Upside down question

I'm always intrigued when I get a comment on a post that's six months old. Reader justjennie71 left a comment on my conspiracy theory post about the 2008 Topps Updates and Highlights inverted photo errors:

I'm a new collector, just started a few months ago. I bought a pack of the U&H's at Fred Meyer and one of the upside down Jay Bruce Rookie Cards (UH100) was in the pack. How do you know what the value is on one of these?

tl;dr version for anyone wou doesn't wan the Econ 101 lesson: About 30 bucks give or take a Hamilton or two most likely. Read on if you want to know how I came up with this number.

The first place I go to check is here. Good 'ol eBay. The best place to find out the value of something is to see what other people are actually paying for it. Do a search for the card and see what the prices are on the cards. Even better is to check the completed auction listings to see what the final auction price were for the cards. Here's an example of completed listings for "Ken Griffey Jr. Rookie Card". You have to have an eBay account to see these listings but if you do, you'll see that a Junior rookie sold anywhere from $50 for an Upper Deck rookie to sixteen cents for a Fleer rookie. In this case we have a slight problem, because I couldn't find a single Jay Bruce inverted error card for sale.

So now what do we do? There were two other inverted short print variations in the set, of Kosuke Fukudome and Evan Longoria. I couldn't find a Fukudome, but I did find a Longoria with a buy it now price of $60. This is a good baseline for the value of a short print variation card but still isn't exactly the same. Bruce and Longoria aren't the same player and have different collecting bases. Ok, eBay can't help, so let's try some other card selling sites. A Google shopping search also came up empty. Sportlots also had no Bruce variation offered for sale. Finally Naxcom/Sportsbuy gives us a result. If you look under the #21 best selling item on that page, you'll see a sale price of $40 or best offer for the Bruce variation. Unfortunately, if you click on the auction, it is no longer listed. So there's a start, the Bruce that you have at one time was being offered for $40, and a similar variation of a different player is on sale for $60. So now what? Where do we go from here?

Check a price guide like Tuff Stuff or, ahem, Beckett.


(brief pause to let the howling subside)


Price guides are just that. A guide to the approximate value of a collectible. The actual value is what someone will actually pay you for the card. A friend of mine back in my college days one told me that my entire card collection was worthless because I'd never ever actually sell any of the cards. I was probably showing off the prices of them in my Beckett at the time. Ultimately, he was right, I've sold off very few cards and the ones I was bragging about in the early '90s sure as hell don't have the same number in the price guide they used to have. So remember it's a guide, not an absolute value. You can see real life examples of this in this post.

So, back to Bruce. I hit the Wally World magazine rack this morning and checked the value of your Bruce in the most recent Beckett Baseball, the one with Griffey on the cover. According to the guise the price ranges from LO $20, to HI $50 for the Bruce. Now, there's a lot of confusion about what LO and HI means. Some say HI is the price you would pay at a shop and LO is the price you would get if you sold the card to a shop. Others see it as the difference between a mint copy and a not-so-mint copy. Far too many see the HI price as an Edict from The Lord on the exact value of the card that must be upheld at all costs lest you fall into Sin. These ideas are all incorrect.

Basically what those numbers mean is that is the approximate price people were willing to pay for that card a month or two ago. I think at one time there was purportedly some sort of complicated formula where Beckett polled hobby shops and auctions and the like and put the prices into a computer and after some gyrating and billowing smoke, the final numbers would pop out. I don't know exactly how they do it today, but the fact of the matter is that Beckett is trusted by enough collectors to make whatever numbers end up printed on that page actually mean something in the hobby. If you were to try to sell or buy the card it is entirely reasonable that the price would fall into that $20-$50 range.

However, there are still a lot of economic factors to consider. The set has been out for 6 months so a lot of the people who desperately wanted that card have already gotten it and moved on to other pursuits. Jay Bruce is playing well right now, so collectors might be more interested in the card. The economy is a wreck so many people who could at one time blow a lot of dough on a card like thins might be putting that money towards trying to pay the mortgage. There are very few of the cards actually for sale, so if there are two collectors out there who desperately want the card a single auction listing might end up causing a bidding war. This is all just basic economics, supply and demand. Since that magazine was printed at least a month ago, economic conditions may have changed so you can't use that price as an absolute value, but it is a good starting point.

Say you want to sell the card on eBay. The guide can help you decide how to sell it. If you had no idea what it was worth, just that it was rare, and listed it at $1000, you'd likely get laughed off the internet and be out of a large listing fee when no one bought the card. Knowing the price guide range, you could list it at a $50 buy it now which is more reasonable. It could be snapped up immediately, get a lowball best offer bid or be ignored completely at that price. If you went the pure auction route and opened the bidding at 99 cents you'd have a shot at selling it for more than expected while risking that it will go for less than you wanted. The card could go for the 99 cent opening bid (it's doubtful it would go without any bids at all) or a sniper war could erupt and it could sell for $100 or more. It all depends on the luck of the draw and who is willing to bid on the card. If one guy bids $100 to open up the bids and he is the only one to bid on the card, then the card may be worth $100 to him, but it's selling for 99 cents because no one else valued it at all. That's why seeing the value as a flexible price range is so important. If 100 Bruce variations were auctioned in the space of a month and the average price of the sales was $30, there are still going to be outliers like the $100 bidding war and the 99 cent bargain. That doesn't mean that the card is worth $30, or $100, or 99 cents. It means that it's worth about thirty bucks give or take a few bucks up or down depending on who is buying at that particular moment.

So the value on that card is most likely somewhere in between 20 and 50 bucks but there's no guarantee you can sell it for that price. At any rate, it's a nice pull of a good player (even though the variation is quite stupid in my opinion) and you picked it up in a retail pack from Fred Meyer. Good luck with the collecting, I hope this answered your question.

Value

I've been collecting cards since 1981. That's a lot of years of collecting. That's more years than I'd really like to think about. In that time the hobby has had quite a few major shifts in ideas about the value of cards. Ten years before I collected, baseball cards were something children played with, forgot about when they became teens and got thrown out by mom when the kid left the house. When I started collecting, price guides were just beginning to be taken seriously and two new manufacturers popped up on the scene after a long court battle. Baseball cards began to be actually worth something. Exactly what they are worth has swung wildly in they years since then. Before I get into what cards might be worth something in 10 years, let me show off some of the cards I've picked up since 1981 and look at how they are valued today.

When I started collecting I got cards pretty much exclusively from Matthews supermarket, a little mom & pop grocery store my grandparents went to because they had an excellent butcher. Soon I was picking up cards at flea markets, antique stores and finally a card shop. The concept of 'rookie cards' was just starting to take hold, stars were really the big thing. I didn't have the money to get big stars though, so I went for quantity rather than quality. I'd buy these bricks of 50-100 cards from Atlanta Sports cards of older stuff from the '60s and '70s. I got a lot of '76 cards for some reason even though they weren't really my favorites when I come to think of it. I guess nobody else liked 'em either, that's why they were so cheap! This Eck rookie card here came in one of those bricks. Remember, this was back when he was a Cub, not an A. He was a legit common. The card isn't a common any more, but it's not going to pay off my bills either. It's a nice card to have though and I'm also happy with all those other commons I got instead of buying one big star card.

Once rookie cards got hot, they got really hot. Crazy hot. The genius behind dealers pushing rookie cards as inherently more valuable than boring old star cards is that they could not only boost the value of their older rookie cards, but they had a whole batch of new ones to hype every year! The old rookie cards were set, you knew that the 1969 Reggie Jackson rookie was going to sell for more than that '69 Andy Messersmith. The new ones had no preconceptions at all about them! You could sell them ALL as if they were the next Hall of Famer, and sell them they did. Back in 1986, Andres Thomas was a hot shortstop prospect for the Braves. Apparently we hadn't learned our lessons with Brad Komminsk and Craig McMurtry. I was a Braves fan though so I wanted a card of the new shortstop. Here was the problem: people started looking as cards as an investment. So not only could the rookie card of that prospect one day make you rich, if you bought a whole bunch of them at once you could become REALLY rich! So this is how I ended up buying not one Andres Thomas Fleer Update rookie card at an artificially inflated price but ten of them. The shop wouldn't sell me just one. I was able to flip the other nine after Andres' Hall of Fame induction though and I used the money to buy a villa in the Alps.

The weird thing about the '80s is while all these segments of collecting were being horrifically over hyped, there were others that were completely ignored. Baseball cards would make you rich. Football cards were for serious collectors who wanted to keep in game shape over the offseason. ET and Michael Jackson cards were like the gateway drug to lure little children into the hobby so they could one day become serious investors in baseball cards. Basketball cards? Well, those were obviously worthless. I mean, who the hell collects basketball cards. Yeah, Magic and Bird and whatnot and the slam dunk contest was cool, but no one would really want to collect basketball cards. Nobody's even made them in 5 or 6 years. Nah, they're worthless. Don't waste your money on those. You see, here's the thing about investing. Buy low, sell high. In 1987 basketball cards were literally worthless. Take this card up here, I bought it in a pack for 35 cents. That's about 2 cents for the card. In 1987, the conventional wisdom was that I vastly overpaid.

Around 1988-89 boring old base products just weren't satisfying anyone anymore. Collectors wanted new and interesting stuff for their investment portfolio. In '88 Score came out with a seriously high end set. Better card stock, color on both sides of the card, a picture on the back, crazy stuff. Upper Deck upped the ante in 1989 with holograms and space age card stock and a big ol' price tag. That's super premium, baby! I didn't fall for that nonsense. A dollar twenty-five a pack? You must be crazy! I can get three packs of Topps for that. Absurd. I plunked down a buck a pack for Topps Big though. Now that was going to be valuable! It's the same size as the original Topps cards from the '50s and those are valuable! Upper Deck, that's a flash in the pan. Total junk. No one will buy cards for $1.25 a pack.

Well, in the five years from 1989 to 1993, things went a little, how should I put it... higglety pigglety? Packs costing a dollar became the norm. The good packs cost three. Or five. Or more. But they had cards that were shiny in them. Insert cards. Not boring ol' base cards but ones that are rare. Like this Frank Thomas worship insert set from 1993 Leaf. Big Hurt was one of my favorite players back in '93 and I ended up trading something very good for a big pile of Leaf inserts. I mean really good. As in, if I told you what I traded someone would literally smack me. They'd get in their car, drive to my house, ask if I was the Dave Campbell who traded X for a bunch of 1993 Leaf inserts cards and when I said yes they would just smack the hell out of me. And guess what? At the time I was positive that I had just totally ripped off that dude. It's freaking Frank Thomas, man!

So the Frank Thomas inserts didn't quite hold their value. They were a casualty of the '90s insert Arms Race. Each year the manufacturers had to top themselves and things got pretty wacky. Pretty soon a glossy set of an MVP with a big holofoil stamp on them was pretty dang boring, to tell the truth. There were base sets that looked like that! This Albert Belle card here was the very first numbered insert I ever pulled from a pack. I got it from a card shop in Tucker, GA. The owner had been collecting for years and was completely jaded by the industry by this point. He'd pretty much openly mock his customers for some of the crap they'd buy, but he'd at least do it with a friendly wink. I pulled this in front of him and even he was impressed. This was numbered 20/2500 and that stamp on the bottom left corner? Gold leaf. He didn't normally buy cards from customers, but he offered me a sale or trade right there on the spot. He didn't like Albert Belle, but he wanted a numbered card like that to show off at the store. I think the card booked for about $60 or so. I turned him down. It was my first numbered card.

Speaking of firsts, this is my first jersey card. I got it at the Target in Athens, GA when I was in college. I was big into hockey at the time due to the EA video games. Man I played a lot of EA hockey in college. I was looking over the hockey cards in the card aisle and I found a pack of Upper Deck that was lumpy. What the heck is up with a lumpy pack of cards? I figured it was one of those slivers of the stuff that gets trimmed off the edges of the card that ends up sneaking into a pack every so often and got it and a few other packs of UD hockey. Later I opened the pack. A little later after that I regained consciousness. Mark friggin' Messier! There's a piece of his damn jersey on this card!! In hockey a jersey is referred to as a sweater, but Upper Deck didn't care. A couple of years after I pulled it I was at a shop that sold hockey cards at the Venture outlet mall off of Steve Reynolds in Gwinnett. I got to talking with the owner and he know of a lady who was absolutely insane over Messier and wanted to see if she would buy it. I said sure I'll sell it, but I want full book. It was $160 back then. She wouldn't pay full book but offered $100. I liked the card and I didn't really need the money so I held onto it. I have no idea what it books for now, but it's still a freaking sweet card.

After Upper Deck started inserting game used stuff in cards, normal inserts were doomed and the memorabilia craze kicked in. Before I get into that, I'm going to take a quick detour into graded cards. Now, the thing with graded cards is it's all about added value. Yeah, the card is good on it's own, but when you get it graded, there's a host of things that make the card even better. For one, you're having a certified professional card expert authenticate the card, and assign it an industry standard condition grade. There's no eyeballing the card, there's no fudging the condition to make the card look better than it is, that card is now that assigned grade period. No more guesswork. Also, it is now encased in a hard plastic shell that protects the card and keeps it away from damaging dust, grease and clumsy dings. Each card is numbered and placed in a database so you can see how your card compares to other cards that were graded. You could potentially have the only one in existence with a certain grade! Also you can register your collection and compare it with others to see who has the highest ranking! The card is now authenticated, protected, graded, serial numbered, cataloged, and given added value all for a nominal fee. How could having a valuable card graded possibly go wrong?

Once manufacturers figured out that people loved jersey cards, they started embedding whatever they could into cardboard. Some things were a big hit, like those multicolored patches that manufacturers had left over from the jerseys they had already cut up. Some things like game used base cards didn't go over quite as well. Short of a jock strap though, if it was used in a game, they tried to put it on a card. This card here I picked up from a Yahoo! auction back in 2000-2001. Jamal was my favorite Dirty Bird (sadly he got a bit too dirty recently) and when I saw this card with a piece of a ball with stitching holes and part of the W in Wilson on it I went nuts. Not only did I spend the second highest amount I had ever paid for a card when I won this auction, the seller was located in the Philippines of all places and I risked sending a money order overseas to the guy as payment. Risk is the operative word, because after I received the card I started getting e-mails from other people who won his auctions asking if I knew how to contact the guy. He sort of fell off the face of the earth right after I got my card. So what is a nine year old card from a low-level set of a retired running back who played for a second rate NFL franchise with a chunk of a football glued to it worth? I dunno, you tell me...

Now when I said the card companies started putting anything on a card, I did mean anything. Those celebrity hair cards and dino fossil cards and postage stamp cards didn't just magically appear last year. They've been putting crazy stuff on and in cards for years. I used to collect coins and I do collect cards, so this set here was perfect! Too bad the cards were insanely expensive back when they first came out. Have you noticed a trend here? How cards get a whole lot of hype and are really expensive when they are first released? I wanted the cards with the silver dimes and quarters and stuff (heck I would have loved a nickel) but all I could scrounge up with was this McCovey with a 1959 penny. It's not even a wheat cent. I wonder what those cards go for now...

Now don't think that while all this insert madness was going on, rookie cards went out of vogue, oh no. People still loved the rookies, it's just that they didn't quite have that same oomph they used to have. Short printing to the rescue! Here's how to make a good rookie card. Wait until the very end of the year. Even after the next year's sets start hitting the market. Now figure out all the rookies that haven't had a card in that year's set. Put out an end of the year product with all those rookies in it. That way your card is not only his first but the only card of that player in any of the sets from that year. Bonus points if the player has a rookie card in the next year's base set that got released before your end of year set. Now, just to make absolutely sure that your product gets the hype, short print the only rookie card that player will ever have to 1000 copies. That's the kid's only rookie card so the people have to have it and they have to buy that product to get it. Instant money! As long as the player pans out at least. Now do you see why the Rookie Card rules came about?

Nowadays though it's all about the 'graph. Certified autograph cards used to be the domain of the superstars in the beginning. Then minor league autographs started showing up, then entire sets of autographed cards. When Albert Pujols' Bowman Chrome auto hit, rookie cards became passe. Now it's the autographed rookie that's the good one! Besides, rookies don't charge as much to sign those cards and sticker sheets. Since we're already combining the rookie value with the autographed value, why not kick it up a notch and mix in an insert too. Let's superfract that rookie auto. I prefer the more traditional on card sig though. And besides, Chuckles went 11-4 his rookie year so he's got a bright future ahead of him.

So here we are in 2009. Some of those cards from 10, 20, 30 years ago have increased in value. Some have held. Most have fallen. A lot. The problem with predicting what will be good in 2019 is that pretty much everything today is overproduced - except the stuff that's artificially scarce - and most of the products that come out this year will be one-upped next year. So, how do you go about figuring out the exact thing to BUY, and then to HOLD with all this insanity going on. I'm not exactly certain which specific products, players or individual cards will have the largest increase in value in ten years, but I think I have a pretty good formula to help you determine which ones would be the best bets. Here it is:

Step 1: Find something you LIKE.

Step 2: Determine what you would be WILLING to pay for the card.

Step 3: Purchase the card at a FAIR price that is within your budget.

Step 4: Once in hand, EXAMINE the card and DETERMINE if you actually do like it or not.

Step 5: If you really do like the card, HOLD.

Pretty much no matter what you purchase right now, you'll probably do a lot better off in ten years investing in just about anything else. Follow those five steps though, and you'll at least have a collection that is valuable to you.

I think I'm going to hold onto this card that I bought for 6 bucks:

It's shiny!!!

My links post got derailed by economics

I was putting to gether my links post for this week when I saw this post from Free Andy Laroche comparing the book values of a big pull from Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects and Donruss Threads. The BV of a Chrome auto refractor of Mets minor leaguer Ike Davis was $100 greater than a jersey card of Eddie Mathews. This seems ridiculous at first glance, but the rules of supply and demand makes some sense of this.

There are a ton of Eddie Mathews cards out there and a decent amount of relic cards. Ike has only has a few cards peppered throughout the usual Draft Pick sets so far. So the supply of Mathews cards is a lot higher than of Ike Davis cards.

Now for the demand. Bowman Chrome is a popular, established product. People specifically collect it. There are also prospectors and autograph hounds out there adding to the customer base of the Ike card. Donruss Threads is a brand new product and a lot of its potential customer base may be turned off since it's not licensed.

There are definitely more people collecting Mathews than Davis, but there are also a lot more options for them to purchase. This card is kind of ugly to boot. The design is a little sketchy, there's no Braves logo and the picture of Eddie looks like it was taken at an Old-Timer's banquet. Unless you are specifically collecting Donruss Threads relics or every Eddie Mathews relic ever made there are a lot better options for Mathews collectors who want a relic. For about the same price you can pick up a Topps or Upper Deck licensed card with the braves logo on it that's a little more visually attractive. So: good card, great player, but the smaller number of potential customers and the large size of cards competing for those collectors' dollars makes the price go down.

Ok, so people specifically collecting Ike Davis cards (there is bound to be someone out there) have this card and maybe another draft pick auto card to choose from. Being a colored refractor parallel, it's one of the most attractive examples of his card. Now put on top of the Davis collectors the ones who collect refractors and autos and prospects and just plain shiny cards that look cool and you have a large group of collectors all after the same card. Supply is low, demand is high, price is very high due to the demand and scarcity.

NOW FAST FORWARD FIVE YEARS:

Eddie Mathews is still a Hall of Famer. There are still a lot of Mathews cards and collectors out there. Probably even more and newer and shiner cards to choose from. More supply, probably stable demand, book value stays the same or drops slightly.

Ike Davis whether he pans out or not is no longer a prospect. Prospectors are out of the collector pool, demand goes down.

If Ike Davis becomes an MVP or All Star, then his collector pool goes way up, increasing demand. If he simply makes the majors, he'll have some following but not much. If he doesn't make it, then his collector base shrinks to a group including hard core Mets fans and his mom. Demand drops precipitously.

There have been more and newer cards produced of Ike, more supply. Possibly more certified autographed cards, more supply. Autograph hounds have had time to pester him at Spring Training, minor league games and TTM. More supply.

This is still his first card, so rookie card collectors are still in the game. People who like shiny cards still like the shiny, but there have been five more years of shiny produced. More supply. So basically, unless Ike becomes a superstar we're looking at a huge drop in demand and possibly a large increase in supply. Guess what that does to the book value?

So let's compare the typical auction for this Ike Davis card now and five years from now.

Now: Brand new product, very low supply, shiny happy card, BowChro Autograph. People bidding on it include: Ike Davis fans, Mets fans, Prospectors, BowChro set chasers, Autograph hounds, People mesmerized by the shiny, Ike's mom. Lots of bids, high final value.

Five years from now, Ike's taken over for Delgado and out produced him: 1st year card, very low supply, shiny happy card of an all-star. People bidding on it include: Ike Davis fans, Mets fans, New York fans, fans who saw him in person and liked him from then on, BowChro set chasers, Autograph hounds, Star collectors, People mesmerized by star shiny, Ike's mom, Ike's many girlfriends. Tons of bids, high final value.

Five years from now, Ike's working at a car wash: Old product, very low supply, low numbered auto of a guy who vacuumed your interior: People bidding on it include: Super hard core Mets fans, people mesmerized by old shiny, Ike's mom. Very few bids, low final value.

So basically, it makes sense right now that the book value of Ike is 6 times the Mathews. It's just simple economics. Now, book value is just a guide to what people in the real world will actually pay for something. It doesn't mean that Ike Davis' card is 6 times better than that Eddie Mathews jersey. In five years the roles will likely be reversed anyway. Now would anyone actually pay $120 dollars for an Ike Davis BowChro refractor? Who knows... Check the real time sales and find out. In my experience you're going to see cards sell for well under high book price far more often than not unless demand spikes for that card for some reason or another. In any case, it's better to ignore the price guide and go after what you like at a price you're willing to pay. My advice to Free Andy Laroche is to collect what he likes and if Ike Davis ain't it, then sell high, buy low and strike while the iron is hot.