Most of the Mets
Now we get to the fun stuff. The $20-30 range is where you’ll find your expectation-level hits. As in, this is usually the best you can expect to get from a box. Now, when you’re spending $60-100 per box, you’re sure hoping for something at least this good to be in there. But all too often you’ll get a 99 cent “hit” and a base card will be the prize of the box. Enjoy it when these fall regularly, even though they won’t make back half of the price of the box.
32-21: Keepers, Buy-It-Nows, and Surprises Good and Bad
Finally, some good cards that I kept because I wanted to and not just because I couldn’t get people to give me money for them… In the case of the Jerry Buchek autograph and the Tim Tebow bat card, I pulled them the day after after getting outbid for the same cards on eBay. So that worked out well. My first Aaron Judge RC of the year was an under-the-radar hit from hobby shop exclusive silver bonus packs. And the similarly-patterned Cody Bellinger purple mega refractor isn’t a Rookie Card but is the best Bellinger I pulled in 2017, so I irrationally decided to hang on to it. If nothing else, I could find a way to leverage it in trade. The Estevan Florial green parallel was a pleasant surprise and almost didn’t get listed after the other parallels I pulled from Heritage Minor League turned out to be worthless. Ditto for the Luis Urias green parallel earlier in the year.
Three of these sold on Buy-It-Nows and I’m still not sure who got the better end of the deal. The Hunter Renfroe autograph selling for $30 was a complete shock to me; I still have one of his autographs sitting around because it isn’t worth anything (good old Heritage premium…). And the Lourdes Gurriel Jr. autograph was a tough one to price, so I probably went a bit low on that. But the Adonis Medina blue refractor autograph? I wasn’t planning on putting a Buy It Now price on that one, mainly because nothing comparable had sold at the time I listed it. It wasn’t selling for $30, so that was clearly the ceiling. But lesser cards were selling well enough to put the floor at about $20. I was content to let the bidding run its course until a bidder in a rush asked for a Buy It Now price. I split the difference at $25. And he requested $18 with free shipping. Um, no. Before I could even respond though, someone else jumped on it for $25.
And then there’s Corey Seager… We’ll have more to say about him later, but suffice it to say that I was pretty happy to pull this card from a box of 2017 Bowman Platinum. Everything else was junk, but this was a very nice card. Die-cut, numbered to 35, only the sticker autograph kept it from being a contender to keep. At least I could make back most of the price of the box from it. When it ended at $28.88, I knew I had made a mistake. Much like when I sold a Byron Buxton autograph for $15.55, I would have rather kept the card, or at least used it to trade for something I would want more. Probably could have gotten a nice deGrom for it… After the photo variation I pulled from 2017 Topps Archives failed to sell (early copies had been selling close to $20), Corey Seager had disappointed me for the second time and it wasn’t over yet.
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