Prospecting, maintaining and then forgetting - The refusal to let go of a lost player!

[mrmopar]

Ever since I got heavily into signed cards, i have been watching the market in general and how things play out as a players career progresses. Some guys seem to be overall immune to any sort of price fluctuations, but I find it odd just how long folks grasp onto the "hope"(?) that a player will rebound when they are not on a star course. A young player who looks like the next best thing will have a season or maybe a few filled with promise, then nosedive and never recover. Yet, many folks are still buying their cards at inflated rates (for what they have accomplished perhaps, but more so for what they feel might be to come). I can see a touted prospect growing upon that popularity and fame as they steer towards a HOF career, (Trout, for example) but the other way around just makes no sense.

I talked about this quite a bit at one point when I was chasing a Yasiel Puig autograph. He came out strong and people went wild. I never felt he was worth anywhere near the prices he was getting and his career never took off either. Yet, I bet even today, people are scooping up Puig autos for well above what a player of his career stats should bring. WHY? He is out of baseball now it seems, was a 1X AS, had a career high 28 HRs, never lead the league in any category, won any awards or anything that would make his journey a standout type of career. His rookie season was pretty decent, which is what drove the hype. The rest was average at best. How long before we collectively forget that he was on par with someone like Leon Durham. Would you pay $30 for a Leon Durham autograph? Probably not even 1/3 of that!

That brings me to the future possibility of another player who has seen a much greater hype. He is still early in his career and does have potential left. still, he is struggling hard this year. Does he start a fast decline into obscurity or can he regain some of the magic of his first couple years? Buyers say he still has the potential, but I wonder if that is true. I hate to think poorly about someone from the team I root for, but anyone forking out $100+ for non RC autos right now makes me question people's decision making process. maybe this is the time to get some steals or maybe this is the time to get caught holding the bag. i'm talking about Cody Bellinger.

I don't follow the rest of the field nearly as close, so I am sure there are plenty of examples of both types of players to compare to, but my main point is how long people hold onto past glory from players like Puig or even those who had even less of an impact that him! I still see folks asking $10-20 or more for scrubs that never made the majors or played in 3 games. Set builders aside, I don't understand that pricing expectation, even if a card is /25 or less. They are done, they never did anything, they never will.

 

[Dilferules]

I wouldn't know anything about that. (but I bought everything cheap after he completely flamed out - no value held with him!)

To be fair it's not only stats that drive card values, how famous a person is/was can drive demand. Puig was famous for a little while, everybody who followed baseball even a little at the time remembers him. He at least held onto that fame longer than say a Kevin Maas. Leon Durham was never famous.

 

[DaClyde]

I'm still waiting for Billy Hamilton's early autos to collapse so I can start a collection of him. They're still coasting off his minor league SB record.

 

[Philip J. Fry]

I wouldn't know anything about that. (but I bought everything cheap after he completely flamed out - no value held with him!)

To be fair it's not only stats that drive card values, how famous a person is/was can drive demand. Puig was famous for a little while, everybody who followed baseball even a little at the time remembers him. He at least held onto that fame longer than say a Kevin Maas. Leon Durham was never famous.

Mine is Brien Taylor. 30 years later and I still try to scoop any cards I don't have of his.

 

[tramers]

i have a couple Dilfer auto's seem to stopped / Matt Capps fell off world also - i know Matt .

 

[smapdi]

The card market is tied to performance but has never been as tightly correlated as one might expect, and it doesn't move very swiftly unless it's upwards. People are hard to move off their first impressions, but when they do, they tend to go to extremes. A guy like Bellinger, who appears to have all the talent and tools but lacks consistency and health, it's extra tough to predict which way the market will jump. He reminds me of Roy Campanella, who alternated MVP years with very ordinary years, or Bret Saberhagen with his odd-year Cy Young trend in the 80s.

Another big thing in today's card market is price memory as the costs are so high to get in now. People who bought Bellinger cards in 2017-2019 were paying pretty stiff prices, and they aren't going to sell cheap now, no matter what his stats are. Even though it feels like he's been around a long time, he's still only 25. By age 30 he could be anywhere from a solid perennial all-star with 275 homers on his way to a long, lauded career to a manager at Foot Locker. Just have to wait and see, but I think he's pretty far from retail at this point.

Very often, perception is much different from stats, and for the young guys the player's performance relative to the hype on him leading up to the majors is huge. This is a huge failing in the market, in my opinion. Jon Sickels or someone compares player X to Joe DiMaggio or Tom Seaver, and when that guy doesn't turn out to be DiMaggio or Seaver, even if he's still pretty good, and the market collapses. But if a guy's prijected simply as a solid contributor, potential all-star kind of guy and meets or exceeds those expectations, his market solidifies and grows. Rather than just sitting back and watching what a guy actually does, everything is about what he is expected do versus what he doesn't do.

Take Wander Franco. His existence has been the ultimate fairytale for the card market in 2021. His first Bowman cards came out right in line with the upswing in the market, his Bowman Chrome super selling for $80K or whatever was the meteor of pricing explosions. Being the #1 prospect for 2 years, the card boards all abuzz about him. Then his debut game finally arrived and he showed what he could do, and it was great. Since then, he's been less than stellar overall. No one is jumping ship on a super-hyped 20-YO having some difficulty in his couple months in the majors, and every good game is taken as an omen of things to come rather than rare bright spots. In fact, he's been trending in a good direction the past few weeks. I'd expect him to have a halo effect for a good long time, but if he ever has a couple 3 WAR seasons in a row, people will stop buying his cards, but they won't sell his cards cheap, either.

Another guy I think of is Kris Bryant. Couldn't ask for a better early career. From college POY to minor league POY to NL ROY to NL MVP and WS Champ, talk about fairytale. Then the Cubs blow it up 5 years after winning, and his cards are still solid if nowhere near as hot as they were. I always liked him but didn't want to buy in at the levels they were at. I started looking at them leading up to the trade deadline when he was the biggest name expected to move, thinking I might want to get one just to have. Newsflash: Bryant Bowman Chrome autos are still not cheap.

 

[nosterbor]

Kris Bryant has not been the same since he was hit in the head with a pitch on 4-22-2018. And I do not think he ever will be. I hope I am wrong.

 

[mrmopar]

The card market is tied to performance but has never been as tightly correlated as one might expect, and it doesn't move very swiftly unless it's upwards. People are hard to move off their first impressions, but when they do, they tend to go to extremes. A guy like Bellinger, who appears to have all the talent and tools but lacks consistency and health, it's extra tough to predict which way the market will jump. He reminds me of Roy Campanella, who alternated MVP years with very ordinary years, or Bret Saberhagen with his odd-year Cy Young trend in the 80s.

Another big thing in today's card market is price memory as the costs are so high to get in now. People who bought Bellinger cards in 2017-2019 were paying pretty stiff prices, and they aren't going to sell cheap now, no matter what his stats are. Even though it feels like he's been around a long time, he's still only 25. By age 30 he could be anywhere from a solid perennial all-star with 275 homers on his way to a long, lauded career to a manager at Foot Locker. Just have to wait and see, but I think he's pretty far from retail at this point.

Very often, perception is much different from stats, and for the young guys the player's performance relative to the hype on him leading up to the majors is huge. This is a huge failing in the market, in my opinion. Jon Sickels or someone compares player X to Joe DiMaggio or Tom Seaver, and when that guy doesn't turn out to be DiMaggio or Seaver, even if he's still pretty good, and the market collapses. But if a guy's prijected simply as a solid contributor, potential all-star kind of guy and meets or exceeds those expectations, his market solidifies and grows. Rather than just sitting back and watching what a guy actually does, everything is about what he is expected do versus what he doesn't do.

Take Wander Franco. His existence has been the ultimate fairytale for the card market in 2021. His first Bowman cards came out right in line with the upswing in the market, his Bowman Chrome super selling for $80K or whatever was the meteor of pricing explosions. Being the #1 prospect for 2 years, the card boards all abuzz about him. Then his debut game finally arrived and he showed what he could do, and it was great. Since then, he's been less than stellar overall. No one is jumping ship on a super-hyped 20-YO having some difficulty in his couple months in the majors, and every good game is taken as an omen of things to come rather than rare bright spots. In fact, he's been trending in a good direction the past few weeks. I'd expect him to have a halo effect for a good long time, but if he ever has a couple 3 WAR seasons in a row, people will stop buying his cards, but they won't sell his cards cheap, either.

Another guy I think of is Kris Bryant. Couldn't ask for a better early career. From college POY to minor league POY to NL ROY to NL MVP and WS Champ, talk about fairytale. Then the Cubs blow it up 5 years after winning, and his cards are still solid if nowhere near as hot as they were. I always liked him but didn't want to buy in at the levels they were at. I started looking at them leading up to the trade deadline when he was the biggest name expected to move, thinking I might want to get one just to have. Newsflash: Bryant Bowman Chrome autos are still not cheap.

You hit most of the points I had in my head. Still, any player who still has gas left in the tank, it would be foolish to cut bait. However, say in the case of Puig, nothing and I mean NOTHING should be driving anyone to buy his autographs at anything other than Leon Durham prices!

I used to collect as many ASG members as I could get. It was fun to go back and fill in the gaps, but if I didn't catch new guys early enough, forget it. I still need a ton of newer AS level guys and won't pay hype prices for 1 AS year. We all know the ASG is often just a popularity contest anyways.

Oh well, it makes for some interesting watching, as you try to figure out the minds of card collectors.