track available hospital beds and ventilators in real time, as well as to provide an updated rundown of cases in a given geographical location. SQREEM invested USD$500,000 in time and resources to create the tracker which will help doctors and patients in their crucial race against time – especially in urban hotspots where there may not be sufficient hospital beds for patients.

“We recognised that the Philippines was doing stellar work making data around incidences of COVID available with data points such as the availability of beds and ventilators being accessible to the public, but it was unstructured”, Ian Chapman-Banks, CEO and co-founder of SQREEM, explains. “Learning from our experience in the contact tracing world, the goal was to produce updated and meaningful data, organised by live tracking dashboards so that people can get to the resources they need more efficiently. For healthcare providers, this means a more equitable distribution of patients resulting in less burden for certain clinics and hospitals. This is part of our initiative to lend support to countries as we had done in the past.”

With SQREEM’s expertise in artificial intelligence systems and machine learning, the team leveraged its AI capabilities to feed on unstructured information, access its insights, and extract relevant information in a short span of time. As Ian adds, “We were able to leverage our capabilities in taking and making massive datasets meaningful and relevant to people. So health care practitioners as well as patients and their families can assess in real time which hospitals are available. We can help them to further understand the COVID-19 situation in their immediate location – whether it's within a zip code or a small geographic area – so they can exercise more caution whenever they go out.” Using artificial intelligence to make sense of government data SQREEM’s Data Natin utilises publicly available data to track and showcase information in real time. From the dashboard, users can monitor the spread of infection in their area according to age, level of severity, city, or neighbourhood. Viewers can also track hospitals’ capacity within their locale and in nearby areas – learning which hospitals have available COVID or ICU beds and ventilators at a glance. This allows users to make informed and timely decisions that can improve a patient’s chances of recovery.

Applying their solution to the Philippine setting, the SQREEM CEO elaborates, “We've taken a lot of disparate and unstructured data from all over the Philippines and organised it in one central place. The platform is updated every 24 hours, every time new data is released.”

According to Ian, aside from helping doctors and patients locate much-needed hospital beds and ventilators, the platform can be leveraged for more informed government policy-making and community planning. “When you're seeing trends of infections and how it's spreading, the government can use this as a tool as a knowledge base to make decisions and policies. And so you could do logistics planning because you know a surge is coming. Local communities can also use this as a tool so they can act on their own and take steps to control the spread within their own neighbourhood.”

About SQREEM

SQREEM is the world's largest "behavioural pattern data aggregator" that collects, analyses, and creates a database of open data on the Internet using its own AI technology. Based on this technology, we provide data analysis and programmatic targeting services to more than 100 companies and government agencies across various industries. SQREEM has also been identified as one of Asia’s fastest-growing companies by the Financial Times for two years running.