Undervalued Areas

[dashcol]

Originally Posted by MoreToppsPlease

If I could add a common-sense caveat: know and understand the value of what you’re looking to acquire and don’t overpay or get taken advantage of.

Very true. Finding out you got taken advantage of also is a quick way to not find enjoyment in the hobby.

Sadly, I had a guy a few months ago I know who bought a couple blasters of 2018-19 Prizm basketball on a whim at Walmart because he wanted to start collecting. A few months after opening he decided he would rather do baseball, and he found a guy to trade his Prizm to for baseball. He came back to show me what he got, and he was super stoked. He had two Frank Thomas RCs, one Leaf and one Topps, a Larry Walker UD, Ken Griffey Jr Rated Rookie, 1985 Topps Mark McGwire, and a 2020 Topps Series 1 and 2 base set. He thought he killed it, I mean two blasters worth of cards for a complete set, 4 HOF RCs, and a McGwire RC. I told him it would depend what he traded for it, but he may have gotten a good deal in that he was sitting on about $150 worth of baseball now. He thought it was great off of a $40 investment, which normally I would agree.

Then he told me the two cards the guy actually wanted from his stack of Prizm. My friend felt bad and just gave him all the cards as he didn’t want the basketball anymore.

The two cards he remembered were 1) DeAndre Ayton Prizm RC, which is whatever I would trade that every day for what he got. The second though was a Luka...

I told him what the Luka was worth raw. At the time it was about $4-500. He was so disgusted that this guy took advantage of him, and he thought the entire hobby was like that, that he sold gave the baseball cards to his nephew and swears he will never do anything in the hobby again.

So, yeah, make sure you educate yourself before you make a deal. If it seems to good to be true, 999/1000 times it is.

[MoreToppsPlease]

Originally Posted by dashcol

Very true. Finding out you got taken advantage of also is a quick way to not find enjoyment in the hobby.

Sadly, I had a guy a few months ago I know who bought a couple blasters of 2018-19 Prizm basketball on a whim at Walmart because he wanted to start collecting. A few months after opening he decided he would rather do baseball, and he found a guy to trade his Prizm to for baseball. He came back to show me what he got, and he was super stoked. He had two Frank Thomas RCs, one Leaf and one Topps, a Larry Walker UD, Ken Griffey Jr Rated Rookie, 1985 Topps Mark McGwire, and a 2020 Topps Series 1 and 2 base set. He thought he killed it, I mean two blasters worth of cards for a complete set, 4 HOF RCs, and a McGwire RC. I told him it would depend what he traded for it, but he may have gotten a good deal in that he was sitting on about $150 worth of baseball now. He thought it was great off of a $40 investment, which normally I would agree.

Then he told me the two cards the guy actually wanted from his stack of Prizm. My friend felt bad and just gave him all the cards as he didn’t want the basketball anymore.

The two cards he remembered were 1) DeAndre Ayton Prizm RC, which is whatever I would trade that every day for what he got. The second though was a Luka...

I told him what the Luka was worth raw. At the time it was about $4-500. He was so disgusted that this guy took advantage of him, and he thought the entire hobby was like that, that he sold gave the baseball cards to his nephew and swears he will never do anything in the hobby again.

So, yeah, make sure you educate yourself before you make a deal. If it seems to good to be true, 999/1000 times it is.

Wow, thanks for the story. Taking advantage of newbies is horrible. One can’t help but think it’s happening a lot these days - it accounts for at least some of the recent price spikes across the board.

[Boredlawyer]

Originally Posted by dashcol

Very true. Finding out you got taken advantage of also is a quick way to not find enjoyment in the hobby.

Sadly, I had a guy a few months ago I know who bought a couple blasters of 2018-19 Prizm basketball on a whim at Walmart because he wanted to start collecting. A few months after opening he decided he would rather do baseball, and he found a guy to trade his Prizm to for baseball. He came back to show me what he got, and he was super stoked. He had two Frank Thomas RCs, one Leaf and one Topps, a Larry Walker UD, Ken Griffey Jr Rated Rookie, 1985 Topps Mark McGwire, and a 2020 Topps Series 1 and 2 base set. He thought he killed it, I mean two blasters worth of cards for a complete set, 4 HOF RCs, and a McGwire RC. I told him it would depend what he traded for it, but he may have gotten a good deal in that he was sitting on about $150 worth of baseball now. He thought it was great off of a $40 investment, which normally I would agree.

Then he told me the two cards the guy actually wanted from his stack of Prizm. My friend felt bad and just gave him all the cards as he didn’t want the basketball anymore.

The two cards he remembered were 1) DeAndre Ayton Prizm RC, which is whatever I would trade that every day for what he got. The second though was a Luka...

I told him what the Luka was worth raw. At the time it was about $4-500. He was so disgusted that this guy took advantage of him, and he thought the entire hobby was like that, that he sold gave the baseball cards to his nephew and swears he will never do anything in the hobby again.

So, yeah, make sure you educate yourself before you make a deal. If it seems to good to be true, 999/1000 times it is.

Sounds like the guy with the basketball cards should have taken five minutes to do some research. I'm not sure if consider that taken advantage of.

[dashcol]

Originally Posted by Boredlawyer

Sounds like the guy with the basketball cards should have taken five minutes to do some research. I'm not sure if consider that taken advantage of.

Very true, and anyone experienced in the hobby would do that. However, this guy collected as a kid in the 90s, and when he went to high school he stopped collecting. He randomly bought some blasters when he was in Walmart just for fun and never expecting money out of it. He had no idea how to check prices, and thought that BV was still the thing that determines price. He went to the LCS to buy a Beckett, and the LCS did not have any. Unfortunately there was a shady guy in the store (not the owner, just a customer) who saw the couple cards he had and instead of teaching him, he offered him “a lot” of cards for his small stack to help him get into baseball.

I have talked to a few guys who have gotten into collecting cards this year, who haven’t collected in 20 years and have no idea about how the market works now, and how much things cost. A large percentage of the new collectors, not flippers, have no idea there are forums, or that eBay drives the prices now. I actually belong to a community who still only go by BV, and none of them ever even look at eBay to buy or sell cards, and still trade to complete base sets.

[i4gotmyid]

Originally Posted by bpc3qh

I meant "market inefficiencies" more as ways for me to save money, since I'm not looking for resale when I buy. Part of why I'm struggling here is that I'm very much in the "buy what I like" camp--I'm a Nats fan, so I buy Soto, Strasburg, Scherzer, Zimmerman--but I also like older guys like Yaz, Williams, Musial, Mays, Aaron, as well as players with ties to pop culture that I like (e.g., the softball episode of the Simpsons). So there isn't much of a consistent philosophy.

If you are buying for your PC, I suggest looking at the card not the grade, especially for vintage if you buy graded cards...the variance between grades 4-6 is quite large. When buying graded cards, dont stick to one brand, SGC and BVG can be had for quite a bargain compared to PSA (re-read my first sentence). When cards are in the graded holder, its also easier to tell if they have been trimmed if you look at the distance of the edges to the holder...and a lot...a whole lot of trimmed vintage were graded by all parties.

Centering and color are more important for me than sharp corners if you put your cards on display. Oddball and rarities can be nice as well...and dont forget O-Pee-Chee for 70s-80s. Some of these are the exact same cards as Topps, lower print run, but also cheaper (lack of demand = lack of resale).

Also I personally would avoid cards without MLB licensing, they can look nice, but Player X for the Washington Baseball Team just seems off to me.

[HarryLime]

I think any legitimate windows of opportunity that currently exist aren't going to be posted on a public message board so that they can instantly be closed.

I would say you need to think outside the box. Every craze has always been accompanied by "no one saw this coming" sentiments. If that's the case, then predicting a future craze would mean that the idea, as it exists today, would seem illogical or impossible.

How many people look to dump their money into illogical or impossible? Not many. You really have to do the legwork yourself so that, at least in your mind, you can see how the illogical can become probable.

And if you've done all of that work, why would you share it with thousands of other people for free?

Arthur

[bpc3qh]

So in terms of avoiding getting ripped off, is there a place that tracks sales? There's a site for comics that tracks graded sales, and I seem to recall that PSA has something similar, but is that the site to use? I'm trying to fit everything into my existing framework, so I apologize in advance for what may be fairly basic questions.

[cardsin47]

Originally Posted by dashcol

The important thing is to collect what you like and not worry about what others think. When you start worrying about what others think you should collect, then you are starting to worry about the monetary value and not the fun of collecting and this starts to turn into less of a hobby the entire time.

Bingo! I collect wax and LOVE it. Most of these guys don’t, but I don’t care. It’s for My enjoyment - not theirs. It happens to also be very profitable.....

[bpc3qh]

Originally Posted by DawnBTVS

One sneaky market inefficiency are Hall of Famers in "modern-day" card sets. I picked up a Bryce Harper Topps Archive Orange Foil /75 for $10 and also picked up a /25 Topps Archive Red Wade Boggs raw for like $4. As a Red Sox homer and big Boggs fan, I was all over that You'll often see modern-day players, especially RCs, much higher priced than legends and proven stars.

TCDB.com is a great tool if you also like the aesthetics of cards and are looking for different sets to explore. 2nd-year cards can be very underrated because they aren't "Rookie" cards but: They usually feature the player's 1st year of MLB stats on the back or 1st full year of MLB stats (something I appreciate) and sometimes the card better captures the player. I'll take Ken Griffey Jr's 1990 Upper Deck Card with him kneeling & smiling all day, every day over his far more valued 1989 Upper Deck Card personally.

If you want to go the graded route and don't really care about "Gem Mint" status, modern-day PSA 8s/8.5s and BGS 8.5s are solid (Near-Mint) and far cheaper than 9s or 10s. Depending on the subgrades of a BGS, you can even get 9 Centering or 9 Corners from an 8.5 or even 8 depending on what the other subgrades are. If you're going 'Vintage' and anything pre-1980, you can get away with some great looking PSA/SGC 3s-5s if you focus on centering.

This is extremely helpful, and really fits exactly what I'm trying to figure out. The idea of modern cards for old players seems great--I might eventually spend the money for a Koufax rookie, but I like the idea of getting a nice looking Koufax card from the last few years, too, at a fraction of the cost.

[Boredlawyer]

Originally Posted by bpc3qh

This is extremely helpful, and really fits exactly what I'm trying to figure out. The idea of modern cards for old players seems great--I might eventually spend the money for a Koufax rookie, but I like the idea of getting a nice looking Koufax card from the last few years, too, at a fraction of the cost.

To play devil's advocate..

I am unsure whether this is a market inefficiency, or just that new players and hot rookies are totally overpriced. There's thousands of Bryce Harper cards produced every year. Harper is going to have tens of thousands of parallels produced over the next ten years. He might have fifteen years of Archives cards before he retires, and each one will have numerous parallels. Maybe none of them are worth more than a buck or two. There's so much overproduction, and it's very difficult to move low end parallels quickly. You might have that Harper up on COMC for a year before it gets a bite. You'll have extremely limited liquidity, and have to decide whether you want to invest a huge amount of time trying to sell and mail individual $5-10 cards, or take a gigantic discount to get rid of them in one lot when you have hundreds or thousands if you don't have the time or interest to market them individually.

I'm willing to bet that most of the members here have that problem. 3200 ct boxes filled with inserts and numbered parallels that are worth SOMETHING, but aren't worth the time to try to photo or scan, list on ebay, type up a description for, package up and mail to try to make a couple dollars.

My patience for photographing, cropping, and listing cards is limited to about 10 cards in a single day.

I posted a message a while back about how I think arbitrage opportunities within the hobby are extremely limited at this point. Everyone has access to all the same scouting videos, player writeups, trends, whatever. It's really just a market trend at this point. Cards are up, every prospect card is up. If cards go down, even if that prospect succeeds, the market is going to sedate the prices.

[Doctor Claw]

Originally Posted by bpc3qh

Relatively inexperienced in cards (have a lot more experience with comics), and I'm trying to figure out if there are any "market inefficiencies", especially among vintage cards. I'm primarily thinking undervalued players or types of cards. I'm not the kind of collector to chase the 1 of 1 auto/patch cards, for example. I typically only buy the players I like anyway, so if I can save money by buying a less-valued version of one of my guy's RC, for example, the knowledge would be good to have. Appreciate any feedback y'all can provide!

Yes, there is one glaring inefficiency, though perhaps not the only one. I’ll say that much I collect and am not into selling for profit, though, so treating cards like stocks is not what I do. That said, if I were to sell the pieces based on this “market inefficiency” I would do quite well from a sheer financial standpoint.

As to price tracking, VCP (Vintage Card Prices) is great, yet not all inclusive; thus it helps to know what Auction House data VCP does not capture, and stay abreast of those auctions as well.

[dodgerfanjohn]

1980’s psa 8 and 9’s of rookie HOF’s.

There’s been a ton of 80’s wax shredded during the pandemic. Some of that went to psa for the past 6-12 months. If the pop reports don’t change too much, that’s it for those cards. Very little new wax will be opened at current pricing.

The entry cost for everything except the Ripken traded and the 1989 UD Griffey is pretty low.

[Vegemight]

Originally Posted by mwheeler27

Online brands and exclusives like Topps NOW.

NOW won’t be going away, and it is getting more popular. It will be interesting watching how this brand plays out in the future, among others.

A collector is more likely to seek out cards they like, and be less concerned about whether their choice meets the approval of the crowd.

In the current climate we see a lot of investor/flipper money coming into the hobby and this makes it much more expensive to acquire cards that have been declared hot, but can also make the less hot cards, at least in a relative sense, a lot cheaper.

For example, there is a PSA 10 2020 Topps Now Road to Opening Day Kyle Lewis card on Ebay for $170.60. Only 84 were printed, and the PSA 10 pop count is 5.

A PSA 10 2020 Topps Chrome Sapphire Kyle Lewis card sold for $610. There are 13 PSA 10s.

A PSA 10 2020 Topps Chrome Rookie Blue Wave Refractor sold for $1500. Only 75 printed, and the pop count is 7 PSA 10s.

All things being equal the Topps Now card looks undervalued, and if you are a Kyle Lewis collector who doesn't care that the investor sheep don't agree with your choice, why wouldn't you pick up the cheaper card?

To save yourself some money, particularly in this untethered moment, look for that kind of price discrepancy, and then continue to collect what you like, not what others tell you to like.

[MoreToppsPlease]

Originally Posted by Vegemight

In the current climate we see a lot of investor/flipper money coming into the hobby and this makes it much more expensive to acquire cards that have been declared hot, but can also make the less hot cards, at least in a relative sense, a lot cheaper.

It’s more than that though - there’s a lot of newbies who don’t know they’re grossly overpaying, and there are plenty of Brent Huigens’ telling people what to buy.

In any event, and unsurprisingly, present prices are only sustainable with the constant, continued flow of money.

[Vegemight]

Originally Posted by MoreToppsPlease

It’s more than that though - there’s a lot of newbies who don’t know they’re grossly overpaying, and there are plenty of Brent Huigens’ telling people what to buy.

In any event, and unsurprisingly, present prices are only sustainable with the constant, continued flow of money.

Absolutely.

There was a somewhat cheesy, but at the same time educational, show called 'Adam Ruins Everything' a few years back, that did a segment on the fine art world, and I see some similarities with what is going on in the card market.

A group of 'elites' decide what will be collectible and then manipulate the market, with actions such as shill bidding at auctions, to push up the price of these items, and make their concocted reality come true.

I just checked, and it's available on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw5kme5Q_Yo

A most inefficient market!

[Shankweather]

Jack Glasscock cards are undervalued imo.

[Swipe79]

I know of this wonderous land also.

Originally Posted by dashcol

I actually belong to a community who still only go by BV, and none of them ever even look at eBay to buy or sell cards, and still trade to complete base sets.

[MoreToppsPlease]

Originally Posted by Vegemight

Absolutely.

There was a somewhat cheesy, but at the same time educational, show called 'Adam Ruins Everything' a few years back, that did a segment on the fine art world, and I see some similarities with what is going on in the card market.

A group of 'elites' decide what will be collectible and then manipulate the market, with actions such as shill bidding at auctions, to push up the price of these items, and make their concocted reality come true.

I just checked, and it's available on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw5kme5Q_Yo

A most inefficient market!

Ha, this is great. This is what happens with unregulated markets!

[AnthonyCorona]

A lot of people have been saying Phil bickford and Brandon wood cards are about to shout up a lot


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[dio]

80s error card, look at beckett price from 89

89 Fleer Bill ripken FF. (griffey $4.5 , this one over $20)
89 upper deck Gary Sheffield SS( griffey $10, SS $8)
89 upper deck Dale Murphy RN ( griffey $10, this one at $100)
87 Donruss Opening Day Barry Bonds error
etc.....

I think at current moment, all these are undervalue