Bad Wax

In the world of baseball card collecting are there two more sweeter words than Rookie Card?  Even growing up in the mid to late 80s, the words rookie card meant finding a undiscovered talent.  Holding on to that card because if he got good, it would mean dollar signs.  Nowadays it’s called prospecting.  Finding the rookie cards of undiscovered talent at a low price and when they make it big, selling off those cards to make a huge profit.  The investors dream buy low (maybe a dollar or two a card), then sell high (50-100 dollars per card).  Sounds so easy, so can’t miss, so how come we can’t do it anymore?

Baseball card manufacturers figured this out between the 1986 and 1987 seasons.  Guys like Jose Canseco, Will Clark, Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and Wally Joyner were murdering the ball.  Putting up numbers that weren’t seen before by rookies.  So what did they do?  They started to make the rookie card the centerpiece of their product.  They first brought back the Topps Rookie All-Star gold cup and the Future Stars cards.  In 1988 they included the USA baseball team cards in the update, in 1989 we had the 1st round draft pick cards.  The thing was, these cards were still worthless until the player did something.

So we fast forward to 1999, I got back into the hobby after a long break (since 1991) and started to notice that in each year, it was the rookie cards that were worth just as much as veteran cards.  They still had done nothing to prove their worth, but they were being collected as prospects with the potential to become stars. Now let’s look where we currently are.  If you go through the sets (not only baseball, but basketball, hockey and football).  It’s all about the rookie card.  They are the card that is short printed, refracted, autographed, game used, ect. . . The player may not have even gotten his first at bat or delivered his first pitch, and his card may be worth hundreds. Some rare versions of a card may be worth thousands.

The question I find myself asking over and over is why? In 2004 the number one draft pick was Matt Bush.  He was a high school player from San Diego who was drafted by the Padres.  His autographed 2004 Bowman Chrome card was the card to get.  I remember seeing it for $100 at one point.  A sure fire, can’t miss, super prospect. The prospectors were going crazy picking these up.  So how did he do (since it’s now 4 years since he was drafted)? His stats were 0.219/3/70/19 with 158 hits. That wouldn’t be a horrible first year stat line.  Unfortunately those were his career minor league numbers.  He retired last year having never made it to the pros.  The card is actually still worth an absurd $30 according to Beckett.

More recently we can look at Luke Hochevar, drafted by the Royals in 2006 as the first overall pick.  Unlike Matt Bush Luke actually made it to the pros in 2007.  However, being he was a former number one overall pick, his card must be worth hundreds . . . right?  Well, things haven’t gone to well for Luke this season, first off he plays for the Royals which is strike one.  His overall stats this year are 4-5/4.86/1.55.  Those numbers aren’t too impressive.  But don’t tell Rookie Card Fanboy that! He shelled out $100 for Luke’s autographed card in 2006 and he’s just biding his time until Luke breaks out and becomes the next Johan Santana.

The point of this rant is simple.  These prospects can’t live up to what their card is worth.  For every Jay Bruce, there is a Rob Deer, or maybe a Cameron Maybin.  The uber prospect that never lived up to the hype. How can they?  Their cards are worth more than Alex Rodriguez’s, but they will never be as good as he is, so why do the lemmings blindly put their money in these cards?  Is it going to get worse?  Will veteran’s cards ever be worth more?  I don’t know, maybe someday the market might correct itself, but until then what do we do?  I guess just sit back and wait for them to fail right?  Seems a bit sadistic to me.

Maybe someday I will understand this hobby and why people blindly follow Beckett, but until then I’ll just keep swooping up these failed prospect’s autographs for a dollar and think what if?