Player Name: Grady Sizemore
Set From: 2000 Bowman Draft Picks
Why are these cards a must have?: Grady may very well be one of the top 5 hitters in baseball right now. As each year passes, he seems to inch closer and closer to a 40-40 season. The scary thing is that this year he’s 26 years old. He has been in the majors since 2004 and other than that season he has hit at least 22 homers and stolen at least 22 bases in each of his past 4 seasons. Last year he hit a career high 33 homers and stole a career high 38 bases. He isn’t even fully developed as a player yet. Already this year he has 6 homers and 4 stolen bases. However offense is just one of the things that set him apart from the others. He is also an outstanding outfielder who has won back to back Golden Gloves in the past two seasons. He also won a Silver Slugger award last year and has 3 All Star selections. His 162 game average is 0.279-27/85/28 which is just outstanding. If those accolades weren’t enough, he has also finished in MVP voting each of his 4 full seasons. So the question is, why is his only rookie card commands only $15? Of course his autographed XRC from the same set is booking at about $300, so I guess that makes up for it. On a side note, he came to the Indians in one of the most lopsided trades in baseball history, Bartolo Colon and Tim Drew for Brandon Phillips, Grady Sizemore, Cliff Lee and Lee Stevens, OUCH!
On a scale of 1 – 10, how must have are these cards: 7, he is a superstar right now. He is years away from being a member of the Hall of Fame, but he looks like he is well on his way, if he continues his ways and stays relatively healthy he could be a 500 homer / 500 stolen base guy, which in my book or anyone’s for that matter is a Hall of Famer. In the book they run at $15 for the base card and $300 for the autographed card, on eBay you can find it for around $8 for the base card and $300 – $400 for the autograph. The base card is a steal and a no brainer to have in your collection. If you can afford the autograph it should go up if he continues to dominate the way he has already shown.
On eBay there was a BIN for the auto at $250 that just expired without selling. I haven’t seen any sell recently but I’ll bet you could get it for the low $200s. Right now it is the card I desire most.
It is my Zooey Deschanel