Quote:
Originally Posted by NorCalSCM
Which do you think is better. The OD or S1 Judge?
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I haven't really kept up with that. I always like to have all of the Opening Day cards that vary from the S1/S2 cards, as many as a half-dozen per year. This year, Judge is one of them, so I want it for my collection. As a baseball card, I like the S1 card better (the "Catching" card); the Opening Day card is more of generic fielding card.
Last year, the Gary Sanchez card in Opening Day was a unique card, but only in that it was cropped / zoomed-in from the same image used on his eventual S2 RC. It was not that well done in that you could see the resulting pixelation on the card.
Just as there is in S1, the Opening Day Aaron Judge base card has an image variation short print. These are extremely tough pulls; something like 1:450 packs. I'm not sure of the case format for the boxes of Opening Day but that would be about 1 in 12 Hobby boxes. That variation will be an extremely valuable card. Both variations are nicer images for a baseball card - more unique photos selected. I don't expect to ever be able to afford one of them for myself. Ichiro had a really sweet base SP variant in '16 Opening Day that all Ichiro collectors would want.
Chasing Case Hits in Opening Day would probably be quite a losing proposition in terms of ROI. Chasing just the Judge SP by buying a case would be a 1/25 proposition I think, maybe a little smaller checklist, but the base SPs are usually worth about $40 I think.
I have collected Opening Day since 2013 and have pulled autographs and relics from it - but never a short print.
Over time I would think the regular S1 RC card will hold more value over the Opening Day card even though the production of the S1 card probably dwarfs the production of the Opening Day card. The Regular Topps Set for the year is the Standard in the world of baseball cards. Having variant RC cards in the Opening Day set might have been a brand new thing last year with the Sanchez card. When players have sooooooo many cards with that great RC logo, I think ultimately the S1/S2/Update card will be a standard to collect, any variants from that (without other product logos as with Opening Day), and also the Chrome base RC and any SP image variant, and /# parallels in other products (Finest, etc.) will all be more desired than the card from that silly set for kids called Opening Day. But some collectors will want every Aaron Judge card with an RC logo, so his Opening Day base RC won't be worthless, either.
The 2013 Opening Day purple Machado I am sure is worth a pretty penny - if you could ever find one for sale.