Demand for Cavs championship bobbleheads has been ‘overwhelming’

Demand for Cavs championship bobbleheads has been ‘overwhelming’ By KEVIN KLEPS

The demand for Cavs championship memorabilia is extending to the bobblehead industry.

Shortly after the Cavs completed their historic comeback in the NBA Finals, the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum introduced a collection of championship bobbleheads.

The bobbleheads start at $35, $40 or $50, depending on the model, and there are LeBron James and Kyrie Irving bobbleheads that stand 3 feet and are priced at $850.

The response to the collection has been “overwhelming,” said Phil Sklar, the co-founder and CEO of the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame. He added that the bobbleheads that were released after Game 7 sold more than any previous championship series bobblehead — which dates back to the early 2000s.

Tuesday morning, the Bobblehead Hall of Fame unveiled a few more Cavs bobbleheads. The group is as follows:

• The Cavs’ mascots — Sir CC and Moondog — holding the Larry O’Brien Trophy and wearing the gray championship T-shirts you’ve seen all over Northeast Ohio. Sklar says this is Sir CC’s first bobblehead, and it was “requested by a lot of people.” There are only 216 (of course) available bobbleheads for each model.

• A miniature set of three bobbleheads featuring J.R. Smith, Tristan Thompson and Richard Jefferson. This is the second set of three that has been offered. The first — of James, Irving and Kevin Love — was very popular, Sklar said.

• A bobblehead of LeBron holding a championship newspaper, with a net around his neck, and figurines of Irving and James on bases that are modeled after championship-edition newspapers.

Sklar said customers who ordered the previous Cavs championship bobbleheads received an email with a code that can be used for free shipping on the new versions. There are still a “very limited” amount of the original Cavs bobbleheads available.

The bobbleheads are officially licensed by the NBA, the Players Association and the Cavs. They are manufactured by Forever Collectibles, which Sklar said is licensed to create championship bobbleheads for the NBA, NFL, MLB and NHL.
And if you’re wondering why each image has an actual picture of the players’ faces, it’s because the Cavs bobbleheads are still in production and the images “haven’t been approved for public release yet,” Sklar said.
The bobbleheads are expected to ship by November — just in time for the holidays.

About the Bobblehead Hall of Fame …

The idea for the Bobblehead Hall of Fame started in 2002, when Brad Novak, the other co-founder, worked for the Rockford River Hawks, a former independent baseball team in the Frontier League.

Since 2014, the duo has been working on debuting a physical space for the Bobblehead Hall of Fame in Milwaukee. (You can take a 360-degree tour of the proposed exhibit here.)

Sklar said they’re hoping to open the bobblehead hall by the end of the year, “but the site selection has taken longer than anticipated.”

Earlier this year, the Bobblehead Hall of Fame had a three-month preview exhibit at a gallery in downtown Milwaukee.

Sklar says it was the “largest public display of bobbleheads ever assembled.”

Indians are a hit in prime time

A couple more Indians ratings nuggets:

As of Aug. 7, Tribe games on SportsTime Ohio were the top-rated program in prime time on 33 of 61 occasions. The 61 prime-time games in that span averaged a 6.45 rating in the Cleveland designated market.
Last week, we wrote that the Indians were on pace to produce their highest STO ratings since 2007. Well, it turns out that team, which came within a victory of the franchise’s first World Series trip since 1997, produced a ratings norm of 5.8.
That means this year’s club, which had a ratings average of 6.1 as of Aug. 9, could top the 2011 team (6.2) for the best Indians ratings in at least the last decade.
From 2007-15, the Tribe ratings on STO were, starting with 2007: 5.8, 3.8, 2.7, 3.0, 6.2, 3.8, 5.5, 6.1 and 3.9.
The team’s 6.1 norm in 2014 ranked fifth in MLB.
The 2016 club, in addition to likely being the first Indians team to play more than one playoff game in nine years, should beat that number.