The hobby of diminishing returns
Welcome to 2015. With Topps and Panini going down to the wire with their 2014 product releases, it will take at least another couple of weeks to finish off all of the year in review pieces here. With any luck, we’ll have the Best Mets Cards of 2014 post up this weekend. But before we get to that, let’s look at how my luck fared with packs in 2014. Spoiler: it was crap.
My spending was down in 2014, with just under $3,000 going toward unopened 2014 product. That yielded just $540 in eBay sales, though, for a variety of reasons, I ended up not selling quite a few of the biggest hits. Meanwhile, even the lesser hits were tough sells; cards that would have sold for $20 or more a year or two ago were lucky to go for $10 this year. Part of the problem is overproduction. Topps in particular has been pushing out more products with more parallels than ever before (and somehow without featuring more players). This results in a glut of low-numbered parallels of star players. That’s great for collectors who buy singles, not so good for sellers. If a Jose Altuve parallel numbered to 35 isn’t going to sell for more than $1, I might as well hang on to it. And so now I have piles of 2014 hits that can’t find good homes.
Of course, even the cards that did sell didn’t always sell. Out of 130 sales on eBay this year, three resulted in non-paying bidders. We’re not talking about junk cards either, these were big names: Clayton Kershaw, Kris Bryant, and Robin Yount. All of these cards went relatively cheap compared to other listings, but all three went unpaid. This seems to be an increasing problem as eBay has become more and more biased against sellers, bending over backwards to placate buyers while making selling more of a hassle. With Check Out My Cards getting into auctions, it should be interesting to see how eBay fares in the sports card market. We could see a tipping point in the next few years.
But enough doom and gloom, let’s get to the pretty cards.
1. 2014 Donruss Wrapper Redemption Masahiro Tanaka 201 SP Variation
$100 (Estimated)
This year, Panini found a creative way to skirt the nebulous Rookie Card rules and get the first RCs of Masahiro Tanaka and Jose Abreu onto the market. As a last-minute addition to 2014 Donruss (what would retroactively become Series 1), Panini announced a special wrapper redemption offer (the only such offer of the year). 24 wrappers of 2014 Donruss could be redeemed for a pack of three Rookie Cards, to be mailed out after the start of the season (when these players would all be eligible for RCs). By producing them in advance of their official eligibility, Panini got the jump on Topps and gave collectors a nice bonus on top of a very disappointing 2014 Donruss product. But that’s not the whole story.
A few months after I got my pack (thanks to a Brent Williams break and a little luck), I found out that the Tanaka had a short-printed variation with Japanese writing. And it turns out that I had it. At its peak, it was selling for $100, so that’s what I’m using for the purposes of this post. By the time I knew what I had, Tanaka’s injury had cut that price to less than half. So now I’m stuck with what should be a highly sought-after card, assuming Tanaka rebounds.
2. 2014 Topps High Tek Clayton Kershaw Black and White Parallel Autograph HT-CK 02/15
$77.00 (Unpaid)
What a year it was for Clayton Kershaw. Cy Young, MVP, and then Madison Bumgarner steals the spotlight in the postseason. Kershaw has only been just about the best pitcher in the NL for four straight seasons (his only Cy Young loss in that span was a second place to R.A. Dickey in 2012), but he’s obviously a terrible pitcher because he couldn’t carry his team to World Series victory. Kershaw has never been particularly strong in the hobby, but it was still disappointing to see this amazing Kershaw autograph sell for barely more than the box it was pulled from.
And then the buyer never paid.
I don’t know why I ever bother listing Kershaw cards anymore. Anything less than this wouldn’t even sell for $5, so I usually just drop those off for my local Dodgers fan trade partner. Maybe I should have done the same with this and saved myself some trouble. One more card to figure out how to unload well after the demand has died down…
3. 2014 Topps Chrome Miguel Cabrera Red Refractor 220 23/25
$72.99
Finally, a sale! This one was quite the shocker. I’ve sold some nice parallels numbered to 25 or 50 before, so I was sure this would go somewhere in the $25-50 range. Maybe $60. I’ve never had a parallel sell for more than $60 and I didn’t expect it here. Jeter? Sure, a Jeter would top that. Trout? Maybe. But Miguel Cabrera? As good as he’s been on the field, he just isn’t a big force in the hobby. I’ve still got a bunch of his rookie cards around here somewhere that I never bothered to dig out and sell. So I was quite happy to see this one top out at $72.99. Sure makes the Kershaw auto numbered to 15 seem disappointing at about the same price.
4-5.
2014 Topps Chrome Update Jacob deGrom Black Refractor MB-19 53/99
$40 (Estimated)
2014 Topps Heritage David Wright Black Refractor THC-284 06/65
$25 (Estimated)
And now some Mets. I actually had pretty good luck at getting Mets parallels this year and these are the best I’ve ever gotten. I obviously held on to these for my collection, leaving just one sale in the top five cards. That’s everything in the $20 and up category, how does it look if we drop the threshold down to $10?
Four autographs, four manufactured material (two of them Jeters), six parallels (three of them Phillies), one insert, and one SP photo variation. Fairly typical, especially all of the Phillies parallels. Of these, the Zimmer is the only one I kept. Some of these went higher than I expected; the Tanaka is numbered to 999 and shouldn’t have been anywhere near $10, common Mattingly parallels don’t usually go this high, and the Gwynn may have seen a boost due to his untimely death. Others were far lower than expected; the Buxton auto went for just $15, I sold an Utley parallel numbered to 25 for nearly twice as much two years ago, and that Miguel Cabrera numbered to 63 sold for $62.50 less than the one numbered to 25.
That’s it for 2014. Don’t expect much in the 2015 version, I’m not sure I’ll be opening much after such a miserable year. I mean, it’s not like Topps and Panini are going to drop their prices to compensate for the diminished value in their products. And they’re certainly not going to add value. I suppose it’s fortunate that poor distribution kept a lot of things from appearing on the shelves in my local hobby store. Out of sight, out of mind.
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