It's a window to a parallel world of card-collecting, one in which the "PSA grade" rules all, and where ungraded cards that I can typically find for a couple of bucks online - on SportLots, COMC etc. - change hands for $30, $50, $75 due to their current desirability and that all-important grade. It's also a great window into who matters in March 2021. As far as baseball is concerned, the typical vintage names are pretty standard: Mays, Mantle, Pete Rose, Joe Dimaggio, Bob Gibson and so on.
It's also fun to see who's valued from our current crop of players. The active guys I collect - Pablo Sandoval, Max Fried - not at all. Just Jo Adell and Shohei Otani; and of course Mike Trout cards are all over this catalog, but I don't really collect that guy out of a need to keep both my sanity and my credit rating intact.
Was kind of surprised to see a few guys have their rare cards called out repeatedly. Paul Goldschmidt? Goldy is one of my favorites. I did not know he'd graduated to that level in the card world. Rhys Hoskins. Andrew Benintendi. Miguel Andujar. I'm going to admit that I don't even know who that last guy is.
Anyway, I'm not up for paying $19.95 for a PSA 7 card that I can get for $2.50 otherwise and that's probably in pretty good shape, but I had a good time thumbing through this catalog all the same.
Call 'em up if you want one sent to you as well!
Interesting. I’ve never been into graded cards and never really cared the condition on cards. The older ones can be had for pennies on the dollar if the condition isn’t desirable, and it allows me to have special and iconic cards in my collection that wouldn’t ever be there if they were mint. I remember a post Junior Junkie did once basically said that anything that you have that is less than an 8 isn’t even worth the time getting graded as you wouldn’t get much more than the price of an ungraded card or something like that. I guess to each their own with grading.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised to see Benintendi, Goldschmidt, Hoskins, and Andujar on that popular list. The first 3 are good players, and you can almost argue for Hoskins and Goldy, but I would almost think Arenado would have more valuable cards as far as current Cardinals, Harper for the Phillies, and Bobby Witt for KC. I thought either Andujar or Urshella was competing for a job in NY and even if he wasn’t that Andujar was hoping to have a bounce back year and wasn’t justifiable of high value cards. I guess that shows you how much I know about the current market. Glad that your guy Adell is doing well.
I'm a bit amazed that anyone's still making a print catalogue like that. It seems so much more efficient to put it all online, where people can access it immediately, where items can be quickly removed once sold, where prices can be changed in response to current trends, etc....
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed collecting graded cards, but I've been pretty much priced out the past year or so. On the flip side... I've been able to start shedding some graded singles I've hoarded over the past ten years for a nice profit. Every time I sell another card... I imagine which autographs (that I never plan on selling) they helped pay for ;D
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